Insurgent Labor: The Vermont AFL-CIO 2017–2023 with David van Deusen

Saturday May 31st, 2025 – 6:30 PM

69a Elliot Street, Brattleboro, VT

Co-presented with Everyone’s Books

Lean more here and get the book.

Join Owen Hill for the book launch of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story in Oakland, CA on Thursday, June 5th at Tally Ho! Books, Oakland’s newest queer and women owned independent bookstore. Learn more here.

About the book

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling. And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).

“Yet the more we get to know him, the more we’re persuaded Blackburn is a Pure Product of Berkeley. He’s not only queer, but a queer sort of all else he declares himself to be: a queer sort of detective, a queer sort of Communist or Anarchist, and beyond—a queer sort of gourmet, ethical thinker, cat owner, and—for certain—a queer sort of narrator.” —Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction

Owen Hill is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He coannotated and edited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage Crime), and coedited Berkeley Noir (Akashic Books). He was a buyer at a secondhand bookstore for many years, and now is a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. He lives in Oakland.

Join Owen Hill for a reading and discussion of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story at Books Inc Alameda on June 11th at 7pm. 1344 Parker Street Alameda, CA.

About the book

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling. And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).

“Yet the more we get to know him, the more we’re persuaded Blackburn is a Pure Product of Berkeley. He’s not only queer, but a queer sort of all else he declares himself to be: a queer sort of detective, a queer sort of Communist or Anarchist, and beyond—a queer sort of gourmet, ethical thinker, cat owner, and—for certain—a queer sort of narrator.” —Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction

Owen Hill is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He coannotated and edited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage Crime), and coedited Berkeley Noir (Akashic Books). He was a buyer at a secondhand bookstore for many years, and now is a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. He lives in Oakland.

Join Owen Hill for a reading and discussion of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story at Bird and Beckett in San Francisco on July 10th at 7pm. 653 Chenery St, San Francisco, CA

About the book

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling. And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).

“Yet the more we get to know him, the more we’re persuaded Blackburn is a Pure Product of Berkeley. He’s not only queer, but a queer sort of all else he declares himself to be: a queer sort of detective, a queer sort of Communist or Anarchist, and beyond—a queer sort of gourmet, ethical thinker, cat owner, and—for certain—a queer sort of narrator.” —Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction

Owen Hill is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He coannotated and edited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage Crime), and coedited Berkeley Noir (Akashic Books). He was a buyer at a secondhand bookstore for many years, and now is a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. He lives in Oakland.

Join Owen Hill for a reading and discussion of The Giveaway: The Clay Blackburn Story at Book Passage Corta Madera on July 26th at 11am. 51 Tamal Vista Blvd, Corte Madera, CA.

About the book

Clay Blackburn—poet, book scout, and sometimes detective—cruises the mean, and sometimes not so mean, streets of Berkeley. With his accomplices, a soldier of fortune, a “defrocked” FBI agent, and a smooth and sexy con man, he lives a life of bisexual sensation with a little crime solving on the side. As such, Blackburn is a sly, witty, and more or less reliable raconteur of the last thirty something years of the Bay Area’s radical bohemia and bookselling. And in the tradition of Ian Rankin’s Edinburgh, and Jean-Claude Izzo’s Marseilles, bears uncomfortable witness to Berkeley’s descent from countercultural paradise to neoliberal inferno.

This omnibus collection collects the novels The Chandler Apartments (2002), The Incredible Double (2010), and the previously unpublished Mayakovsky’s Bugatti (2025), and includes the Blackburn short story “Righteous Kill” (2021).

“Yet the more we get to know him, the more we’re persuaded Blackburn is a Pure Product of Berkeley. He’s not only queer, but a queer sort of all else he declares himself to be: a queer sort of detective, a queer sort of Communist or Anarchist, and beyond—a queer sort of gourmet, ethical thinker, cat owner, and—for certain—a queer sort of narrator.” —Jonathan Lethem, from the Introduction

Owen Hill is the author of three crime novels, two books of short fiction, and many collections of poetry. He coannotated and edited The Annotated Big Sleep (Vintage Crime), and coedited Berkeley Noir (Akashic Books). He was a buyer at a secondhand bookstore for many years, and now is a union organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. He lives in Oakland.