Voices from the Hill

Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win is the author of several beautiful poetry collections, including Percussing the Thinking Jar, Storage Unit for the Spirit House, and Invisible Gifts. Her work pays close attention to memory, the body, and the small, meaningful moments that shape us. She’s also deeply committed to literary community — as a former and first Poet Laureate of El Cerrito CA, a longtime, and active teacher and mentor, and a co-founder of Maker, Mentor, Muse. Learn more at mawsheinwin.com [https://www.mawsheinwin.com] Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three poetry collections, including "Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love." A two-time winner of the San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides, she has been a featured poet at leading Bay Area poetry venues. She also curates poetry events, leads writing workshops, and co-hosts the "Voices from the Hill" podcast at Telegraph Hill Books. Learn more at jenniferbarone.wordpress.com. [http://jenniferbarone.wordpress.com./] This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, subscribe, leave us a review and share. Please visit telhilit.org [http://telhilit.org/] to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org [submissions@telhilit.org].

Andrew Paul Nelson - The Golden Sardine

Andrew Paul Nelson, author of the recent poetry collection, How to Draw a Guillotine, and the owner of The Golden Sardine in North Beach—an intimate wine bar that has quickly become a cultural hub for Bay Area poets and writers. Through his thoughtful curation of wine, his literary journal Apocrypha, and his work organizing the Coit Tower Poetry Club every first Friday, Andrew has helped create a vibrant, welcoming space where community and creativity meet. Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three poetry collections, including "Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love." A two-time winner of the San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides, she has been a featured poet at leading Bay Area poetry venues. She also curates poetry events, leads writing workshops, and co-hosts the "Voices from the Hill" podcast at Telegraph Hill Books. Learn more at jenniferbarone.wordpress.com. [http://jenniferbarone.wordpress.com./] This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, subscribe, leave us a review and share. Please visit telhilit.org [http://telhilit.org/] to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org [submissions@telhilit.org].

Mark Bittner - Street Song

Today, we're joined by Mark Bittner, a writer whose life has followed anything but a conventional path. You may know him from The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, his best-selling memoir that chronicled his unlikely relationship with a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco. But in his new book, Street Song, Mark takes us further back to his days wandering Europe to the streets of San Francisco and deep into the invisible realm of spiritual searching. Part memoir, part meditation, street song is a powerful reflection on freedom, disillusionment, and the invisible forces that shape a life. And today, we get to explore the life behind it. Learn more at MarkBittner.net [https://markbittner.net/]. You can find his music "Street Songs" on the San Francisco Public Library’s “Bay Beats” program, here [https://baybeats.sfpl.org/albums/mark-bittner-street-songs].   Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three poetry collections, including "Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love." A two-time winner of the San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides, she has been a featured poet at leading Bay Area poetry venues. She also curates poetry events, leads writing workshops, and co-hosts the "Voices from the Hill" podcast at Telegraph Hill Books. Learn more at jenniferbarone.wordpress.com. [http://jenniferbarone.wordpress.com./] This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, subscribe, leave us a review and share. Please visit telhilit.org [http://telhilit.org/] to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org [submissions@telhilit.org].

Gail Reitano - Women's voices of the Italian diaspora in North America

Gail Reitano grew up in the southern New Jersey Pine Barrens. After graduating from Rutgers University, Gail lived in New York and London before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Her fiction, memoir and personal essays have appeared inGlimmer Train, Catamaran Literary Reader, LitHub, Ovunque Siamo, and the recent anthology, “And There Were Red Geraniums Everywhere: Women’s Voices of the Italian Diaspora in North America,” Radici Edizioni (2024), in English and Italian. A first novel, Italian Love Cake, Bordighera Press (2021) won an Independent Press award; also available in French under the title Liberata.   Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three poetry collections, including "Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love." A two-time winner of the San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides, she has been a featured poet at leading Bay Area poetry venues. She also curates poetry events, leads writing workshops, and co-hosts the "Voices from the Hill" podcast at Telegraph Hill Books. Learn more at jenniferbarone.wordpress.com. [http://jenniferbarone.wordpress.com./] This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, subscribe, leave us a review and share. Please visit telhilit.org [http://telhilit.org/] to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org [submissions@telhilit.org].

Bart Schneider - Giacometti’s Last Ride

Bart Schneider grew up in San Francisco and lives in Sonoma. He spent twenty-five years living and working in Minnesota, where he was the founding editor of Hungry Mind Review and Speakeasy Magazine. He is the author of two poetry collections, Morning Opera and Water for a Stranger, and five novels, BGiacometti’s Last Ride, Nameless Dame, Man in the Blizzard, Beautiful Inez, Secret Love, and Blue Bossa. In 2020, Schneider published two serialized novels, Separation Sonoma and Voice of Sonoma, inspired by life in the time of COVID-19. After Covid, he collaborated with his good friend Sonoma painter Chester Arnold on The Daily Feast, a food-inspired book of poetry and paintings. To learn more about Bart and his work, visit kellyscovepress.com [https://www.kellyscovepress.com],  or bartschneider.substack.com [http://bartschneider.substack.com], and find his books at Telegraph Hill Books [https://telegraphhillbooks.com/]. Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of three poetry collections, including "Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love." A two-time winner of the San Francisco Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach, where she resides, she has been a featured poet at leading Bay Area poetry venues. She also curates poetry events, leads writing workshops, and co-hosts the "Voices from the Hill" podcast at Telegraph Hill Books. Learn more at jenniferbarone.wordpress.com. [http://jenniferbarone.wordpress.com./] This podcast is brought to you by Telegraph Hill Arts & Literature. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please follow, subscribe, leave us a review and share. Please visit telhilit.org [http://telhilit.org/] to find out about our local events such as author talks, writing workshops, and consider making a donation to support our public programs. If you’re a Bay Area author interested in being on the show, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to us at submissions@telhilit.org [submissions@telhilit.org].