Litseen

Virtual Event: Kink: On & Off the Page
2021-02-17 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17 AT 6PM PT WHEN WE CELEBRATE THE NEW SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY, KINK, WITH AN EVENING OF READINGS, LIVE DEMONSTRATIONS, AND CONVERSATIONS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH KINK.COM!
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT
About the Event
Kink.com and Green Apple Books are partnering for an exclusive launch party for a new short fiction anthology, KINK. Edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, KINK brings together 15 acclaimed writers and their stories of power, pain, fetish and desire.
This groundbreaking event goes one step further, tying readings by celebrated authors to live demonstrations and conversations with some of the BDSM community’s most respected voices.
Join us as authors and kinksters converge to explore the fact and the fiction in this powerful collection. Featured authors include Vanessa Clark, Garth Greenwell, and R.O. Kwon
About KINK
KINK is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. They explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists’ offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers, including: Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.
About the Authors
Vanessa Clark is an intersex trans fem author that has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, POPSUGAR, Vice, and Them, and has written articles for Vox. Pronouns: she/they. Even though she lives in New Jersey, she is more likely spending her free time at some of the best indie bookstores, parks, museums, and record shops in New York City. On social media, you can find her on Facebook (@vcerotica) and Twitter (@FoxxyGlamKitty).
Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for several other awards. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. He coedited the anthology Kink, out in 2021. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in Iowa City.
R.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was named a best book of the year by over forty publications and is being translated into seven languages. She coedited the anthology Kink, out in 2021. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and her writing is published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, NPR, and elsewhere.
A Note About This Event
– THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT. Please join from your personal computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
– You must be 18+
– Please log in on time.
– All sales are final.
– A link to join the Zoom meeting will be sent via the email you registered with.
– Please download Zoom immediately to your computer, smartphone or tablet once you receive the link. This will save you time and also ensure that you will be able to join the event on time.

Brontez Purnell in conversation with Melissa Broder
2021-02-17 18:00 - 20:00
celebrating the launch of Brontez Purnell’s new book
100 Boyfriends
published by MCD x FSG Originals
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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
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Event is free, but registration is required.
(Click Here) to register. (link to be posted soon)
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(Click Here) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon)
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An irrerverent, sensitive, and inimitable look at gay dysfunction through the eyes of a cult hero
“It’s like that saying, ‘Where god closes a door, he opens a window,’ but in this particular case the window was on the fifth floor and the house was on fire.”
Transgressive, foulmouthed, and devastatingly funny, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting—and often losing—the urge to self-sabotage. His characters solicit sex on their lunch breaks, expose themselves to racist neighbors, sleep with their coworker’s husbands, rub Preparation H on their hungover eyes, and, in an uproarious epilogue, take a punk band on a disastrous tour of Europe. They also travel to claim inheritances, push past personal trauma, and cultivate community while living on the margins of a white supremacist, heteronormative society.
Armed with a deadpan wit that finds humor in even the lowest of nadirs, Brontez Purnell—a widely acclaimed underground writer, filmmaker, musician, and performance artist—writes with the peerless zeal, insight, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. From dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama, Purnell indexes desire, desperation, race, and loneliness with a startling blend of levity and vulnerability. Together, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are a singular and uncompromising vision of an unexposed queer underbelly. Holding them together is the vision of an iconoclastic storyteller, as fearless as he is human.
Brontez Purnell is a writer, musician, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel, a novella, a children’s book, and the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers’ Award for Fiction, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers, a cofounder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School, and the director of several short films, music videos, and the documentary Unstoppable Feat: The Dances of Ed Mock. Born in Triana, Alabama, he’s lived in Oakland, California, for more than a decade.
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels MILK FED (Feb 2, 2021) and THE PISCES, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY, and five poetry collections, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems (Summer 2021) and LAST SEXT. Broder has written for The New York Times, Elle.com, VICE, Vogue Italia, and New York Magazine‘s The Cut. Her poems appear in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Guernica, Fence, et al. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry.
Praise for 100 Boyfriends:

