Greg Sarris Discusses "The Last Human" with Nina Schuyler

This event is FREE to attend. Seating is first-come, first-served. (RSVPs are optional, but encouraged for our planning purposes.)

Meet the author, find out about a terrific new book, ask questions, hear directly from the author, and get personalized signed books!

We are delighted to announce that Greg Sarris, author of How a Mountain was Made, The Forgetters, Becoming Story, and more, will be joining us to celebrate his new book, The Last Human Bear, a complex, moving meditation on personal origins, family lore, and ethnic struggles that emerge from self-exploration. Nina Schuyler, author of In This Ravishing World and Open the Floodgates, will be joining Sarris in conversation.

You don't need to have read the book beforehand to enjoy the event, but we do recommend reserving your copy ahead of time:

About the Book:

"It's revelatory on every page." --Dave Eggers

"The grand return of a master storyteller." --Peter Maravelis, City Lights Booksellers

An epic story of curses, love, hard-won independence, and healing--and the first novel in 28 years by a widely acclaimed Native writer.

Mary Hatcher lives with a curse--or is it a power that could make her life whole? A Native Pomo woman who comes of age in 1930s California, Mary keeps trying to make sense of her enigmatic family. Strange rumors spread about her. Her stepmother may have taught her how to become a Human Bear, a shapeshifter who can menace and poison enemies. Two men may love her--or love who they think she is. A mystery even to herself, Mary learns to pass between Native and white societies, tenaciously carving her own path as an independent woman. But as she explores love and desire, family inherited and chosen, and the secrets of the natural world, one question gnaws at her: Is she fated to do harm?

Wry and richly lyrical, The Last Human Bear follows Mary from the Great Depression to the twenty-first century, when she commits a haunting final act. Inspired by the Native women elders who shaped Greg Sarris in his youth, it is the triumphant and revelatory return of an eminent novelist. With illustrations by Obi Kaufmann.

About the Author:

Greg Sarris is an accomplished author, university professor, and tribal leader currently serving his seventeenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria. His publications include Keeping Slug Woman Alive, Grand Avenue, Watermelon Nights, How a Mountain Was Made, Becoming Story, and The Forgetters. In June 2026 his new novel, The Last Human Bear, will debut. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Sundance Institute, former board chair of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, and a member of the Board of Regents for the University of California. Greg lives and works in Sonoma County, California. Visit his website at greg-sarris.com. Photograph by Beowulf Sheehan.

About the Conversation Partner:

Nina Schuyler’s new novel, Open the Floodgates, will be published September 15, 2026. Schuyler’s story collection, In This Ravishing World, won the 2025 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. It also won the W.S. Porter Prize and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. Her novel, Afterword, won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Science Fiction and Literary. Her novel, The Translator, was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize and won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction. The Painting was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. The second editions of her bestselling craft books, How to Write Stunning Sentences and Stunning Sentences: A Creative Writing Journal, will be published in January 2026. Her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and won Best Microfiction 2025 and 2025 Best Small Fictions. For nearly a decade she taught for the University of San Francisco’s MFA program and currently teaches creative writing for Stanford Continuing Studies.

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