How McDonald’s, KFC, and other American eateries spread around the world.

The franchise model makes hurting workers inevitable.

Trauma, Tresses & Truth - Social Wellness

A legal assistant by day becomes a karaoke queen by night to grab a second chance at love in this joyfully queer rom-com, perfect for fans of Casey McQuiston and Alexis Hall. For Rex Araneta, his college sweetheart Aaron Berry was always the one who got away. So when he finds out that Aaron is now living in the same town and needs help saving his karaoke bar, it’s Rex to the rescue. Or more like Regina Moon Dee, Rex’s internet-famous drag queen alter ego. Even if no one can know the identity of the man behind the makeup. As Regina’s popularity grows, Rex’s ruse becomes more difficult to keep under wraps. It even becomes a family affair with his mom and sister helping to keep his secret. It’s dawning on Rex that he’s hidden this side of himself away for far too long . . . and perhaps his real shot at love is to reveal his true self. And be loved for all that he is.

Swimming with Maya demonstrates the remarkable process of healing after the traumatic death of a loved one. At age 19, Maya mounts a horse bareback as a dare and in a crushing cantilever fall, is left in a coma from which she will never recover. Author Eleanor Vincent’s life is turned upside down as she struggles to make the painful decision about her daughter's fate.Ultimately Eleanor chooses to donate Maya’s organs. Years later, she is able to hear Maya’s heart beat in the chest of the heart recipient. Along the way, Eleanor re-examines her relationship with her daughter, as well as Eleanor’s traumatic life as a child and young woman. In a story that has been called “heartbreaking and heart-healing,” Eleanor Vincent illuminates the kind of courage, creativity, faith, and sheer tenacity it takes to find one’s balance after unthinkable tragedy. With 495 Amazon ratings, this memoir is powerful testimony to the resilience of the human spirit.

Winner of the Ledge Prize for Fiction.

Featured in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Featured in Zyzzyva.

You cannot save everything when the fires come to Northern California.

Two trans women go from best friends to tense roommates to bitter enemies in this novel of queer community conflict and surreal architecture. Traversing art, domination, sex, and shape-shifting houses, LOVE/AGGRESSION is a novel about the indignity of depending on other people, and the terrible cost of trying not to.

The key to winning on this show: instant reflexes.

The Man With Eight Pairs of Legs, an award-winning debut collection of short stories, by Leslie Kirk Campbell about the ways we hold memories on our bodies, visibly – scars, tracks, bruises, tattoos, and invisibly over generations, and the risks we take when pushed to the extreme.