“This stunning collection of vignettes from artist, punk rocker, and Whiting Award winner Purnell forms a delightfully crass, kaleidoscopic worldview. Each story introduces new heartbreaks and reminders that moments of intimacy often end in loneliness . . . Purnell brilliantly immerses the reader in Black, queer desire with humor, self-awareness, and just the right amount of vulgarity.” —Publishers Weekly
“Each story in 100 Boyfriends is a minor eclipse: stunning in scope, technically blinding, and entirely miraculous. I laughed and I cried and I laughed until I cried—Brontez Purnell is a marvel.“ –Bryan Washington, author of Memorial and Lot
“In the vast history of the universe there is only one Brontez Purnell, and thank god we get him. From cruising to crushes, cumming to closure, 100 Boyfriends is a mandatory read for the funny-sexy lit freaks among us—a candy box of Euro boys and Daddies, blue pills and satanic exes—all told in an addictively-delicious voice by a writer who is somehow both wildly cool and deprecatingly humble at the same time.” —Melissa Broder, author of The Pisces and So Sad Today
“Brontez Purnell has such seemingly casual genius that at times you forget you’re reading a book and are transported to some couch/bus/basement where the drugs are really good and your friend is really funny, maybe your weird closeted cousin is on HarlemHookups in the corner, and all of a sudden your friend says some fucking Sappho ass, weird ass, brilliant ass bullshit. I love this slut of a book, it’s a slut ass maker. 100 Boyfriends or no new boyfriends at all, Purnell’s autofiction/memoir/whatever the hell this marvelously sad and intoxicating book is shook me up good with its honesty and blunt-to-face endings, the jokes and stories I didn’t know we were allowed to tell outside of circles of faggots and misfits. But this book is in those circles, makes you tea and steals for you, it invites us in, but would we mind shutting the hell up cause it’s a little hungover? The light is coming through the windows so clear.” —Danez Smith, author of Homie
“No one writes like Brontez Purnell. It’s not just that he is hilariously irreverent, which he is, but that he reserves reverence for that which is deserving. 100 Boyfriends is like a good lover, at turns vulgar and vulnerable, dirty and desperate, and always grinding toward magic.” —Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“Scathingly lucid, filthily pure, this is the most astute, witty, acid-tongued and emotionally generous book about relationships—from one night stands to internet no-no’s to ill-conceived crushes to long-term loves, requited and otherwise—I’ve read. Painfully knowing yet never jaded, 100 Boyfriends dissects, explodes, lambasts, and revels in the ugly beauty of imperfect intimacies with prose that consistently puts its finger on the bleeding pulse of contemporary desire. An unforgettable ode to the heart that beats inside every longing body.”–Maryse Meijer, author of The Seventh Mansion
“The stories in 100 Boyfriends took me on a journey: They made me laugh. They made me gasp. They made me feel. Brontez Purnell is a vibrant literary voice you won’t soon forget. I love this book.” —De’Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills

Author: Melissa Valentine in conversation with writer Amber Butts
2021-02-17 18:00 - 19:00 | San Francisco Public Library – Virtual Library
In celebration of Melissa Valentine’s book, The Names of All the Flowers, Valentine and Butts will discuss writing and community organizing.
Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, The Names of All the Flowers, explores siblinghood, adolescence and grief in a family shattered by loss. Published by Feminist Press.
YouTube Live
Melissa Valentine is an award-winning writer from Oakland, CA whose work explores themes of race, trauma and healing. Her debut memoir, The Names of All the Flowers, was the 2019 winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. She is a 2020 artist fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts in Nonfiction Literature. Valentine has also been a fellow at the San Francisco Writers Grotto. Her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Guernica, Jezebel and Apogee among others. She is a Visiting Professor at University of California at Santa Cruz.
Amber Butts is a storyteller, cultural strategist and grief worker who believes that Black folks are already whole. Her work asks big and small questions about how we move towards actualizing spaces that center tenderness, nuance and joy, while living in a world reliant on our terror. Their writing has appeared in NPR, Essence, Zora Magazine and metoo, amongst others. She is currently at work on a speculative fiction novel that writes elders into the future.
Connect
Melissa Valentine – Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
Amber Butts – Website | Instagram | Twitter

Virtual Event: Kink: On & Off the Page
2021-02-17 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Join us on Wednesday, February 17th at 6pm PT when we celebrate the new short story anthology, KINK, with an evening of readings, live demonstrations, and conversations in partnership with Kink.com!
PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT
About the Event
Kink.com and Green Apple Books are partnering for an exclusive launch party for a new short fiction anthology, KINK. Edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, KINK brings together 15 acclaimed writers and their stories of power, pain, fetish and desire.
This groundbreaking event goes one step further, tying readings by celebrated authors to live demonstrations and conversations with some of the BDSM community’s most respected voices.
Join us as authors and kinksters converge to explore the fact and the fiction in this powerful collection. Featured authors include Vanessa Clark, Garth Greenwell, and R.O. Kwon.
About KINK
KINK is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love, desire, BDSM, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. They explore bondage, power-play, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates, therapists’ offices, underground sex clubs, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains, sure, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers, including: Callum Angus, Alexander Chee, Vanessa Clark, Melissa Febos, Kim Fu, Roxane Gay, Cara Hoffman, Zeyn Joukhadar, Chris Kraus, Carmen Maria Machado, Peter Mountford, Larissa Pham, and Brandon Taylor, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.
About the Authors
Vanessa Clark is an intersex trans fem author that has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar, POPSUGAR, Vice, and Them, and has written articles for Vox. Pronouns: she/they. Even though she lives in New Jersey, she is more likely spending her free time at some of the best indie bookstores, parks, museums, and record shops in New York City. On social media, you can find her on Facebook (@vcerotica) and Twitter (@FoxxyGlamKitty).
Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for several other awards. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. He coedited the anthology Kink, out in 2021. A recent Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in Iowa City.
R.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel, The Incendiaries, was named a best book of the year by over forty publications and is being translated into seven languages. She coedited the anthology Kink, out in 2021. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and her writing is published in the New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review, NPR, and elsewhere.
A Note About This Event
– THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT. Please join from your personal computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone.
– You must be 18+
– Please log in on time.
– All sales are final.
– A link to join the Zoom meeting will be sent via the email you registered with.
– Please download Zoom immediately to your computer, smartphone or tablet once you receive the link. This will save you time and also ensure that you will be able to join the event on time.

