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Salon magazine founder David Talbot is not only a bestselling author of books like Season of the Witch and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government; he’s also a great defender of San Francisco in all its glories and disappointments. 

In conversation with writer and journalist Denise Sullivan, Talbot offers his takes on The City’s literary and political scenes, as well as his son Joe’s acclaimed debut film, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, and a sneak preview of his forthcoming memoir, Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of My Stroke.

David Talbot is an author, journalist, media entrepreneur, and book publisher. He is founder and former editor-in-chief of Salon.com, and is author of the bestsellers Season of the Witch and Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government, and the illustrated pulp history Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America. His forthcoming memoir, Between Heaven And Hell: The Story of My Stroke (Chronicle Books, 2020), is a chronicle of his life-changing year following his 2017 stroke, “a year that turned his life upside down, and ultimately, saved him.”

Denise Sullivan is an author, journalist, cultural worker, literary organizer, and longtime guest curator for Litquake. A former member of the Modern Times Bookstore Collective, and co-founder of the United Booksellers, she is the SF Lives columnist at the San Francisco Examiner and a contributor to DownBeat. Author of Keep On Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop (Lawrence Hill Books, 2011), editor of the anthology Your Golden Sun Still Shines: San Francisco Personal Histories & Small Fictions (Manic D Press, 2017), and co-editor of the three volume poetry series, The City Is Already Speaking (UBSF, 2018-2019), The Rakish Tam (Phony Lid, 2018) is her latest chapbook.