Meet the author April 20 at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, and May 2 at Book Passage in San Francisco.

Bijan, whose own family fled Iran in 1978, made her first return to the country in 2010 a chef who ran her own restaurant, L’Amie Donia in Palo Alto, she describes the dishes of Café Leila in delicious detail. As she confronts national history and family revelations, “The Last Days of Café Leila” delivers a moving portrait of a character caught between two worlds. But Iran has changed since Noor left for America 30 years earlier. Arriving in Tehran with her teenaged daughter, Lily, she settles into a new life centered in her father’s neighborhood café. When Noor discovers that her husband has left her for another woman, she gathers what’s left of her San Francisco life and returns to her native Iran. “The Last Days of Café Leila” by Donia Bijan (Algonquin, $25.95, 304 pages)Ī betrayal sets Donia Bijan’s captivating new novel in motion. Fiction and memoirs, all with Bay Area connections, round out this month’s list of new releases. Donia Bijan starts her debut novel in San Francisco, then takes readers to her native Iran “Oakland Noir” captures hidden corners of its namesake city. Women, people of color, the disenfranchised, have to fight for survival, let alone progress and artistic recognition.The Bay Area has a long history of supplying authors with memorable settings, but there’s an especially strong sense of place in these new releases by Bay Area authors. We all knew who she was she read her work openly editors knew. 'When I first started going to poetry workshops, I met a poet who used only her first and middle initials in an attempt to hide her female identity to editors.

Fresh Ink: An Interview with Debut Novelist Judy Juanita.

'It's ironic that black chick lit, street lit and urban fiction for a time represented the whole of contemporary black literature.' (The Weeklings)

All The Women In My Family Read Terry McMillan.

Also, I feel like you get at a deeper truth when you go more into the realm of fiction.' (Publishers Weekly) So my imagination takes me far afield of the actual facts. Of course, I also love to read nonfiction, but I knew right away that this had to be told through a story.'

I've always loved fiction from childhood, when I lost myself in fairy tales when I was eight or whatever I would read them and just love them. 'I love the tall tales, and in those lie a deeper truth. Juanita joins The Daily Circuit to discuss her first novel and what it means to be a black female writer today.

Virgin soul by judy juanita