Aleta George: The Pleasures and Perils of a Literary Pilgrimage

Aleta George is a journalist and independent scholar who writes about the nature, history, and culture of California. Her work has been published in Smithsonian, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and High Country News. She is the award winning author of Ina Coolbrith: The Bittersweet Song of California's First Poet Laureate. She will share her experiences of making pilgrimages to sites important to Ina Coolbrith, the subject of her first biography, and Jack London, the subject of her current project. The book tells how the young Coolbrith slipped into the male-dominated literary world of post-Gold Rush San Francisco where Bret Harte, Mark Twain, and John Muir got their start and how she mentored Jack London and Joaquin Miller. She will discuss the climate and world of some of these writers from the Bay Area at the turn of the 20th Century.

She is currently working on a new book about the long time valet to Jack London - Yoshimatsu Nakata. Nakata is a primary character in her book-in-progress, a place-based biography about London’s formative and lifelong relationship with the San Francisco Bay. Nakata kept journals in 1909 and a later one in 1914. Her hope is that Nakata’s 1914 diary will help tell the story of London’s last, four-month cruise on the San Francisco Bay less than two years before his death.

Yoshimatsu Nakata was Jack London’s right-hand-man for eight years, at the height of the novelist’s prolific career. At the turn of the last century London was one of the most widely read writers in the world. In 1897, already a committed socialist, London dropped out of the University of California after one semester to seek his fortune in the Klondike. He didn’t find gold but did return with vivid impressions that he turned into stories that became bestsellers, including such adventure classics as The Call of the Wild and White Fang.

After the talk, a champagne reception will be offered with sweets and savories.

Please reserve your seat as soon as possible for event arrangements. Reserve here or call Richelle Lieberman at 510-381-1973.

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