Voices from the Hill

Kerry Donoghue - Mouth

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 15:44:22 -0700

Today we’re joined by Kerry Donoghue — poet, writer, and author of the short story collection MOUTH from Unsolicited Press that explores the many forms of consumption — not just food or drink, but emotional, relational, and existential hunger. Kerry’s work blurs the line between poetry and confession, exploring the raw edges of motherhood, desire, and womanhood with unflinching honesty and wit. Her writing captures both the beauty and the mess of being human, and we’re so excited to dive into her creative process, her inspirations, and what she’s exploring in her latest work. For listeners who’d like to learn more about Kerry Donoghue, and her work, you can visit kerrydonoghue.com, and on Instagram at @kerrydonoghue.

Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and artist. She is the author of four poetry collections, including "Sirenland," about the Bay of Naples, Italy, the siren mythology and stories of the sea, and "Saporoso: Poems of Italian Food & Love", Feather Press. A two-time winner of the SF Public Library’s "Poets Eleven" contest for North Beach, where she resides, she hosts the "Voices From the Hill" podcast interviewing Bay Area authors for Telegraph Hill Books, and leads creative writing workshops that blend writing, alchemy, and Italian culture. jenniferbarone.wordpress.com / Instagram & Substack: @baronejenn

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 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.

Phil Cousineau - The Wisdom of the Odyssey

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:57:40 -0700

Phil Cousineau is the author of The Wisdom of the Odyssey and over forty other books. including the bestselling The Art of Pilgrimage, and The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Cousineau is a writer, teacher, filmmaker, storyteller, and cultural historian, who has consulted on mythology and story for major studios including Warner Brothers., Pixar, and Lucasfilm, and has led mythology travel programs to Greece for more than three decades. Cousineau has been featured on NPR, CNN International, the BBC, the Smithsonian and Discovery Channels, and was the host of PBS and LINK-TV’s Global Spirit. He lives in San Francisco. Visit him online at http://www.PhilCousineau.com.

Janis Cooke Newman - Page Street Writers

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:40:42 -0700

Janis Cooke Newman is the author of 2 award-winning novels and a memoir. She is also the founder of LitCamp, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting writers, as well as Page Street, coworking spaces for writers in SF and Berkeley. Learn more at Janiscookenewman.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.

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.

Britta Stromeyer, Author, Literary Critic, and Teacher

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 06:00:00 -0700

Britta Stromeyer is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her writing appears in The Common, World Literature Today, Tupelo Quarterly, Beyond Words Magazine, Necessary Fiction, On the Seawall, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bending Genres Journal, Marin Independent Journal, and other publications. Britta has authored award-winning children's books and holds an MFA from Dominican University, CA, an M.A. from American University, and a Certificate in Novel Writing from Stanford University.

Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and author of four poetry collections including “Sirenland” and “Saporoso, Poems of Italian Food & Love” from Feather Press. 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.

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.

Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 16:02:48 -0700

Kim Shuck was born in San Francisco and is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She received a BA in art and an MFA in textiles from San Francisco State University. Shuck is the author of the poetry collections Deer Trails (City Lights Books, 2019); Clouds Running In (Taurean Horn Press, 2014); Rabbit Stories (Poetic Matrix Press, 2013); and Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press, 2005). In 2019, Shuck was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She served as the seventh poet laureate of San Francisco from 2017 to 2021.

Maw Shein Win

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 15:36:09 -0800

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

Andrew Paul Nelson - The Golden Sardine

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 11:15:52 -0800

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.

Mark Bittner - Street Song

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:23:01 -0800

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.

You can find his music "Street Songs" on the San Francisco Public Library’s “Bay Beats” program, here.

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

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 14:41:16 -0700

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.

Bart Schneider - Giacometti’s Last Ride

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 13:59:54 -0700

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, or bartschneider.substack.com, and find his books at Telegraph Hill Books.

