Poldark Returns! ROBIN ELLIS / Healthy Eating for Life
Poldark returns! When British actor Robin Ellis' excellent first cookbook, for diabetics, first came out, we had a marvelous evening with the man who is perhaps best known for playing Ross Poldark in the classic BBC series. Robin is not only returning to San Francisco to celebrate his new cookbook...but it looks like he'll be involved with the scheduled BBC's remake of Poldark (Downtown Abbey, watch out!) -- even though he's said "I spend all my time writing, cooking, and eating in a healthy Mediterranean way; it's one of the great joys of life."
HEALTHY EATING FOR LIFE is a collection of simple and tasty recipes including Chilled Curried Apple Soup; Sweet Potato, Fennel and Smoky Bacon au Gratin; Cauliflower Roasted with Garlic and Coriander Seeds; Turkish Spinach with Rice; Smoky Spanish Fish Stew; Chicken and Leeks with Lemon; Pork Chops Braised with Rosemary, Garlic and Thyme; Hazelnut Pasta; Chickpea, Leek and Fennel Curry; Peaches in Honey and Lime; and much more.
Now living in southwestern France, Robin Ellis runs occasional cooking workshops, and writes a wonderful blog, jammed with recipes (and photos) that inspire a quick trip to the market and thus into the kitchen, In addition to the successful Poldark series, he appeared in many other classic TV series and had a long career in British theatre, including a stint with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His most recent role was in the original Swedish version of the detective series, Wallander. He also starred in the Merchant Ivory film The Europeans and can been seen in Fawlty Towers, The Good Soldier (based on the Ford Madox Ford novel) and Elizabeth R.
Join us to celebrate both cook and actor this evening with a small taste from the book and a glass of something lovely!
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
DINAW MENGESTU / All Our Names
" In alternating chapters that take place in America and Uganda, Mr. Mengestu addresses, with great lyricism and ferocity, the same themes of exile and loss that animated his two earlier novels...deeply moving..."
-- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
This is the story of two young men who come of age during an African revolution, drawn from the safe confines of the university campus into the intensifying clamor of the streets outside. But as the line between idealism and violence becomes increasingly blurred, the friends are driven apart -- one into the deepest peril, as the movement gathers inexorable force, and the other into the safety of exile in the American Midwest. There, pretending to be an exchange student, he falls in love with a social worker and settles into small-town life. Yet this idyll is inescapably darkened by the secrets of his past: the acts he committed and the work he left unfinished. Most of all, he is haunted by the beloved friend he left behind, the charismatic leader who first guided him to revolution and then sacrificed everything to ensure his freedom.
Elegiac, blazing with insights about the physical and emotional geographies that circumscribe our lives, All Our Names is a marvel of vision and tonal command. Writing within the grand tradition of Naipul, Greene, and Achebe, Mengestu gives us a political novel that is also a transfixing portrait of love and grace, of self-determination and the names we are given and the names we earn.
“. . . Split across two narratives—one in the past, one in the present—All Our Names dramatizes the clashes between romantic idealism and disillusioned practicality, as well as between self-preservation and violence, all while blurring the identities of those who can move on, those who stay behind, and those who simply change.” -- The Millions, “Most Anticipated: The Great 2014 Book Preview”
Dinaw Mengestu, a 2012 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of two novels, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears and How To Read the Air. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Columbia University's MFA program in fiction and the recipient of a 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation and a 20 Under 40 Award from The New Yorker. His journalism and fiction have appeared in such publications as Harper's, Granta, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and the Wall Street Journal. He is a recipient of a 2012 MacArthur Foundation genius grant and currently lives in New York City.
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
MELISSA GIRA GRANT / Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work
The sex industry is an endless source of prurient drama for the mainstream media. Recent years have seen the proliferation of stories focused on the intersection between the internet and sex work and reports on the supposed increase in human trafficking. The panic over “online red-light districts,” which are said to seduce vulnerable young women into a life of degradation, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s live tweeting of a Cambodian brothel raid, and the work of “video vigilantes” like JohnTV typify the fearful, salacious stories about sex work told by news organizations and the high-profile NGOs that see themselves as the saviors of helpless young women.
Rarely do such stories come from sex workers themselves, and rarely do they deviate from the position that sex workers must be rescued from their condition, and the industry simply abolished—a position common among feminists and conservatives alike.
In Playing the Whore, journalist Melissa Gira Grant turns these pieties on their head, arguing for an overhaul in the way we think about sex work. Based on ten years of writing and reporting on the sex trade, and grounded in her experience as an organizer, advocate, and former sex worker, her narrative dismantles pervasive myths about sex work, criticizes both conditions within the sex industry and its criminalization, and argues that separating sex work from the “legitimate” economy only harms those who perform sexual labor.
Demonstrating how distorted the popular conception of sex work has become, and the scant attention our society pays to the concerns of those who make their livelihood from it, Grant affirms that sex work is work, and sex workers’ rights are human rights.
Melissa Gira Grant is a writer and freelance journalist whose work has appeared in Glamour, the Guardian, the Nation, Wired, and the Atlantic. She is also a Contributing Editor to Jacobin.
- Street:
- 1644 Haight St.
- City:
- San Francisco ,
- Province:
- California
- Postal Code:
- 94117-2816
- Country:
- United States
