Heyday Books publisher Steve Wasserman will discuss his newest memoir, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie and his exciting literary life in this special live conversation with book critic Barbara Lane.

During his decades-long career in publishing, Steve Wasserman has worn nearly every possible hat in the industry—editor, agent, reviewer, literary festival co-founder, publisher—serving as a midwife to the art and ideas of some of the most influential cultural juggernauts of recent decades.

Lauded by Viet Thanh Nguyen, Héctor Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Vivian Gornick, and Hilton Als (to name just a few), Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie encompasses Wasserman’s superbly turned hot takes, ranging from the frontlines of progressive politics to the higher gossip of the literati. The intellectual terrain within his orbit is as capacious as its geography—with deep-dive spannings from the readerly culture of Los Angeles to the art of the Russian avant-garde and featuring cameos from a constellation of extraordinary cultural figures—Susan Sontag, Orson Welles, Barbra Streisand, and Gore Vidal among them.

Steve Wasserman is publisher of Heyday. A 1974 graduate of UC Berkeley, he holds a degree in criminology. His past positions include being deputy editor of the op-ed page and opinion section of the Los Angeles Times; editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review; editorial director of New Republic Books; publisher and editorial director of Hill and Wang at Farrar, Straus & Giroux and of the Noonday Press; editorial director of Times Books at Random House; and editor at large for Yale University Press. 

Barbara Lane is a book columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, book reviewer for NPR, and several national newspapers, and author interviewer for City Arts & Lectures, the Commonwealth Club, and a number of literary festivals.

Our bookseller for this program is Sausalito Books by the Bay.