The Publishing Life of Heyday's Steve Wasserman

In a world full of noise, publishers are the ones who amplify the voices that need to be heard. But it’s rare that we get to hear directly from publishers themselves.                                                             Anonymous

We will have one of those rare opportunities on Wednesday, January 8, at 7 p.m., when Steve Wasserman, head of Heyday, Berkeley’s nonprofit, independent publishing house, will speak at Arts & Culture. He will discuss his illustrious career in publishing and also preview his own new book, Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If It's a Lie: A Memoir in Essays.

Tickets for this program are $5 for club members and students and $10 for non-members. Please register early so we can be sure to accommodate everyone comfortably. 

A Berkeley native, Wasserman has worked in nearly every part of the publishing industry: as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review; as a literary agent; as editorial director at both Times Books at Random House and New Republic Books; and as editor at large for Yale University Press. He returned to Berkeley eight years ago to take over Heyday.

Wasserman’s book comprises thirty essays, written during his fifty-year career. Together, they offer a model of how to stay mentally young and intellectually curious. He delivers a riveting account of the awakening of his empathetic sensibility and lively mind during the Free Speech Movement and Vietnam War. 

“Berkeley, in the years that I came of age, was heady with the scent of night jasmine and tear gas,” Wasserman writes. “It whipsawed, sometimes violently, between cliches, from the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Apocalypse and back.”

Always a keen observer, he records his experiences in the overlapping worlds of politics and literature and the tumults of a world in upheaval. Through it all, as Kirkus Reviews notes, "Wasserman's love of reasoned debate and good writing shines through.” 

As both a veteran publisher and a gifted writer, Wasserman is sure to be both enlightening and entertaining.

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