University of New Mexico Press, 87 pages, $25<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually there\u2019s a lot of angst and anguish that goes into writing a whole book,\u201d said Berkeley\u2019s Grant Faulkner. \u201cThis was so joyful and organic. I just picked a photo and if it spoke to me I would write about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Faulkner was referring to his seventh book, \u201csomething out there in the distance,\u201d a \u201cflash novel\u201d made up of super-short stories that accompany the haunting images shot by his longtime friend, the Los Angeles photographer Gail Butensky.<\/p>\n The book tells the tale of two lovers, Dawn and Jonny, who take a wild and searching road trip through the American West. Dawn is a photographer of desert landscapes, while Jonny looks for a home, \u201ceven as his recklessness overtakes him,\u201d Faulkner said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faulkner has a lengthy resume when it comes to writing short. Both a master and promoter of flash fiction, he cofounded the literary journal 100 Word Story<\/a> in 2011 and the Flash Fiction Institute<\/a>, an educational learning hub, in 2025. Faulkner has also written an influential book on the subject, \u201cThe Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story\u201d (2023). He\u2019s also taught flash fiction on every level, from undergrads to adults, all over the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faulkner believes the form has grown popular \u2014 and the Bay Area has become a hub for it \u2014 because of the short bursts of internet and social media writing. \u201cWriters under 30 especially seem so ravenous with their interest in flash,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One of the Bay Area\u2019s most active and connected writers, Faulkner is something of a literary entrepreneur who has long promoted writing communities since he moved to Berkeley in 2004.\u00a0<\/p>\n For 12 years he was executive director of the Berkeley-based NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) the annual writing challenge where participants aim to write a 50,000-word draft of a novel in a month. Faulkner left the organization two years before it crashed, burned and ultimately closed in 2025 after a string of controversies<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his latest venture, Memoir Nation<\/a>, launched in May 2025, Faulkner collaborates with Brooke Warner, publisher and founder of Berkeley\u2019s She Writes Press<\/a>. Designed to be\u00a0 a hub and a community for memoirists, the site offers different levels of membership, including classes, coaching and events. Faulkner and Warner also co-host the Memoir Nation weekly podcast<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Memoir Nation\u2019s signature event, JanYourStory, launched this year and attracted some 1,500 participants. Faulkner described the write-in as a more achievable version of NaNoWriMo, but for memoirists, with a goal of writing 500 words a day instead of 1,700.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faulkner has even taken writing into the realm of reality TV, partnering with Kanopy to \u201cAmerica\u2019s Next Great Author<\/a>,\u201d with an air date to be determined.\u00a0<\/p>\n Faulkner\u2019s on the board of Litquake, San Francisco\u2019s annual literary festival, and on the writers council at the National Writing Project, a Berkeley nonprofit dedicated to improving the teaching of writing. One more thing: he\u2019s got a novel in the works with the University of New Mexico Press.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cGotta make a living!\u201d he said, of his myriad endeavors. \u201cI love it all. My wife tells me to stop and I just can\u2019t. I\u2019m happier than I\u2019ve ever been career wise.\u201d<\/p>\n Faulkner will read from the book and be in conversation with ZYZZYVA editor Oscar Villalon at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26<\/a> at the San Francisco Public Library\u2019s main branch.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA Very Cold Winter<\/a>\u201d by Fausta Cialente, translated from the Italian by Julia Nelsen<\/p>\n Transit Books, 250 pages, $19\u00a0<\/p>\n A humanities scholar with a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC Berkeley, Julia Nelsen had long known about the Italian writer Fausta Cialente (1898-1994) from studying 20th century Italian literature and women\u2019s writing. She described the author as \u201can undersung voice.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCompared to other female writers of her generation \u2014 Elsa Morrante or Natalia Ginsburg \u2014 Cialente dropped off the map and was more known in scholarly discussions about Italian women\u2019s literature,\u201d said Nelsen, who lives in Berkeley.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cialente, a journalist, novelist and activist, is one of the first self-declared feminist Italian writers, whose early work anticipated modern feminism but was limited by fascist censorship.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2022, an Italian publisher rereleased Cialente\u2019s 1966 novel, \u201cA Very Cold Winter,\u201d the first in a series of republished editions recognizing Cialente\u2019s contributions. Nelsen read the book and proposed an English version to Ashley and Adam Levy, the husband-and-wife publishers behind Berkeley\u2019s Transit Books<\/a>, which specializes in literary translation. (The Washington Post recently singled out the couple<\/a> in its \u201cNext 50,\u201d the 50 people shaping culture in 2026, for their success at uncovering international hidden gems.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Levys gave Nelsen the go-ahead. \u201cA Very Cold Winter\u201d represents the first translation of the book in English and Nelson\u2019s first translated book. So far, the novel has been briefly mentioned<\/a> in The New Yorker and blurbed by the author Jhumpa Lahiri, an Italophile, who wrote that \u201cJulia Nelsen\u2019s engrossing English translation is cause for celebration.