Olga Zilberbourg’s English-language debut LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) explores “bicultural identity hilariously, poignantly,” according to The Moscow Times. It also dives into topics of bisexuality and immigrant parenthood. Anthony Marra called it “…a book of succinct abundance, dazzling in its particulars, expansive in its scope,” and Karen Bender said, “Olga Zilberbourg is a writer to read right now.”
Zilberbourg’s writing has appeared in World Literature Today, The Believer, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Born in Leningrad, USSR in a Russian-speaking Jewish family, she makes her home in San Francisco, California. She has published four collections of stories in Russia, including most recent Задержи дыхание [Hold Your Breath] from Vremya Press. She serves as a consulting editor at Narrative Magazine and as a co-facilitator of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. Together with Yelena Furman, she has co-founded Punctured Lines, a feminist blog about literature from the former Soviet Union. She is currently at work on her first novel.
Our own Jo Beckett-King will appear at Books Inc. in the Marina tomorrow, Sunday, August 3rd, 2025, at 5 pm, to present her debut THE HOUSE OF FOUND OBJECTS.
This mystery about a twelve-year-old Bea from Passaic, New Jersey is aimed at middle-grade readers, so feel free to bring your kids (RSVP here) and/or buy a copy for yourself and all the young readers in your life. Jo has been a loyal regular at SFWW for the last few years and we’ve loved her novels and stories and benefited greatly from her feedback. If you can’t make it to the event tomorrow, please order a copy through Books Inc. or elsewhere and make sure that your local library carries a few copies. Let’s make sure Jo’s debut is a huge success!
More about the book: Bea is visiting her family in Paris for the summer when her grandmother’s most precious heirloom—a drawing by Henri Matisse—goes missing. After a cryptic clue arrives on Bea’s doorstep suggesting its whereabouts, Bea is determined to pursue the lead. Without the French skills to navigate her way around the landmarks of Paris, she teams up with her cousin, Céline, whose clear-eyed French directness makes her a perfect partner for curious, problem-solving Bea. The girls embark on a city-wide search, deciphering riddles, solving puzzles, and cracking codes as they try to locate the Matisse, find a thief, and identify their mysterious benefactor.
We look forward to celebrating Jo’s book with some of you tomorrow!
Thanks to Asa Murphy for pictures of Tamim Ansary, taken when he chose to step down as a moderator of the San Francisco Writers Workshop in July 2015. His last Tuesday night as a moderator gathered a great number of old and new regulars at Alley Cat books.
Tamim Ansary receives a plaque from Kurt Wallace and James Warner
Regulars in the background: Beverly Parayno, Ian Tuttle, Ransom Stephens, Holman Turner, Yanina Gotsulsky
Coming up this Friday night, June 6, 2025, at 7 pm. Join us in supporting NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
Our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years, as well as one of the current moderators, Monya Baker, and several of our stellar regulars. (Full list of bios is below.)
We will have a book raffle, a game of SFWW bingo, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. Bring your friends and help us spread the word!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
Mark your calendars for 7 pm on June 6, 2025, at NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
San Francisco Writers Workshop is hosting our annual benefit to support NOISEBRIDGE, the venue that has been generously providing us with a space to meet for the past three years. A legendary anarchist hackerspace in the San Francisco’s Mission district, NOISEBRIDGE doesn’t charge writers to gather every Tuesday night, but the organization certainly has a large rent bill to pay. This is our chance to help ensure their and our own future!
We’re delighted that this year our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years. Tamim will be presenting his new book, TRUTHER NARRATIVES. Alongside Tamim, we’re incredibly proud to introduce a few of our current regulars. We will have a book raffle, a storytelling game, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
Mark your calendars for 7 pm on June 6, 2025, at NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
San Francisco Writers Workshop is hosting our annual benefit to support NOISEBRIDGE, the venue that has been generously providing us with a space to meet for the past three years. A legendary anarchist hackerspace in the San Francisco’s Mission district, NOISEBRIDGE doesn’t charge writers to gather every Tuesday night, but the organization certainly has a large rent bill to pay. This is our chance to help ensure their and our own future!
We’re delighted that this year our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years. Tamim will be presenting his new book, TRUTHER NARRATIVES. Alongside Tamim, we’re incredibly proud to introduce a few of our current regulars. We will have a book raffle, a storytelling game, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
Twelve-year-old Bea from Passaic, New Jersey, is visiting her family in Paris for the summer when her grandmother’s most precious heirloom—a drawing by Henri Matisse—goes missing. After a cryptic clue arrives on Bea’s doorstep suggesting its whereabouts, Bea is determined to pursue the lead.
Without the French skills to navigate her way around the landmarks of Paris, she teams up with her cousin, Céline, whose clear-eyed French directness makes her a perfect partner for curious, problem-solving Bea. The girls embark on a city-wide search, deciphering riddles, solving puzzles, and cracking codes as they try to locate the Matisse, find a thief, and identify their mysterious benefactor.
Published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Order on Bookshop or Amazon. Don’t forget to rate and review!
Dear writers, this year, we’ll be taking TWO Tuesdays OFF for the holidays. There will be no meetings on December 24 and December 31. We will be back at Noisebridge on January 7, 2025, 7-9 pm.
Happy writing! Your moderators, Judy, Kurt, Monya, Olga
The latest book by Tamim Ansary, former moderator and beloved leader of the San Francisco Writers Workshop, TRUTHER NARRATIVES: CONSPIRACY THEORY EXPLAINED. WHAT IT IS, HOW IT FORMS, WHY IT SPREADS is a long-form essay which uses conspiracy theory as a lens for looking at a larger issue—the way narrative shapes our experience of social reality and how this impacts and is impacted by culture and history.
It begins by asking a simple question: what do we mean by conspiracy theory? How does this type of story differ from narratives about real conspiracies (which after all do occur at times)? The search for answers takes the inquiry into psychology, evolutionary biology, social sciences, cultural analysis, and history. Conspiracy theory emerges from this inquiry as a particular type of narrative. The book refers to this underlying template as the Truther Narrative.
A literary critic would recognize a truther narrative as a story built around an archetypal mythic structure: one that all conspiracy theories tend to evoke in common, whatever their surface differences might be. The book spotlights instances in history when this narrative has burgeoned, and has fed movements, and it explores those historical episodes for ideas about why the Truther Narrative seems to be surging in our time and how we as a society might respond to it.
The latest book by Tamim Ansary, former moderator and beloved leader of the San Francisco Writers Workshop, TRUTHER NARRATIVES: CONSPIRACY THEORY EXPLAINED. WHAT IT IS, HOW IT FORMS, WHY IT SPREADS is a long-form essay which uses conspiracy theory as a lens for looking at a larger issue—the way narrative shapes our experience of social reality and how this impacts and is impacted by culture and history.
It begins by asking a simple question: what do we mean by conspiracy theory? How does this type of story differ from narratives about real conspiracies (which after all do occur at times)? The search for answers takes the inquiry into psychology, evolutionary biology, social sciences, cultural analysis, and history. Conspiracy theory emerges from this inquiry as a particular type of narrative. The book refers to this underlying template as the Truther Narrative.
A literary critic would recognize a truther narrative as a story built around an archetypal mythic structure: one that all conspiracy theories tend to evoke in common, whatever their surface differences might be. The book spotlights instances in history when this narrative has burgeoned, and has fed movements, and it explores those historical episodes for ideas about why the Truther Narrative seems to be surging in our time and how we as a society might respond to it.
San Francisco Writers Workshop 