Boonville

Surrounded by rednecks, misfits, and counterculture burnouts, John Gibson ­the reluctant heir of an alcoholic squirrel-sculpting grandmother ­- and Sarah McKay - a commune-reared "hippie-by-association" - search for self and community in 1989 rural Mendocino County, California. The dying logging industry is colliding with the economic rise of wineries, tourism, and the unregulated marijuana trade in The Emerald Triangle. Boonville is the hilarious, darkly comic tale of how John and Sarah try to reconcile the facts of heredity, sexuality, personal expression, love, death, the possibility of an existence without God, their cultural wars, and what happens when they choose to make art from their lives.

Robert Mailer Anderson is a writer, producer, activist, and 9th generation Californio. He is also the author of the novel "Boonville," co-writer/producer of the films "Windows on the World" and "Pig Hunt," the play "The Death of Teddy Ballgame," and has been a contributor to The Anderson Valley Advertiser for 40 years, among other publications. He is a board member of PEN Oakland, the advisory board of Los Cenzontles, and was appointed by Governor Newsom to the California Humanities Board in 2020. As a music producer, he has been nominated for three Grammy Awards and won two NAACP Image Awards. He was the 2013 Colonial Standard Bearer for the Selkirk Common Ride and received the San Francisco Arts Medallion in 2016.