An Evening with Kara Swisher

Co-presented with Jewish Community Center San Francisco and The Box Sessions

Just when we thought the era of “move fast and break things” might be over, the biggest tech billionaire of them all has moved lightning-quick to “fix” the federal government. Who better to consult about the confusing entanglements of technology and power today than “bad-ass journalist and OG chronicler of Silicon Valley” (Booklist) Kara Swisher? In her memoir Burn Book: A Tech Love Story (an instant NYT bestseller called “incendiary” by the Associated Press), Swisher reflects on her own history of speaking truth to technocrats, and she sounds a dire warning about the intersecting threats of unchecked power and artificial intelligence. The newly released paperback edition of Burn Book also includes a brand-new chapter, with fresh insights gleaned after the 2024 presidential election. In conversation with her friend and fellow award-winning journalist Laura M. Holson, founder of The Box Sessions, a series of gatherings that celebrate community and cultivate creativity in a variety of artistic fields. Tickets $20 advance / $25 door.

Book sales by Green Apple Books.

Kara Swisher is the host of the podcast On with Kara Swisher and the co-host of the Pivot podcast with Scott Galloway, both distributed by New York magazine. She was also the co-founder and editor-at-large of Recode, host of the Recode Decode podcast, and co–executive producer of the Code conference. She was a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and host of its Sway podcast and has also worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. Burn Book is her third book.

Laura M. Holson (interviewer) is an award-winning feature writer and editor who has written about Hollywood, Silicon Valley and powerful figures in finance and politics for The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and other publications. She joined the Times in 1998, first chronicling the mergers and acquisition boom, then becoming a correspondent in Los Angeles writing about Hollywood, media companies, and the movie business. In 2008, she joined the Style desk, where she explored the intersection of money, power and celebrity. In 2017, she broke the story about sexual harassment claims against hotel financier Andre Balazs. Previously Holson was a writer for Smart Money magazine, where she won a National Magazine Award for public service, one of the industry’s highest honors. In 2020, she founded The Box Sessions, an annual gathering of talks and workshops with artists, Oscar-winning filmmakers, musicians, and authors. She has extensively studied creativity and is currently writing a book, and she will be an artist-in-residence in Arles, France in 2025.

Host or Publisher Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival