The Mill Valley Library is thrilled to welcome Alison Owings, author of Mayor of the Tenderloin, the unforgettable account of Del Seymour, an activist who overcame 18 years of homelessness and addiction to become one of the most respected advocates in San Francisco in conversation with Del Seymour himself and moderated by the manager of the African American Center at the San Francisco Public Library, Shawna Sherman.

In Mayor of the Tenderloin, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour—whose addiction led him into eighteen years of homelessness, pimping, and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job.

Honest and compelling, Mayor of the Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods as it was lived—in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it.

Alison Owings is a freelance editor and the author of Mayor of the Tenderloin, Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans, and Hey Waitress: The USA from the Other Side of the Tray. Her writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Times Business section, and elsewhere. Alison and her husband lived in Mill Valley for 35 years, and at one point she volunteered in the Mill Valley Public Library's History Room working on oral history projects.

Shawna Sherman is a writer and librarian currently working as the manager of the African American Center at the San Francisco Public Library's Main Library in the Tenderloin neighborhood. Through her writing and the stewardship of other's work at library, she aspires to keep telling African American history.    

The bookseller for this program is Book Passage Corte Madera. 

For information about accessibility at the library, please visit https://millvalleylibrary.org/2049/Accessibility