Six years after Rebecca Solnit added a few new words to the lexicon of sexist experience in her smash-hit essay collection Men Explain Things to Me, the longtime writer and activist is out with a new memoir about her formative years in San Francisco. In Recollections of My Nonexistence, Solnit gives the Beats the drubbing she felt she couldn't give them back in the day, tells the stories of the people and places that inspired her writings, and compares the violence women faced then to the violence they still face today. Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein will interview Solnit onstage, so I've got my fingers crossed for an insider's take on the overlap between the riot grrrl scene and the SF literary activist scene in the 1990s. Regardless, this is a grand council of living feminist legends that must not be missed, especially when there's so much that continues to trouble the realm. by Rich Smith