\u201d<\/p>\n In World War II, Cialente became active in the antifascist movement, writing pamphlets and making daily broadcasts from Radio Cairo against the Italian regime. She returned to Italy after the war and began publishing novels again, winning Italy\u2019s most prominent literary award, The Strega Prize, in 1976.<\/p>\n Set in Milan in 1946, when the city is in ruins, \u201cA Very Cold Winter\u201d follows the lives of nine characters, mostly women in an extended family who are living in an illegal attic, as they struggle with the aftermath of war and contemplate their futures.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAll translations are difficult in their own way,\u201d Nelsen admitted. In this case, she found that the \u201cinteresting puzzle\u201d was to represent the unusual point of view: an omniscient character who roves through the perspectives of a vast cast of characters. \u201cIt was a fun challenge to get their voices right, to get the cadences of the conversations, the dialogues, to really enter into each character\u2019s different perspective,\u201d Nelsen said.<\/p>\n Nelsen is now at work translating Cialente\u2019s 1930 debut novel, \u201cNatalia,\u201d for Transit. \u201cI would call it a feminist discovery of self,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cShe was very much ahead of her time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Nelsen will discuss the translation process and Cialente\u2019s career with publisher Ashley Levy at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 26<\/a>, at Transit Books.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Determined\u201d<\/a> by Rachel Rueckert<\/p>\n Kensington Books, 382 pages, $19<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a Disney princess pirate story,\u201d said Berkeley author Rachel Rueckert, of two of history\u2019s most infamous women, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. \u201cTheir lives were much more interesting than the Hollywood tropes we see represented, who tend to be hot, sexy and red-headed.\u201d<\/p>\n BFFs Bonny and Read are the subject of Ruecker\u2019s second work of historical fiction, \u201cThe Determined.\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up in Salt Lake City, Ruecker has long had a pirate obsession, and as a child wore a plastic sword through her belt loops. She ended up in Boston, where she lives part of the year, to get a master\u2019s degree in education from Boston University. She also holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rueckert\u2019s first book, \u201cIf the Tide Turns,\u201d about the forbidden love between pirate Sam Bellamy and suspected witch Maria Hallett, is \u201cCape Cod\u2019s most infamous love story,\u201d Rueckert said. Like buried treasure, Rueckert stumbled upon her heroines when digging through \u201cA General History of the Pirates,\u201d written by Charles Johnson in 1724.\u00a0<\/p>\n Though the book was highly sensational, Rueckert corroborated Johnson\u2019s accounts of the women through court documents and records she discovered in Bahamian museums.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bonny and Read spent only two months as swashbucklers, yet have inspired popular culture for the next 300-plus years, from John Gay\u2019s 1729 opera \u201cPolly\u201d to characters in the Starz TV series \u201cBlack Sails\u201d and HBO\u2019s \u201cOur Flag Means Death\u201d to music by Adam and the Ants and Death Grips and video games like \u201cAssassin\u2019s Creed IV: Black Flag.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Their paths collide in a notorious pirate den in Nassau, where they find kinship aboard the Revenge, the fastest ship in the Caribbean. Both women had been outcasts, born to unwed mothers. Prior to \u201cturning pirate,\u201d Mary served as a cabin boy in the navy to scrape by while Anne escaped an abusive situation by running away to the Bahamas.<\/p>\n Both subvert gender roles in their quest to survive in a male-dominated world, claiming a unique and hard-earned form of freedom they had never experienced on land. Rueckert sought to bring dignity and nuance by chronicling the entirety of their remarkable lives \u2014 not just the racy bits.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI had to work with my intuition to go through all these layers and do this story justice,\u201d Rueckert said.\u00a0<\/p>\n A launch party will be held at Mrs. Dalloway\u2019s at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24. Sea shanties will be performed by friends Rueckert has \u201cpressed into service,\u201d as pirates would say. Reservations<\/a> are recommended but not required.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cProles<\/a>\u201d by Barry Bergman<\/p>\n Serving House Books, 194 pages, $14<\/p>\n Barry Bergman was having lunch in Berkeley with a friend, describing the three-and-a-half years he spent working at a copper smelter north of Tucson, beginning in the summer of 1973. The setting, Bregman said, was Kafkaesque.<\/p>\n \u201cMy first shift at the smelter was graveyard, in the middle of the desert, pitch black, except for all this molten black and orange copper everywhere you looked. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very scary honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n His friend said, \u201cYou should write about that.\u201d Bergman did.<\/p>\n \u201cProles\u201d marks the Kensington writer\u2019s fiction debut. A former journalist and magazine editor who spent ten years at UC Berkeley\u2019s public affairs office before retiring in 2017, Bergman tapped his experiences at the smelter and as an idealistic youth in search of a cause to craft the book\u2019s protagonist, Simon Bussbaum.