SFist Eve already gave you the scoop on one literary happening and then our inbox beeped to let us know that we got an email from Kepler's (snappy new site design there) listing their April author events. They're kicking off a travel series and its killing us! We want to go somewhere (not that we don't love SF, oh no). Wah! Since our travel budget is so limited we're going to settle for visiting local bookstores and checking out their free author events.

We'll start with SFist Peninsula headquarters in Menlo Park at Kepler's:

The kickoff to their travel series comes from Frances Mayes (warning, there's sound at that link), on Saturday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.

We're also really intrigued by Stevie Smith (more sound, sorry), coming in June (Wednesday June 14, 2006 7:30 p.m.), mostly because my god man, what were you thinking?! Guess we'll have to go there and ask him because we too have been out-of-shape, inexperienced and broke young bureaucrats but our solution came in the form of career counselling and beer.

Taking our tour a little further but still manageably close to home we looked to see what other author events various Books, Inc. locations have coming up:

Tomorrow, Wednesday March 29th you can sneak down to the Stanford Shopping Center location to see Ruth Reichl at 7:30 p.m. The following Wednesday the Mountain View location hosts Karen Armstrong, also at 7:30 p.m.

As we look, we see lots of chances to see most authors, so if you miss out on one, check out other local bookstores. A good example is Jennifer Solow who's overly coquettish author photo (see left) stares at us from more than one author event listing. She's at Cody's on Stockton on Wednesday, March 29th and pretty much everywhere else in the coming days.

Cody's on Telegraph changes the script on us on Wednesday, April 5th when they host Gary Hart (yes, that Gary Hart) at 12:30 p.m. Skip out at lunch for your naughty topics fix as the talks about politics and religion. My god, will he also tell us how much money he makes and complete the verboten topics trifecta?!

City Lights is co-sponsoring what we think might be the most interesting conversation kicked off by a book: "Black Exodus/Black Eviction" on Wednesday, April 12th at 8:00 p.m. at Counterpulse (1310 Mission at 9th in San Francisco).

The infamous redevelopment process of the 1960s did much to diminish a vibrant African-American community in the old Fillmore. The black population of San Francisco has been falling steadily since 1970. Is today's Bayview/ Hunter's Point neighborhood facing another round of racist relocation? Community activists and historians will discuss the past to inform the present and change the future! Speakers: Kevin Epps (featuring excerpts from Straight Outta Hunter's Point), Alicia Schwartz (POWER) and Willie Ratcliff (publisher, San Francisco Bay View newspaper).

Our final stop is A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books where we're looking forward to Eric Schlosser on April 27th. Schlosser is promoting his new book Chew on This which takes the material and ideas of Fast Food Nation and aims them at pre-teens.