The California Book Club’s First Three Years: 12,173 Members and 36 Authors (and Counting!)

In the spring of 2020, I reached out to John Freeman with what seemed like a crazy idea. We were several months into the COVID-19 lockdown, and so much about the world seemed uncertain. At Alta Journal, we’d had to jettison the lineup for Issue 12; any story that required reporting, photography, or travel could not be completed. It felt natural to turn to literature, and Freeman wrote for us an extraordinary essay, “Reading and Writing California” (which we later gave a more pointed web headline: “The New California Curriculum”). It was a jeremiad of sorts, and we would use it to open our reimagined issue.

Freeman, an executive editor at Knopf, is a poet and critic noted for his generous spirit and erudite commentary. In that essay for Alta, he takes to task academia and the New York–centric publishing world for overlooking the vitality of writing from the Golden State. He recalls reading the likes of Plato, Shakespeare, Austen, and Flaubert as a student, but not Chandler, Didion, Shilts, or Butler: “What we didn’t read were Californians.” But of the present, he writes: “I think something more fundamental to literature is happening in California that explains why so many of its writers are breaking new ground—why it is, I think, a literary mecca for a world on the move.”

I explained to Freeman that Alta had been longing to start a book club but had been roadblocked by two concerns. The first obstacle was where to hold the gatherings: Los Angeles? San Francisco? San Diego? The pandemic eliminated that concern; we would meet virtually. The second challenge was how to focus the club’s selections in order to give it a purpose. His essay presented the perfect solution: we would endeavor to define a new California canon, one that reflected the tremendous diversity and humanity of the state’s writers. Might he, please, be willing to host such a club?

I proposed a goal of 5,000 registered members in the first year, with 500 or more people in virtual attendance at a single event. In the first 12 months, we would exceed that.

Much to my delight (and that of everyone at Alta), Freeman gave an enthusiastic yes. Over the next several weeks, I could sense the gears in his brain turning when we spoke on the phone and exchanged emails. How often? Monthly. Could we avoid the two-talking-heads format? Yes, we’d keep things moving with an MC, a special guest, questions from the audience. Who would pick the books? He suggested a selection panel. How would we get the word out? Booksellers and libraries, maybe some lit mags. I had been discussing this with my coworkers and had rough answers to all his questions. But then he stumped me.

How might we measure success? Freeman asked. How big a membership might we attract?

Now it was time for the gears in my brain to turn. On June 17, 2020, I proposed a goal of 5,000 registered members in the first year, with 500 or more people in virtual attendance at a single event. I’d like to think I wasn’t pulling numbers out of thin air, but I was. They seemed outrageously ambitious.

Yet in the first 12 months, we would exceed them. During that time, we attracted 5,762 total registrations, and in September 2021, Freeman’s conversation with Rebecca Solnit about her book A Paradise Built in Hell drew 720 sign-ups. Performance artist, comedian, and social justice activist Kristina Wong was our special guest that night.

Three years after our club’s founding, 12,173 people have signed up. Defying the constraints of time zones and geography, members have logged on from as far away as Sweden, Japan, and India for our free online gatherings, held the third Thursday of each month.

“When we started out,” Freeman says, “the club was really just a way to get together with some friends and read a new classic of California writing together. As aims go, they’re pretty simple. All the beauty is in two words: ‘together’ and ‘new.’ There’s some kind of magic that happens when we read together, and the predicament we found ourselves in with the pandemic was new, still is new. I’m not sure any of us quite knows what it entirely means yet, but it’s marked us all. The tenderness and risk and yearning for togetherness of that time, difficult as they were, are hard to separate from the genesis of this club, and I feel like it’s formed a very powerful bond with the readers who have been with it these three years as we’ve explored, together, where California writing has been, where it is going.”

We’ve hosted 36 authors: among them, winners of Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, Booker Prize honors, and National Book Critics Circle Awards. Video recordings of the live conversations with these incredible writers have been viewed about 12,600 times. What’s more, we’ve been supported by eight booksellers, Book Passage, Bookshop West Portal, Bookshop.org, Books Inc., Book Soup, Diesel, a Bookstore, Green Apple Books, and Vroman’s; two libraries, the Los Angeles Public Library and the San Francisco Public Library; two publications, Narrative and Zyzzyva; and a university institute, the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. Simply put, the California Book Club wouldn’t be what it is today without our partners.

On October 19, we’ll welcome Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jennifer Egan. She’ll be in conversation with Freeman and a special guest about her novel The Candy House. (Click here to sign up for this free online event.)

ILLUSTRATION BY VICTOR JUHASZ

John Freeman’s essay “Reading and Writing California” provided inspiration for Alta Journal’s California Book Club.

A book club is only as good as the titles it picks for its members. And that’s why we invited distinguished literary figures from across the state to serve as the club’s selection panel. Our group consists of journalist and author Lynell George, UCLA professor Marissa López, novelist and essayist Danzy Senna, Alta books editor and author David L. Ulin, Zyzzyva editor Oscar Villalon, City Lights Booksellers lead buyer Paul Yamazaki, and, of course, book club host Freeman.

