Babylon Salon
presents a special performance
Saturday, December 6, 2025
in The Sycamore's outdoor patio
2140 Mission St, San Francisco [16th St BART]
Come for drinks at 5 // Show starts at 5.30pm
featuring
Lori Ostlund
[Are You Happy?; After the Parade]
"Lori Ostlund is one of our country's finest short story writers, a true national gem… With a deft hand, one that manages to float gently as it cuts deeply, Ostlund explores recognizable American lives reckoning with injustice and seeking connection. Relevant, devastating, and ultimately redemptive, this book is a must have for anyone who cares about anything."
—Heidi Pitlor, author of The Daylight Marriage
Lori Ostlund is the author of Are You Happy?, published by Astra House in May 2025. The collection was chosen as one of Electric Literature’s Top 5 story collections of 2025 and appeared on the Washington Post’s “50 Notable Works of Fiction from 2025.” Her novel After the Parade (Scribner, 2015) was a B&N Discover pick, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and a NYTimes Editors’ Choice. Her first book, The Bigness of the World (UGA, 2009; Scribner, 2016), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and the California Book Award for First Fiction. Her stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories, the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, ZYZZYVA, and New England Review, among other places. Lori has received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award and was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She has served as the series editor of the Flannery O’Connor Award since 2022 and is on the board of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, the writer Anne Raeff.
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Kevin Smokler
[Break the Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers]
"Break the Frame is an illuminating and entertaining guide to some of the best film and television directors working today. Not just a guide to what female artists have accomplished, but also a primer on where some of the best minds in Hollywood are headed. -- Mauren Ryan, Vanity Fair
Kevin Smokler is a writer, documentary filmmaker and event host focused on our relationship as human beings with pop culture. His new book BREAK THE FRAME: CONVERSATIONS WITH WOMEN FILMMAKERS contains 24 career-retrospective conversations with directors behind box office phenomenon like Captain Marvel, Oscar winners like Free Solo and the filmmakers who launched actors such as America Ferrera, Paul Rudd, Ryan Gosling and Jennifer Lawrence. His previous book, BRAT PACK AMERICA is a love letter to teen movies of the 1980s. His 2013 essay collection PRACTICAL CLASSICS is a 50 book attempt to reread one’s high school reading list as an adult. His feature length documentary film VINYL NATION on the American renaissance of the vinyl record, won ten awards and screened at 50 film festivals worldwide. His new documentary MIDDLE GROUNDS, about coffee shops and civic dialogue will be released next year. Onstage he has interviewed comedians, filmmakers, musicians architects, actors and authors, He sits on the board of Zyzzyva Magazine and lives with his wife and a lot of books and vinyl records in San Francisco.
—
Aimee Phan
[The Lost Queen]
"Lyrical, magical, and haunting, with a compelling protagonist full of determination and heart, THE LOST QUEEN had me from the first line. Phan is an astounding new talent." — Marie Lu, author of the Legend series
Aimee Phan was born and raised in Orange County, California.She is the author of The Lost Queen, a young adult fantasy, and two books for adults, We Should Never Meet: Stories and the novel The Reeducation of Cherry Truong. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Time, USA Today and CNN.com among other publications. Aimee teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and resides in Berkeley, California with her family.
—
Susie Hara
[The House on Asbury Street]
“Earthquake Shack is a unique love letter to the San Francisco of our past, present, and future, not to mention a rollicking ride with a vibrant cast of characters. Fun, queer, and unforgettable, the novel is a must-read for historians, romantics, and diehard locals.” –Brittany Newell, author of Soft Core
Susie Hara is the author of two previous novels, The House on Ashbury Street (Mumblers Press, 2023) and Finder of Lost Objects (Ithuriel’s Spear, 2014), which was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and winner of an International Latino Book Award. Her writing has also appeared in Fractured Lit and The New York Times. A member of the writing communities The Ruby and Page Street Writers, she lives and works in San Francisco.
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