Posts by Julia Flynn Siler
92nd Annual California Book Awards
Founded in 1931 during the depths of America’s Great Depression, the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards celebrates its 92nd anniversary this year and tonight is the award’s ceremony. Please join us at 6 p.m. PT to honor some of the state’s most distinguished writers. It will be streaming at https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/2023-06-05/92nd-annual-california-book-awards The purpose of the awards…
Read MoreRemembering a Hawaiian Queen
A few weeks ago, I was asked by a producer at Wondery if I’d be interested in being interviewed for the podcast American History Tellers about Hawaii’s last queen. I hesitated at first because my book on Hawaii had been published more than a decade ago. Agreeing to the interview would mean that I’d have…
Read MoreCalifornia Book Awards – 2022 Finalists!
Founded in 1931 during the depths of America’s Great Depression, the Commonwealth Club’s California Book Awards celebrates its 92nd anniversary this year. The purpose of the awards is to highlight the work of California authors – a praiseworthy goal at a time when the publishing industry (then and now) remains focused on East Coast…
Read MoreHistory Written by the Victors….
For an example of history being written by the victors, consider the case of Jane Lathrop Stanford, the victim of one of California’s most puzzling unsolved murder mysteries. As co-founder and primary benefactor of Stanford University, Jane died of strychnine poisoning in 1905 in Waikiki. For nearly a century, the fact of her murder…
Read MoreUnited Nations and Human Trafficking
March is Women’s History Month and I’m thrilled to take part on Friday, March 19th in a virtual panel at this year’s United Nations Commission on the Status of Women NGO Forum. The event is being organized by the San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking, a public-private partnership established more than a decade ago by…
Read MoreThe Safe Place That Became Unsafe
Early on in the research for The White Devil’s Daughters, I learned about a horrific aftermath to the story I was writing. My focus was on a group of women residents and staffers of a historic safe house who fought sex slavery at the turn of the 20th century. One day, while sifting through case…
Read MoreRemembering Judy Yung
Judy Yung’s death this month marks the passing of a gifted and generous scholar. Her groundbreaking work in the history of Asian American women paved the way for a new generation of thinkers and writers. Along with fellow San Franciscans Him Mark Lai and the Philip P. Choy, Judy Yung made an enormous contribution to…
Read MoreThe Queen’s Diaries
It took a decade for The Diaries of Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii to finally be published. The result: a stunningly beautiful book that will be used by scholars and lovers of Hawaii for years to come. David W. Forbes led the effort to gather and annotate the diaries of the last queen of Hawaii, aided…
Read MoreTalking with Min Jin Lee
Over this past week, I’ve been immersed in Pachinko. To be specific, I had the fortunate assignment to read Min Jin Lee’s masterful novel Pachinko, which is a family saga about the world of Koreans living in Japan. I’ve always loved the sprawling social novels of the 19th century – Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist and…
Read MoreOvercrowded prisons in our back yards
I wrote this essay on San Quentin for an online class I’m taking titled “Reading and Writing the Very Short Essay.” It’s taught by one of my favorite authors, Lauren Markham. It was published in Sunday’s Sacramento Bee print edition and other McClatchy papers throughout the state on July 5, 2020 and appeared online a…
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