Tomas Moniz & Laleh Khadivi talk about their new books

​We've got two beloved Bay Area writers in conversation for this event. Oakland's own Tomas Moniz has a lovely new novel out, The King of Aloe Vera, about the Mission, intergenerational friendship, and last chapters. Laleh Khadivi's new book is Female Life on Planet Earth, a novel about mothers and daughters and the secrets they keep (and expose).

​Khadivi is chair of the creative writing MFA at USF. She's the author of four novels, including The Age of Orphans, which received a Whiting Writers' Award; The Walking; A Good Country, a New York Times Editors' Choice. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, and a Stein Fellowship at Stanford University

​Moniz is a latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/ Hemingway and the LAMBDA. His second novel, All Friends Are Necessary, won the 2024 California Golden Poppy Award. He edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies, and he teaches at Berkeley City College, the Antioch MFA, St Mary's College, and USF.