In an event that was part poetry reading, part interview series, and part variety show, Alta Journal was welcomed back to San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore to honor the release of our Issue 27. Headlining the evening were poet Tayi Tibble, author Sylvia Brownrigg, and crossword constructors Rafael Musa and Rebecca Goldstein. This soirée marked the start of an exciting literary sprint for Alta: next weekend, editors will fly down to Southern California for two days of author signings and meeting magazine fans at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and the following weekend, we’re going to help Manhattan Beach’s Pages: A Bookstore celebrate Indie Bookstore Day.
After a warm welcome from City Light’s veteran events coordinator and bookseller extraordinaire, Peter Maravelis, Alta’s editorial director, Blaise Zerega, kicked off the night’s program with a first for us: a collective crossword game. Zerega led the crowd in filling out a gigantic custom puzzle that Goldstein and Musa had crafted just for the occasion.
Tayi Tibble was featured first. Aligning perfectly with National Poetry Month, the Māori poet has been on the go, touring the States to debut her stunning new book of poems, Rangikura. Tibble was joined for a Q&A by Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Forrest Gander. Together, they dug into her work, discussing the influences of Māori creation stories, ancestry, and language, as well as the role of hip-hop culture and shorthand in Tibble’s poetry. If you haven’t already, be sure to read her beautifully layered essay Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa: Ocean Memory, published as an Alta Folio in the new issue.
Sylvia Brownrigg read her short story “Chinese School,” also published in Issue 27. Brownrigg, the author of seven fiction books, discussed growing up on the Bay Area’s Peninsula and writing with careful attention paid to the “landmarks of childhood.” Her latest book, The Whole Staggering Mystery, will be released on April 23.
In between Tibble’s poetry and Brownrigg’s story, Zerega would continue the night’s crossword game. “Naughty!” yelled one attendee, with the correct answer to a seven-letter word for “up to no good.”
The crossword nearly done, Goldstein and Musa took the stage to reveal the process behind constructing a puzzle. A research scientist and a software engineer, respectively, the pair have been collaborating for a little over a year, discovering their shared stylistic and creative impulses. Goldstein and Musa discussed the Bay Area’s growing crossword community and how the inclusion of younger and historically underrepresented voices in these spaces has changed puzzling for the better.
As always, the evening closed with a lively Q&A with the audience, a little wine and sparkling water, and each of our speakers signing copies of their books and answering questions one on one with the crowd who stayed to mingle. JD Beltran, author of the Alta story You Are Here: My Geography of Conflict, renewed her membership and explained enthusiastically, “I always leave an Alta event smarter than when I walked through the door!”
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