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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.