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Booksmith is thrilled to host the launch event for Vanessa Hua and her novel Forbidden City. She'll be in conversation with Zyzzyva's managing editor, Oscar Villalon. ** Please note **
> Due to demand, we have moved this event to Urban School, 1563 Page Street, San Francisco.
> Safety: ID and proof of full vaccination, including booster, will be required at the door. Masks will be required throughout the duration of the event, capacity will be limited to allow indoor distancing, and we'll have extra ventilation in place.
> Because we’re limiting capacity, we can't guarantee we'll have space for walk-ins. The best way to ensure you’ll get a seat is to order the Book + Seat ticket through this link: https://app.gopassage.com/events/vanessa-hua. Our free RSVPs for this event have all been reserved, but there are still seats available via Book + Seat tickets; if we do not sell out before the event, any remaining tickets will be released on a first-come, first-served basis with no guarantee of admission.
> We are happy to offer *signed copies* of Forbidden City: order a Book + Seat ticket bundle if you'd like to pick up a signed copy at the event, or order here if you just want a signed copy: https://www.booksmith.com/book/9780399178818
> If we feel it is not safe to gather, as the event gets closer, we will pivot to a virtual event and your registration will remain valid.
> Questions? Write [email protected].
—About the book—
On the eve of China’s Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman’s opulent residence—a forbidden city unto itself—that she learns that the girls’ job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei beelines toward the Chairman.
Mei gradually separates herself from the other recruits to become the Chairman’s confidante—and paramour. While he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place and the Chairman’s imperious wife, who has secret plans of her own.
When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear.
Forbidden City is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world’s most powerful and least understood leaders during this extraordinarily turbulent period in modern Chinese history. Mei’s harrowing journey toward truth and disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, and belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl.
—About the authors—
Vanessa Hua is an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of the national bestseller A River of Stars, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the forthcoming Forbidden City. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Asian American Journalists Association. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Panama, and Ecuador, and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She has taught, most recently, at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. Author photo by Andria Lo.
Oscar Villalon is the managing editor at the literary journal ZYZZYVA. His writing has appeared in Stranger's Guide, Freeman’s, the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, Literary Hub, and other publications, and in the anthology There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis (Vintage). A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, he lives in San Francisco.
** Please note **
> Due to demand, we have moved this event to Urban School, 1563 Page Street, San Francisco.
> Safety: ID and proof of full vaccination, including booster, will be required at the door. Masks will be required throughout the duration of the event, capacity will be limited to allow indoor distancing, and we'll have extra ventilation in place.
> Because we’re limiting capacity, we can't guarantee we'll have space for walk-ins. The best way to ensure you’ll get a seat is to order the Book + Seat ticket through this link: https://app.gopassage.com/events/vanessa-hua. Our free RSVPs for this event have all been reserved, but there are still seats available via Book + Seat tickets; if we do not sell out before the event, any remaining tickets will be released on a first-come, first-served basis with no guarantee of admission.
> We are happy to offer *signed copies* of Forbidden City: order a Book + Seat ticket bundle if you'd like to pick up a signed copy at the event, or order here if you just want a signed copy: https://www.booksmith.com/book/9780399178818
> If we feel it is not safe to gather, as the event gets closer, we will pivot to a virtual event and your registration will remain valid.
> Questions? Write [email protected].
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Urban School of San Francisco, 1563 Page St,San Francisco,CA,United States
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