Red Room Where the Writers Are

On Tuesday, July 15th, one hundred San Francisco Bay Area authors gathered at the legendary bar/café Tosca, the much-loved hangout of North Beach literati, gangsters, and movie stars since 1919. The occasion was Red Room’s Author Mixer: “Mixed Authors & Best-Selling Drinks!”

The idea for the mixer was born at this year’s BookExpo America when Red Room founder and CEO Ivory Madison ran into Debi and Will Durst on the convention floor. The Dursts asked Madison when they’d be going out for drinks with all the authors. Since that could add up to quite a few drinks, Red Room called the most logical venue in town, local landmark Tosca. Naturally, Red Room asked Will to be guest of honor to celebrate his new book, The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing: Common Sense Rantings from a Raging Moderate, released in April by Ulysses Press.

Launched less than six months ago, redroom.com is already the online home of 1,000 authors. Alan Black, Lisa Brown, Ben Fong-Torres, Rodes Fishburne, Daniel Handler, Bill Hayes, Jane Ganahl, Leah Garchik, Jessica Barksdale Inclán, Adair Lara, William Poy Lee, Ericka Lutz, Wendy Merrill, Richard Moran, Bharati Mukherjee, Peter Orner, Ishmael Reed, Trina Robbins, and Ellen Sussman were among the authors who joined the party.

Admission was at least one signed copy of any of their books, so we enjoyed seeing authors mixing, Durst ranting, and book-swapping galore! Everyone said how great it was to meet so many authors face-to-face whom they’d only seen on their computer monitors until now.

–Your friends at Red Room

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