Sue Gilmore, The Contra Costa Times

Sunday, July 31, 2005 

PLANNERS OF San Francisco’s annual Litquake series of literary events held a pack-’em-in-wall-to-wall preview party at RNM restaurant in the Haight earlier this week, and if the buzz heard there can be believed, expect new works soon from some of the Bay Area’s higher-profile authors.

San Francisco’s Po Bronson, most recently of "What Shall I Do With My Life?" fame, confessed that he probably shouldn’t be partying, because he was a mere two days away from handing over his new book to his Random House editors. Its working title is "Why Do I Love These People?" and it’s an anecdote-laden rumination on the challenges of family, gathered from scores of interviews the author conducted across the country with people in critical situations of one sort or another within their families.

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based essayist and memoirist Tamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul, East of New York," has also just wrapped up a new work – a novel this time, set in strife-torn Afghanistan. And poet, novelist and essayist Kate Braverman, still breathing a sigh of relief over her recent relocation here from Southern California, says we should be looking soon for her new memoir.

The nine-day Litquake, by the way, is still a couple of months off — it’s scheduled for Oct. 7-15 at various venues in San Francisco.