“When I heard that the goal was to work together to identify books that told a wide range of California stories—books that brought readers into unexpected environments, introduced them to characters who were Californian by way of other influences, books that were a door into wildly disparate experiences but were also rooted in the state—that truly piqued my interest,” recalls George. “Weighing our selections, talking about these books, allowed us to create a different sort of atlas of place.”

“Being a member of the Alta California Book Club selection panel has been a highlight of my five decades as an independent bookseller in San Francisco,” says Yamazaki. “Having an opportunity to work with some of the finest writers and editors in California has been indescribably rewarding and fun. My understanding of the breadth and depth of the literature of California has been informed by the conversations of the selection committee.”

Books are chosen months in advance and drawn from a lengthy, running list of worthy candidates. It’s not an easy task.

With Freeman’s essay serving as North Star, books are chosen months in advance and drawn from a lengthy, running list of worthy candidates. It’s not an easy task. “Perhaps one of the most unfair questions that I’ve been asked in any context is to pick the favorite among the 36 authors that we have selected,” Yamazaki says. “Three years have flown by, and the authors that have been presented only hint at the richness of what is California literature.”

The panel eschews hot or trendy books as it endeavors to identify works for a California canon. For instance, some club picks have been decades old: Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior was first published in 1976; Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, in 1982; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Always Running, in 1993. Yet in other cases, the panel is betting that a new release will stand the test of time. C Pam Zhang’s How Much of These Hills Is Gold, a debut novel, was published just six months before the panel chose it as the club’s inaugural selection. It was later long-listed for the Booker Prize. Hua Hsu’s Stay True was published less than a year before its club selection; it later won a Pulitzer Prize.

Ranging from fiction to nonfiction to poetry, the roster of selected titles is evidence of the panelists’ experience and prescience. Book by book, they are forging a California canon.

Alta

Readers who join the California Book Club via altaonline.com receive four free bookplates.

More important than the California Book Club’s origin story and metrics: the ongoing, snowballing, and vibrant community that has sprung up around the monthly gatherings. In the weeks leading up to each month’s event, book club editor Anita Felicelli, also an author and a National Book Critics Circle board member, supervises the publication of perhaps a dozen articles for altaonline.com on the book to be discussed. Wildly popular, these articles provide context and insight for club members and have included criticism, excerpts, and illustrated panels. We also publish online commentary from our print edition about the books: “Why I Write,” by the authors, and “Why You Should Read This,” by Ulin.

With so much context, the stage is set for literary magic to take place between Freeman, author, and special guest. While these smart, lively, and inspiring conversations need to be experienced to be fully appreciated, feedback from members attests to their brilliance.

For instance, after the November 2021 book club event with Tommy Orange, author of There There, and special guest Kaveh Akbar, an Iranian American poet and scholar, the audience shared numerous comments like this:

Thank you for rewarding our reading habits with such generous insight, wisdom, and commentary. Look forward to each session and tell my friends after.

You guys are doing such a great job in engaging the author. Thank you for creating and sharing this space for us to participate and enjoy.

No suggestions but heartfelt thanks for a brilliant program—not just tonight’s, the whole California Book Club.

To hear from authors in this way enriches life and makes people with such imagination and skill so accessible. I know writers have so many more “jobs” than just writing and appreciate the time given to readers and the community-of-California.

Can you folks teach others how to produce such consistently excellent, inspiring online author interviews? Pretty please with magic on top?

“John’s generous questions always take the writers deep into their process and/or the experience of the characters. I love watching the light bulb go on when he hits something that they haven’t considered before or they feel something small has been recognized,” George says. “But also, I love when the guest interviewer pops into the room with questions or observations. When Nina Revoyr was featured, she invited writer, scholar, and sociologist Manuel Pastor to interact with her because their worlds cross, not just in Southern California but in the kind of community, social equity work they do—on and off the page. The way the club is set up, we get to see writers from different angles, different places in their lives.”

Sometimes it feels as if the book club has taken on a life of its own.

Interactions with attendees are essential to the book club experience. “Sometimes history boomerangs right into the episode, though, and I love that,” says Freeman. “During Naomi Hirahara’s week [for Clark and Division], there was someone in the comments who didn’t just leave the [Japanese internment] camps and go to Chicago; they landed at Clark and Division too, and on the same floor in the same apartment building as the characters in her book. Meantime, during the episode for [Kelly Lytle Hernández’s] Bad Mexicans, there was an audience member whose grandfather had been arrested and jailed alongside Ricardo Flores Magón in Los Angeles. In such instances, it becomes clear that this is a book club about the lived experience of people in and from California. It is in a small but real manner a way to honor those lives and their stories.”

And throughout these past three years, with the help of all our partners, we’ve made tote bags, given away custom bookplates, done signed-book giveaways, and executed engaging social media campaigns. Sometimes it feels as if the book club has taken on a life of its own.

As the California Book Club embarks on its fourth year, I’m reminded of a simple statement that shows how far we’ve come in bringing our state’s literature to the fore. After being introduced by Freeman for our June 2021 gathering, National Book Award–winning poet Robin Coste Lewis sighed and observed, “The California Book Club. Those are the most delicious words to put together.”