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like Bergman, Bussbaum flees Queens, N.Y. for an Arizona copper mine during the summer of 1973, when the Watergate hearings are being televised, after being freshly liberated from the draft. A film buff, Bussbaum is inspired by a McCarthy-era film that portrays the mine, the site of a legendary strike, as a proletarian idyll.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of what the book is about are the different mythologies and stories that people want to adopt as their own,\u201d Bergman said, admitting that he, himself, was guilty of such youthful idealism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n After a hot summer of hard labor, toxic masculinity, unrequited love and insights into the power \u2014 and perils \u2014 of myth, Bussbaum\u2019s reality falls short of the fantasy. His Plan B is to land in Berkeley, a haven for free speech and thinking.<\/p>\n Unlike his protagonist, Bergman had Berkeley in his sights from the start, likewise drawn to its progressive rep. Friends from Queens were already waiting for him in a Walnut Street rental. He took a detour, however, after following a love interest to Tucson.<\/p>\n \u201cI got sidetracked,\u201d Bergman said. Nevertheless, he ended up living in Berkeley for about six years and remained in the Bay Area ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nonfiction\u201cSymbolorum: The Secret Wisdom of Emblems\u201d<\/a> by Mandy Aftel<\/p>\n Abbeville Press, 240 pages, $20<\/p>\n World-renowned natural fragrance expert and perfumer. Collaborator (with chef Daniel Patterson) on a book about using scent to flavor food. Creator of the first museum in the U.S. dedicated to perfume<\/a>, housed in the backyard of her North Berkeley home.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mandy Aftel has another credit to add to her many accomplishments: bibliophile. Her interest in antiquarian books has long acted as a gateway to her subject matter. The latest archaic book in her collection likewise led her down \u201canother rabbit hole.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Her 10th book, \u201cSymbolorum: The Secret Wisdom of Emblems,\u201d is modeled after a Baroque emblem book and contains images and text from the \u201cSymbolorum et Emblematum\u201d of Joachim Camerarius, published in 1654. Emblem books, which Aftel calls \u201ca long-lost cousin of the tarot,\u201d were meant to instruct and advise using aphorisms and images that often incorporate mythological figures, symbols, plants and animals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Aftel became obsessed with tracking down the book after discovering a mention of it in a 1920s book on Arts and Crafts floral design.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI like to look for things,\u201d Aftel said. \u201cI like the hunt.\u201d<\/p>\n The hunt lasted about eight years. Aftel finally found the book through a dealer in Britain and bought it for $2,000. The book contains 400 wood-cut images of plants, quadrupeds, including mythic animals, birds and fish.<\/p>\n Because the text was in Latin, with a smattering of Greek, Aftel had to hire a translator. She excerpted from the original text, added her own commentary and hand-painted 100 wood-cut emblems using watercolors to make the black and white images \u201ccome to life.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re full of lore in some witchy ways,\u201d Aftel said of the emblems. \u201cDuring the scientific revolution everything changed. Yet, that older view of nature still appeals to me. It allows us to enter in a completely fluid and enticing way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness\u201d<\/a> by Michael Pollan<\/p>\n Penguin Random House, 320 pages, $32<\/p>\n Michael Pollan\u2019s latest deep dive seems like a logical progression from two previous books, \u201cHow to Change Your Mind\u201d from 2018, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and \u201cThis is Your Mind on Plants\u201d from 2021. \u201cA World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness\u201d is described as a panoptic exploration of consciousness: \u201cwhat it is, who has it and why \u2014 and a meditation on the essence of our humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n In Pollan\u2019s extensively researched exploration, he discovers a world deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. \u201cHis search takes us into the laboratories of our minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves,\u201d according to the summary.<\/p>\n \u201cA World Appears\u201d is the Berkeley author\u2019s 10th book. Before delving into subjects involving the mind, he was best known for books that explored the socio-cultural impacts of food, starting with \u201cThe Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma\u201d from 2006.<\/p>\n Pollan is also a professor at Harvard University and UC Berkeley, where he is the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism and co-founder of the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, where he leads the public-education program.<\/p>\n Pollan will be joined in conversation with cognitive scientist Maya Shankar at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10 at Berkeley\u2019s First Congregational Church. Tickets <\/a>are $39.84 and include the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853648_287_image-14.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/grant-faulkner.png\")
Grant Faulkner. Credit: Toby Burditt<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853650_747_image-16.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853651_154_image-18.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853652_602_image-20.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853653_429_image-22.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/image-24.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771853654_724_image-26.png\")
<\/p>\n