How do we find human connection? Being “in with the out crowd”? An author and poet finds peers on the Pacifica Pier.

On this week’s Out in the Bay, Toni Mirosevich reads from her new book, Spell Heaven and other stories. In Spell Heaven, a lesbian couple moves to a coastal town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders. The collection, set in “Seaview,” reflects on finding meaning and connection in an increasingly isolated world.

Seaview is a name Mirosevich dreamt up for the real town of Pacifica, where she lives, just down the coast from San Francisco, and Spell Heaven mirrors her actual life. The book’s narrator, like her, is a retired creative writing professor looking for meaning.

“I saw a sign on a post down by the sea one day. It said ‘I’ve lost something. I don’t know what it is. Can you help me find it?’

“And I thought, that’s very true to who this narrator is,” says Mirosevich. Like many of us, especially in this COVID era, “she’s lost some kind of meaning, some kind of connection.” Her stories show how dropping presumptions about others, and making friends out of strangers, can rebuild connection.

Pacifica, btw, had its first-ever Pride Parade June 4. “It was so joyous,” said Mirosevich. “All along Palmetto, one of the main streets, someone had chalked at every crosswalk in the sidewalk ‘Love Wins.’”

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This episode was edited by Christopher J Beale. Photo of Pacifica Municipal Pier at sunset by Toni Mirosevich.