Nadia Terranova, guest author from Messina, Italy

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:13:34 -0700

Nadia Terranova is the author of Gli anni al contrario, Casca il mondo, and Bruno, il bambino che imparò a volare. Her first novel translated into English, Farewell Ghosts (Seven Stories, 2020), was awarded the Premio Alassio Centolibri and was a finalist for the Premio Strega.The Night Trembles (Seven Stories Press, 2025), also translated from Italian by Ann Goldstein, is Terranova's second novel to publish in English. Her latest novel, Quello che so di te, was a finalist for this year's Premio Strega prize.

Please join her tonight (October 16th) at Litquake’s “The Night Trembles: Nadia Terranova with Sara Marinelli”, 6:30pm at the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. And for more information see her website: https://nadiaterranova.net/.

Mattia Milone is an Italian teacher at Istituto Italiano Scuola. Born in the southern Italian region of Puglia, he grew up in Milan, the city he feels inspired and influenced the most by: its cultural life, its style, its history and memories. He achieved his degree in Italian Literature and his certificate of Teaching Italian as a Foreign Language (DITALS).

He started working for the publisher Sonzogno, and taught Italian Literature to high schoolers. From 2015 to 2018, he collaborated in a program funded by the European Union, teaching Italian language to refugees and immigrants.

In 2018 he moved to California (somehow reminds him of Puglia!) where he lives with his wife. For more about Mattia, see his website: https://mattiamilone.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.

Genny Lim, San Francisco's Poet Laureate

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 10:38:25 -0700

Genny Lim is an American poet, playwright, and performer. She is the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco, California, and the first Chinese American in the role. She was the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps. Genny is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo, and an anthology of Senior Asian American memoirs, Window: Glimpses of Our Storied Past.

Stuart Schuffman, The Worst of Broke-Ass Stuart

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 15:37:57 -0700

Stuart Schuffman, also known as Broke-Ass Stuart, is an American travel writer, television host, poet, performer, and journalist based in San Francisco. He pioneered budget-living zines and books, created IFC’s travel series Young, Broke & Beautiful, and runs BrokeAssStuart.com as “Editor-in-Cheap.”

The Worst of Broke-Ass Stuart: 20 Years of Love, Death & Dive Bars is exactly what it sounds like. Part memoir, part cultural archive, the book brings together twenty years of stories about scraping by, speaking up, and falling in and out of love with the most beautifully heartwarming and heartbreaking place in America. These 350 pages chronicle Stuart’s many escapades, like running for Mayor of San Francisco, getting paid to travel the world, and hosting his own TV show, as well as his mediations on things like love, death, and of course, dive bars.

Celebrate the release of Broke-Ass Sutart’s new book on Friday, October 17th at Kilowatt. Tickets at kilowattbar.com.

Tania Romanov

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 13:57:29 -0700

Tania Romanov Amochaev is the author of Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women, Never a Stranger, a collection of award-winning travel essays, and San Francisco Pilgrimage. Tania’s work has been featured in multiple travel anthologies, including The Best Travel Writing and The Best Women’s Travel Writing series. To learn more about Tania and her work, visit taniaromanov.com, @tamoch on Instagram, and find her books at Telegraph Hill Books.

Gary Kamiya

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 11:19:25 -0700

Gary Kamiya, journalist, historian and author of “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco” and “Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages Through the Unknown City” with artist Paul Madonna” – His “Portals of the Past” column appears in The Examiner. To learn more about Gary and his work, go to his Substack Kamiya Unlimited and visit garykamiya.com and find his books at Telegraph Hill Books.

Welcome to Voices from the Hill

Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 14:23:15 -0700

Welcome to “Voices from the Hill” from Telegraph Hill Books in North Beach, celebrating the vibrant literary voices of the San Francisco Bay Area. With each episode we sit with a local author to explore their creative process, inspirations, and the unique stories that shape our community. Hosted by Jennifer Barone, poet and Joseph Carboni, owner of Telegraph Hill Books.

Visit Telegraph Hill Books to purchase our featured author’s books: telegraphhillbooks.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.