80s and 90s San Francisco Bay Area Book Lovers’ Party and Book Launch
You’re invited to the 80s and 90s San Francisco Bay Area Book Lovers’ Party! Join us for a nostalgic trip down memory lane as we celebrate the heyday of small press publishing and bookselling in the Bay Area. Reconnect with friends and colleagues, reminisce about the good old days, and share stories. This event will also feature the book launch of Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire by Vicki (Morgan) DeArmon. Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate our shared history and the enduring legacy of the Bay Area book industry. See you at The Open Square at Futures Without Violence!
In partnership with CALIBA and with onsite bookseller Green Apple Books.
Appetizers and drink, music, and, at 3:30 p.m., festivities
Featured author: Vicki DeArmon, Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire
Other Sibylline authors who will attend: Christine Walker, Tap Dancing at the Bluebird; Simi Monheit, The Goldie Standard; Samantha Rose, Giving Up the Ghost; Lorraine Devon Wilke, Chick Singer; Julia Park Tracey, Silence and The Bereaved; Deborah Luskin, Reviving Artemis; Erin Van Rheenan, You Could Be Happy Here; Susannah Kennedy, Reading Jane: A Daughter’s Memoir; Suzy Vitello, Bitterroot.
About Foghorn: The Nearly True Story of a Small Publishing Empire:
The heyday of small press publishing in San Francisco lives again!
This is the never-before-told story of a unique time in San Francisco as well as in book industry history, when Bay Area small presses—armed with arrogance and personal computers—took the publishing field. At Foghorn Press, Vicki Morgan was an ambitious woman publisher, young and brash, coming-of-age while quixotically building a book publishing company from scratch with her eccentric brother to help.
As part of their optimistic Morgan heritage, the siblings strive to grow Foghorn Press with no capital, 100-hour work weeks, cheap beer, irrepressible belly laughs, and no book publishing experience. They assemble a cast of preposterous authors and resistant staff while surviving a drunken ex-husband, a con artist, calculating distributors, a fleet of good ol’ boys, terrible cash flow, and their own differing aspirations. Books are brought to market and miraculously sell from their offices in the Boiler Room. Foghorn is soon a resounding success with sales, media, acclaim. But in the end, there are costs, to relationships, to family, and maybe even to the truth.
About Author Vicki DeArmon:
Vicki DeArmon has been in the book industry for forty years as a respected publisher, bookseller, and innovator. She started her San Francisco publishing company Foghorn Press with a small advance on her credit card when she was twenty-five, growing it into a $2 million enterprise before selling it fourteen years later. She worked as the marketing and events director at Copperfield’s Books for eight years and as consultant to California’s independent bookstores. She’s also a writer whose short stories and essays have won awards and appeared online and in print. Vicki is one of the founders of Sibylline Press and serves as its publisher.
