City Arts & Lectures City Arts & Lectures

Victoria Chang is the author of 8 books of poetry, including “Obit” and “Barbie Chang”, a work of creative nonfiction, and two children’s books. Her newest collection of poems is called “With My Back to the World.” It’s inspired by the art and writing of Agnes Martin, a painter who was an influential part of the abstract art movement beginning in the 1950s.  On May 31, 2024, Chang came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Steven Winn about her creative process and some of the themes in her new collection, including feminism, mental illness, and creative expression.

Serj Tankian, lead singer of the heavy metal band “System Of A Down.” Tankian founded the group in 1997, releasing five studio albums, three of which debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200.  His solo career also includes work as a painter, composer and filmmaker.  The musician’s new book is called Down with the System: A Memoir (of Sorts).On July 21st, 2024, Tankian came to the KQED studios in San Francisco to talk to Zack Ruskin about music and activism – particularly his work in support of Armenia, his ancestral homeland. 

Since their foundational philosophical critique of gender and sexuality, Gender Trouble, Judith Butler has been a singularly important contributor to our contemporary understanding of those categories, including what it can mean to be queer.  Butler’s revolutionary cultural influence and constant drive towards better understandings of our world guarantee that they will remain a widely read canonical writer for decades to come. In recent years, Butler’s theoretical and activist work on gender performance and nonviolence has placed them in conversations around transgender rights, Black Lives Matter, and the Occupy Movement. Their forthcoming book, Who’s Afraid of Gender?, examines why recent authoritarian governments and transexclusionary feminists have focused so much of their energy and ire on gender.On June 13, 2024, Judith Butler came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater to be interviewed on stage by Poulomi Saha,  the co-Director of the Program in Critical Theory at UC Berkeley.

Artist Kara Walker has investigated race, gender, sexuality, and violence through her installations, paintings, silhouettes, and films. Walker’s art has won awards and is collected by museums around the world. Her work with stereotypes and the history of racial violence has pushed viewers to confront the continuing violence against Black people in America. With beloved writer Jamaica Kincaid, winner of the American Book Award, Walker is publishing An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children, a brilliant collection of essays and illustrations revealing the beauty of the natural world and the terrible history of colonialism. In July 2024, SFMOMA is releasing a site-specific installation by Walker, focusing on the global loss due to COVID-19, trauma, and technology. On June 6, 2024, Kara Walker came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by New Yorker staff writer Doreen St. Félix.

Author and creator Miranda July isn’t bound by medium nor by expectations. From films like Me and You and Everyone We Know  and Kajillionaire, to books like No One Belongs Here More Than You and The First Bad Man, to an iPhone app that reroutes text messages to strangers, July’s powers of creativity and observation are wise, surprising, and always delightful. Her second novel, All Fours, is the story of a woman’s artistic cross-country quest that  has already won praise from George Saunders, Emma Cline, and Vogue for its intimacy, humor, and boundary defying freedom.On May 23, 2024, Miranda July came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by Anna Sale, host of the podcast Death, Sex & Money. 

Before his novel Erasure was adapted into the hit film American Fiction, Percival Everett was already one of the literary world’s most acclaimed talents, appreciated for his inimitable characters and storylines, as well as his uncommon variety of genres. Since Everett’s first novel in 1983, he has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, for Telephone, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, for The Trees. His newest novel, James, is a reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, and has already been touted as “a canon-shattering great book.” Cord Jefferson made his feature writing and directorial debut with American Fiction, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. His television credits include Watchmen, The Good Place, Succession, Station Eleven, Master of None, and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. On June 3, 2024, Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed by Jelani Cobb.