Wayne Wang is a Hong Kong-American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Considered a pioneer of Asian-American cinema, he was one of the first Chinese-American filmmakers to gain a major foothold in Hollywood. His films, often independently produced, deal with issues of contemporary Asian-American culture and domestic life.
Wallace Earle Stegner was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian. He was often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.
The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
Ethan Andrew Canin is an American author, educator, and physician. He is a member of the faculty of the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Lan Samantha Chang is an American novelist and short story writer. She is the author of The Family Chao (2022) and short story collection Hunger. For her fiction, which explores Chinese American experiences, she is a recipient of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Berlin Prize, the PEN/Open Book Award and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award.
Carole Maso is a contemporary American novelist and essayist, known for her experimental, poetic and fragmentary narratives which are often called postmodern. She is a recipient of a 1993 Lannan Literary Award for Fiction.
Nan Cohen is an American poet and teacher. She has published two poetry collections, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City.
Tom Barbash is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction, as well as an educator and critic.
Fae Myenne Ng is an American novelist and short story writer.
Forbidden City was a Chinese nightclub and cabaret in San Francisco, which was in business from 1938 to 1970, and operated on the second floor of 363 Sutter Street, between Chinatown and Union Square.
Cornelia Nixon is an American novelist, short-story writer, and teacher. She has lived much of her mature life in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Larry Sultan was an American photographer from the San Fernando Valley in California. He taught at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1978 to 1988 and at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco 1989 to 2009.
Tom Zoellner is an American author and journalist. He is the author of popular non-fiction books which take multidimensional views of their subject. His work has been widely reviewed and has been featured on The Daily Show. His 2020 book Island on Fire: The Revolt That Ended Slavery in the British Empire was a finalist for the Bancroft Prize in history and in 2021 won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Chinatown station is an underground Muni Metro light rail station, located under Stockton Street at Washington Street in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, California. It opened on November 19, 2022, as part of the Central Subway project. The station's official name honors Rose Pak, a political activist in the Chinatown community who helped secure support and funding for the station and the extension of the T Third Street line.
Merla Zellerbach, née Myrle Carmel Burstein, was born in San Francisco in 1930, the daughter of Rabbi Elliot M. and Lottie Burstein. While attending Stanford University, she met and soon thereafter married Stephen Zellerbach. They had one child, son Gary. Her literary, civic and philanthropic work began at the time of her first marriage. By the time of her death on December 26, 2014, she authored 13 well reviewed novels and five self-help medical books, was a panelist for six years on the ABC TV show Oh My Word, and a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. Subsequently, she was Editor of the Nob Hill Gazette for twelve years. Charities she supported and/or worked for included Compassion and Choices, the Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco, the Kidney Foundation, and a dozen more.
San Francisco currently has lower-than-average rates of violent crime when compared with other major U.S. cities, while property crimes, such as theft and burglary, are higher than the national average.
Caro De Robertis is a Uruguayan-American author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. They are the author of five novels and the editor of an award-winning anthology, Radical Hope (2017), which include essays by such writers as Junot Diaz and Jane Smiley. They are also well known for their translational work, frequently translating Spanish pieces.
Elizabeth Rosner is an American novelist, nonfiction author, essayist, and poet. She is author of three novels and a poetry collection. The Speed of Light was translated into nine languages and won several awards in the US and in Europe, including being shortlisted for the Prix Femina. Blue Nude was named among the best books of 2006 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Electric City was named among the best books of 2014 by NPR.
Patricia Engel is a Colombian-American writer, professor of creative writing at the University of Miami, and author of five books, including Vida, which was a PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award Finalist and winner of the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, Colombia's national prize in literature. She was the first woman, and Vida the first book in translation, to receive the prize.
The San Francisco Writers Grotto is a writers' coworking space in San Francisco’s SOMA district. Founded in 1993 by writers Po Bronson, Ethan Canin and Ethan Watters, the Writers Grotto is a community of working writers which provides support, feedback, and community to its members. Members have won Pulitzer prizes and Guggenheim Fellowships and penned New York Times bestsellers, national TV series and movies. Notable alumni include ZZ Packer, Roberto Lovato, Mary Roach, and Julia Scheeres. All Writers Grotto members are vetted before acceptance and must have a published book or a significant amount of journalistic or related media work published.
