City Arts & Lectures

Writer Carmen Maria Machado discusses “I Who Have Never Known Men”, a 1995 novel by Jacqueline Harpman that was republished in 2022 to great acclaim.  It’s a work of speculative dystopian fiction about a group of women who are apparently the only survivors of a global catastrophe.  Machado wrote the introduction for the new edition, and on December 12, 2025, she came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to talk with KQED’s Alexis Madrigal about the book and its connections to her own work.  

 Eleanor Coppola (1936 – 2024) was a conceptual artist and documentary filmmaker. She met her husband, Francis Coppola, in 1962, when she worked as Assistant Art Director on his first feature. Dementia 13. Eleanor went on to make several behind-the-scenes documentaries for films directed by her family. Her books include Notes: On the making of Apocalypse Now and Notes on A Life. At the age of 80, Eleanor directed her first feature film, Paris Can Wait.  Eleanor Coppola’s final memoir, Two of Me: Notes on Loving and Leaving, was published posthumously in November of 2025. 

On December 5, 2025, Eleanor Coppola’s daughter, director Sofia Coppola, came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to read from and discuss her mother’s work.  She was joined by two friends of Eleanor’s who edited her memoir, radio producer Davia Nelson and writer Vendela Vida. 

This is an encore of a program originally broadcast in May of 2025. 

Ross Gay is a writer with a mission: to help readers explore the beautiful complexities of joy, gratitude, and delight.  In his essays and poetry, Gay brings his overflowing kindness and relentless eye for details to community gardens, the lives of Black people, the artistry of basketball, and much more. He is the author of the poetry collections Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude and Be Holding, and the essay collections The Book of Delights, Inciting Joy and The Book of (More) Delights.

On May 2, 2025, Ross Gay came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to read from his work and talk with poet and editor Aracelis Girmay.  

The iconic activist and philosopher Angela Davis has been a major influence in global politics for more than 50 years. Davis first gained fame in the 1960s and 70s through her work within second-wave feminism and Marxist advocacy, specifically fighting against the firing of Communist professors at University of California. More recently, she has fought for prison abolition and spoken out in support of anti-imperialist movements, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter.
On December 15, 2025, Angela Davis came to the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco to be interviewed on stage by journalist Deepa Fernandes.  

This week, we’re celebrating the life of architect Frank Gehry, with a conversation recorded in 2015. 

Widely regarded as one of the most influential designers of the last century, the Canadian-born architect was known for his use of bold shapes and unconventional building materials like titanium, stainless steel, and even chain-link.  Among his most famous projects are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.  Frank Gehry died on December 5, 2025, at the age of 96. 

In this program, recorded on October 15, 2015, at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, Gehry talks with his biographer, Paul Goldberger.   Goldberger spent ten years as an architecture critic for the New York Times, where he won the Pulitzer Prize, and 13 years on the staff of The New Yorker.  Goldberger’s book on the life and work of Frank Gehry is “Building Art”.