JOHN FREEMAN

PETALUMA --

Copperfield's Books is honored to welcome executive editor and author John Freeman to Petaluma in celebration of his new book - California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State's New Literature.

John will be joined in conversation by Sheryl Cotleur with special guest Greg Sarris.

Join us for a meaningful discussion followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

This is a free event, registration required for seating.

Dive into the revelatory worlds of California's most exciting writers, and discover how their books uncover our history and can help us imagine our shared future.

"In Freeman's hands, California is a literary mecca, and each essay a revelation." --Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of The Man Who Could Move Clouds

Percival Everett, Rebecca Solnit, Tommy Orange, Michael Connelly, Julie Otsuka: As John Freeman writes in California Rewritten, "Literature of so many kinds and so many genres from so many different types of people--at the highest level--has been coming out of California and from Californians for decades now." Freeman, one of the sharpest editors working today, has followed the evolution of California's literary life since his teenage years in Sacramento. In over fifty essays inspired by his hosting of Alta Journal's popular California Book Club, he offers an essential road map to California literature now. He shows us how the state's most exciting writers can unlock our understanding of the past, and how they can deepen our imaginations as we confront the most pressing issues that face our society: labor and inequality, migration and citizenship, technology and its limits, changing landscapes and climate catastrophe. Incisive and compulsively readable, California Rewritten will be a source of empowering discovery for any book lover who cares about the Golden State.

Author:

John Freeman has hosted Alta‘s California Book Club since its founding in 2020 and is the author, most recently, of California Rewritten: A Journey Through the Golden State’s New Literature. He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and he edited Freeman’s (2015–2023), a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as the anthologies Tales of Two Americas, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and Sacramento Noir. He is also the author of three poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York.

It’s hard to imagine a Book Buyer who has read more or done more for launching authors than Sheryl Cotleur. With 30 years in the book business, she has what many readers would consider a dream job. She buys books for all eight of Copperfield's Books' stores in San Francisco's North Bay, and along with the job, she reads incessantly, while working with publishers, authors, and editors to discover the best new books. Over the past four years, her role has expanded beyond the bookstore to include serving as a jurist for a number of book awards and, in 2014, she was named as a judge for the National Book Foundation’s annual fiction awards, one of the nation’s most prestigious literary prizes. This year she is serving as a judge for the 2016 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction.

Greg Sarris is an accomplished author, university professor, and tribal leader currently serving his seventeenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive, Grand Avenue, Watermelon Nights, How a Mountain Was Made, Becoming Story, and The Forgetters. In June 2026 his new novel, The Last Human Bear, will debut. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sundance Institute, former board chair of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, and a member of the Board of Regents for the University of California. Greg lives and works in Sonoma County, California. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com.