Steve Wasserman on Place and Purpose with Greg Sarris and Obi Kaufmann
Thursday, August 3 | 10:00 am
Heyday’s very own publisher, Steve Wasserman, will join Heyday authors Greg Sarris and Obi Kaufmann on their podcast, Place and Purpose.
Wasserman is former editorial director of Times Books/Random House, publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, and served as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He is currently the publisher for Heyday, based in Berkeley, CA.
This episode streams live on August 3 at 10am PT.
Watch HereAbout the Speakers
Steve Wasserman
Steve Wasserman, raised in Berkeley and a graduate of Cal, is Heyday’s publisher. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press and editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has worked with many authors and published numerous books, including, most recently, Greil Marcus’s The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Martha Hodes’s Mourning Lincoln, David Thomson’s Why Acting Matters, and two posthumous volumes of the late critic Ralph J. Gleason’s musical and political writings. A founder of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California, Wasserman was a principal architect of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books during the nine years he served as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (1996–2005). He began his career as an assistant editor to Warren Hinckle at Francis Ford Coppola’s City Magazine of San Franciscoand went on to become deputy editor of the Sunday Opinion section and Op-Ed Page of the Los Angeles Times (1978–1983) before becoming editor in chief of New Republic Books, based in Washington, D.C., and New York. He was also a partner in Kneerim & Williams, a Boston-based literary agency, and represented, among others, Robert Scheer, Christopher Hitchens, David Thomson, Linda Ronstadt, and Placido Domingo. He has written for many publications, including The Village Voice, Threepenny Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The American Conservative, The Progressive, Columbia Journalism Review, Los Angeles Times, and the (London) Times Literary Supplement. [Author photo credit: Dennis Anderson]
Obi Kaufmann
Growing up in the East Bay as the son of an astrophysicist and a psychologist, Obi Kaufmann spent most of high school practicing calculus and breaking away on weekends to scramble around Mount Diablo and map its creeks, oak forests, and sage mazes. Into adulthood, he would regularly journey into the mountains, spending more summer nights without a roof than with one. He is the author of The California Field Atlas (2017, #1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller), The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Natural Resource (2019), and The Forests of California: A California Field Atlas (2020), all published by Heyday. When he is not backpacking, you can find the painter-poet at home in the East Bay, posting trail paintings at his handle @coyotethunder on Instagram. His website is coyoteandthunder.com.
Greg Sarris
Greg Sarris is an award-winning author and tribal leader serving his fifteenth consecutive term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. He received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University and has taught as a professor of Creative Writing and American and American Indian Literatures. His books include Becoming Story, How a Mountain Was Made, and Grand Avenue, which was adapted into an HBO miniseries. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com.
