Jacque McLaughlin is executive director of Gilead House based in downtown Novato. She's passionate about the vital work Gilead House performs by providing transitional housing and life skills to families in need. Established in 1999, Gilead House is a transitional home for single mothers and their children. Their...

It may come as something of a surprise that Vendela Vida doesn't have access to the internet at her home, but make no mistake, she's very connected. The talented author founded The Believer which celebrates its tenth anniversary with the publication of...

Yvette van Boven's cookbooks seem sprinkled with fairy dust. Her latest one, Home Made Summer, is filled with her fanciful drawings, tempting recipes, and her husband's evocative photographs. Raised in both Ireland and the Netherlands by her Dutch parents, she...

Emily Mortimer is a terrific English actress who has shown her incredible emotional vulnerability in such films as Hugo, Lovely and Amazing, Shutter Island, and Lars and the Real Girl. Last year, she reinvented herself as gutsy executive producer MacKenzie McHale in Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom on HBO. In perhaps...

Whether you're still searching for a holiday gift for your choosiest bookish friend or a gripping read for yourself, may I recommend the new Twisted Lit series? With glowing reviews (even from Kirkus- "Death, betrayal, ruthless...

Mira Sorvino has moved audiences with her humor, compassion, and remarkable vulnerability. She first made her mark in Hollywood in her Oscar-winning portrayal of a prostitute with a heart of gold in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite. Although her performances have been greatly praised, it's...

If Generation X had a hero, it was River Phoenix. In his every vulnerable performance, he seemed to embody the thoughts and concerns of an entire generation. On September 27, Dark Blood the last film that Phoenix appeared in, yet never completed, will premiere at the

Famke Janssen first came to audiences' attention as bond girl "Xenia Onatopp" in GoldenEye and then as Jean Grey in X-Men. She'll reprise her role as Liam Neeson's wife in Taken 2 this fall and star as Muriel the witch in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunter next year. In her...

There's a new literary camp in town. Litquake and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto have joined their wonder twin powers to form Lit Camp -- a superior literary writing intensive with representatives from some of San Francisco's finest;...

Only a decade after opening their doors and then the hearts and minds of young students in San Francisco's Mission district, groundbreaking nonprofit 826 Valencia now has seven national chapters and outposts as far away as Dublin, garnered a legion...

Over the past few weeks, I've had the pleasure of cooking recipes from Jenny Rosentrach's new cookbook Dinner: A Love Story for my family. I've tackled Turkey Chili (spicy kick), Apricot-Mustard Baked Chicken (divine) and Greek-Style Shrimp with Feta (opa!). We also discovered recipes my daughter loves to...

Although Cindy Pawlcyn may be the undisputed queen of Napa Valley cuisine, she's traveled the world in search of truly daring and delicious recipes. With her supper club at Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen, she nurtured a doting dining community in her own backyard....

Of my first anthology The May Queen, Charles McGrath wrote in the New York Times that there was a "ghost" in the collection -- "the mother of the essayist, who is variously memorialized or blamed for being too perfect, an impossible role model, or for not...

Bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert never knew her great-grandmother. While unpacking boxes of old family books, she rediscovered her cookbook At Home on the Range first published in 1947 and met her for the first time through her witty and warm...

When asked why she wrote about food, M.F.K. Fisher responded, "When I write of hunger I'm really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it... and then the warmth and richness and...

When I met Jaida Im founder of Freedom House a few weeks ago, I was struck not only by her passion for helping human trafficking survivors, but also her absolute faith in the work that she's doing through her shelter. On Saturday,...

Christopher Bessette's compelling new film Trade of Innocents will be presented as an advance screening at Trade of Innocents: A Global Perspective on Human Trafficking Symposium at Yale Law School from April 12-13, 2012. The film stars Dermot Mulroney and Mira Sorvino as a husband and...

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage to one of your favorite authors' homes? I've made many, but none have been as memorably as those I've made in England. I followed in the footsteps of Lord Byron in Hampstead Heath to the notorious Spaniard's Inn; cried over a lock of...

Fourteen years ago, I drove across country with my friend Jung for three days straight from Nashville to Berkeley. We moved to the bay area to start new lives -- find jobs, friends, partners, our future. Jung and I had great dreams, many we've realized over the past decade. I...

I turned 40 last month. Now that I find myself halfway through my life, I remember the young, impressionable girl I was when love first came for me. I had sipped from a dainty glass of Cinderella fantasy, but I hadn't swallowed it, not completely. I knew on a visceral...