Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland is pleased to present David Herlihy as he discusses and signs The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance, a gripping narrative that captures the soaring joys and constant dangers accompanying renowned high-wheel racer and long-distance tourist Frank Lenz in the days before paved roads and automobiles, on Sunday, September 12 at 3pm. David Herlihy is the author of Bicycle: The History and his work has been featured on National Public Radio and Voice of America and in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Boston, and Historic Preservation. In 1999 Herlihy received the McNair History Award from The Wheelmen, the preeminent American association of antique bicycle collectors.     

 Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland hosts another installment of Poetry Flash, this time with Jacqueline Berger and Eric Gudas, on Sunday, September 12 at 5pm. Jacqueline Berger's new book of poetry is The Gift That Arrives Broken, winner of the 2009 Autumn House Poetry Prize. Chana Bloch says, "In her third book Jacqueline Berger surveys the terrain of mid-life. . .Her perceptions about the hungers of body and mind, striking in their candor, are couched in language that honors and deepens the losses, even as she uncovers the gifts to be found in brokenness." Her first book, The Mythologies of Danger, won both the Bluestem Award and the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award, and her second, Things that Burn, was a winner of the Aga Shahid Ali Prize from the University of Utah Press. Best Western and Other Poems is Eric Gudas's first book of poems, winner of the 2008 Gerald Cable Book Award. Tony Hoagland says, ". . .Eric Gudas has been one of my secret favorite poets for a long time. This careful, rich collection makes his playful, anguished, perceptive, and humane poems available at last." His poems, reviews, and interviews with poets have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poetry Flash, and elsewhere, and he's also author of the chapbook Beautiful Monsters.