The Program
6:00 - Reception with the authors
6:30 - Readings, discussion, and Q&A
7:30 - Book signing
Looking to discover your new favorite author and some new books to add to your reading list this festive season? Join us for our signature reading series, Story Is the Thing, to hear four stellar Northern California fiction authors read from their debut and latest titles.
Our guests are Keith Haddock for Imagine My Surprise! in which a reincarnated drug addict sets out to avenge his own murder; bestselling author Chad Harbach for his urgent, deeply felt story of friendship, The Brightness; Vanessa Hua for Coyoteland, her funny, heartfelt novel set in an affluent Bay Area suburb; and, finally, Omar Hussain for A Thousand Natural Shocks, a mesmerizing meditation on trauma, memory, and identity wrapped in a high-octane thriller.
The Lineup
Born in Seattle but raised in the Bay Area, Keith Haddock is a novelist, playwright, theater director, and musician. A long-time member of San Francisco's arts community, he is a three-time winner of the San Francisco Fringe Festival for his musicals. His rock band, The Grüps, are currently mixing their debut album, The Time Out. Keith resides in San Francisco and works for Industrial Light & Magic.
Chad Harbach grew up in Wisconsin and studied at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is a cofounder of n+1 and the author of the bestselling novel The Art of Fielding, which has been translated into more than twenty languages.
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a California Arts Council Fellowship, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, as well as honors from the de Groot Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. She was a finalist for the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and the New American Voices Award. Previously, she was an award-winning columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has filed stories from China, Burma, South Korea, Ecuador, and Panama, and her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Omar Hussain is a writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. His debut novel, A Thousand Natural Shocks (Blackstone Publishing, 2025), was recently shortlisted for the Cabell First Novelist Award and named one of the Washington Post’s 10 Best Thrillers of 2025, as well as a “best of” pick from USA Today, the Seattle Times, Goodreads, and BookBub. The Washington Post called it “daring” and Publisher’s Weekly compared it to Philip K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon. He holds an MFA in creative writing from NYU and now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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