Registration now closed

Author Talk: Jessica Ferri @North

Buried San Francisco Bay Area

Learn about the history of Bay Area Cemeteries with Buried San Francisco Bay Area author Jessica Ferri in conversation with Lauren Markham.

About Buried San Francisco Bay Area: 

With the exception of the churchyard behind Mission Dolores and the National Cemetery in the Presidio, all of San Francisco’s gorgeous Victorian-era cemeteries were evicted from the city in the early 1930s and relocated to Colma, a planned city of the dead just below Daly City where the dead outnumber the living 1,000 to 1.

The process of moving hundreds of thousands of graves to Colma wasn’t an easy one, and as history has shown, it wasn’t even complete. Constant development and renovations in San Francisco have revealed that many of the city’s dead never made it to their new resting place, raising questions about the role that cemeteries play in our lives and what we owe to the dead.

The story of San Francisco is one of rapid development, for the living—a very specific segment of the living. A city without the dead, or any memorial to them, is a place without history. It is the story of the Bay Area.

About Jessica Ferri:

Jessica Ferri is a writer and photographer based in Northern California. She is the author of Silent Cities New York, Silent Cities San Francisco, Buried Hollywoodland: The Cemeteries of Los Angeles and Buried San Francisco Bay Area: The Fallen Star.

She is the founder of the feminist bookshop and imprint Womb House Books.

About Lauren Markham:

Lauren Markham is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, A Map of Future Ruins, and Immemorial. Her work has appeared in VQR, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, and other publications. She teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and in the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program.

Upcoming Events