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.

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.

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.