Books! Banter! Cinema!

The ZYZZYVA 2025 Movie Night series kicks off on Monday, April 14, with Lauren Markham & Jenny Odell and the cult-hit documentary River and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time (2001). River and Tides examines the breath-taking outdoor sculptures of Goldsworthy, who only works with natural material and whose art (some of which can be found in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and the Presidio and at Stanford) was designed to “deteriorate.” Markham calls River and Tides “a study of reverence and impermanence that invites us to approach our art—and the world we live in—with a simultaneous diligence and improvisation, artistry and exertion, attention and whimsy, curiosity and devotion.”

The film will be introduced by Markham, whose most recent book, Immemorial—a dazzling synthesis of reporting, memoir, and essay—meditates on language in the face of climate catastrophe. Following the movie, there will be a short conversation between Markham and Odell about River and Tides.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. with a book signing. Movie introduction starts promptly at 6, followed by a conversation at the end of the screening. ZYZZYVA Movie Night is copresented with Litquake, San Francisco's literary festival (October 9–25, 2025).

Lauren Markham’s work regularly appears in outlets such as Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and the critically-acclaimed A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. Her new book, Immemorial, was published in 2025.

Jenny Odell is the author of the New York Times bestsellers How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy and Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Paris Review, and The Believer. Odell has been an artist in residence at the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and Recology SF. From 2013 to 2021, she taught art at Stanford University.