6:00 - 7:00
Experience the evocative world of Nina Schuyler’s Afterword in conversation with writer and journalist Frances Dinkelspiel. Together they will explore the novel’s layered themes, rich characters and the delicate interplay of memory and storytelling that define Schuyler’s work. The discussion will be followed by audience Q&A and a book signing.
Nina Schuyler is the author of In This Ravishing World (2024), winner of the 2025 PEN Oakland–Josephine Miles Literary Award and finalist for the Northern California Book Award. The collection also received the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her novel Afterword won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary, while The Translator was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. The Painting was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. The second editions of her bestselling craft books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal, will be released in January 2026. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and recognized with Best Microfiction 2025 and Best Small Fictions 2025. For 17 years, she taught in the University of San Francisco’s MFA program and now teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies.
Frances Dinkelspiel is an award-winning journalist and author who co-founded Cityside, the nonprofit news organization behind Berkeleyside, Oaklandside, and Richmondside. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Beast, and People. She’s the author of Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, which was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and Tangled Vines: Greed, Murder, Obsession, and an Arsonist in the Vineyards of California, a New York Times bestseller.
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One City One Book
Events and workshops curated around SFPL’s One City One Book selection. One City One Book: San Francisco Reads is a citywide literary event that encourages members of the San Francisco community to read the same book at the same time. For more information, see sfpl.org/onecityonebook.