Jenara Nerenberg - Divergent Mind (Virtual Event)
2021-02-17 16:00 - 18:00
A paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women—those with ADHD, autism, synesthesia, high sensitivity, and sensory processing disorder—exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish.
As a successful Harvard and Berkeley-educated writer, entrepreneur, and devoted mother, Jenara Nerenberg was shocked to discover that her “symptoms”—only ever labeled as anxiety—were considered autistic and ADHD. Being a journalist, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups.
When it comes to women, sensory processing differences are often overlooked, masked, or mistaken for something else entirely. Between a flawed system that focuses on diagnosing younger, male populations, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults, if at all. As a result, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences, and the misidentification leads to depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and shame. Meanwhile, we all miss out on the gifts their neurodivergent minds have to offer.
Divergent Mind is a long-overdue, much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity, ADHD, autism, misophonia, dyslexia, SPD, and more, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy, they have an overwhelming excess of it).
Nerenberg also offers us a path forward, describing practical changes in how we communicate, how we design our surroundings, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish, we create a better tomorrow for us all.

Jenara Nerenberg lectures widely on neuroscience, innovation, sensitivity, leadership, and diversity. Selected as a “brave new idea” presenter by the Aspen Institute for her work on re-framing mental differences, Jenara is also the founder and host of The Neurodiversity Project. She holds degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and UC Berkeley. Her work has been published in Fast Company, New York magazine, Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution, Garrison Institute, Elaine Aron’s HSP, Healthline, KQED, and elsewhere. In addition to her work as a journalist, Jenara is a frequent workshop facilitator, speaker, and event host for institutions including the Stanford Graduate School of Business and elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Lulu Miller is the cohost of Radiolab, cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia, and a Peabody Award–winning science journalist. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, VQR, Orion, Electric Literature, Catapult, and beyond. Her favorite spot on earth is Humpback Rocks. She is the author of Why Fish Don’t Exist.
Jenara Nerenberg photo courtesy of author

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener | GGP Online Book Club
2021-02-16 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 7 PM PST for a GGP Online Book Club discussion of Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener.
The Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82735553371.
You can order a print copy at http://bit.ly/ggpUncannyValley or in audiobook from Libro.fm, GGP’s audiobook partner, at http://bit.ly/UncannyValleyAB.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES‘S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2020.
Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Esquire, Parade, Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Times (UK), Fortune, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, The A.V. Club, Vox, Jezebel, Town & Country, OneZero, Apartment Therapy, Good Housekeeping, PopMatters, Electric Literature, Self, The Week (UK) and BookPage. One of Amazon’s Best 100 Books of 2020. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick.
“A definitive document of a world in transition: I won’t be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come.” –Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial–left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.
Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.
Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.
Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.

Kate Russo - Super Host (Virtual Event)
2021-02-16 18:00 - 20:00
A deeply funny and shrewdly observed debut novel about being lost in the very place you know by heart.
Bennett Driscoll is a Turner Prize-nominated artist who was once a rising star. Now, at age fifty-five, his wife has left him, he hasn’t sold a painting in two years, and his gallery wants to stop selling his work, claiming they’ll have more value retrospectively…when he’s dead. So, left with a large West London home and no income, he’s forced to move into his artist’s studio in the back garden and list his house on the popular vacation rental site, AirBed.
A stranger now in his own home, with his daughter, Mia, off at art school, and any new relationships fizzling out at best, Bennett struggles to find purpose in his day-to-day. That all changes when three different guests—lonely American Alicia; tortured artist Emma; and cautiously optimistic divorcée Kirstie—unwittingly unlock the pieces of himself that have been lost to him for too long.
Warm, witty, and utterly humane, Super Host offers a captivating portrait of middle age, relationships, and what it truly means to take a new chance at life.
Kate Russo grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. She has an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, and exhibits in both the UK and the US.
Steven Rowley is the bestselling author of the novels Lily and the Octopus and The Editor. He has worked as a freelance writer, newspaper columnist and screenwriter. Originally from Portland, Maine, he is a graduate of Emerson College. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

Rashid Khalidi & Nora Barrows-Friedman: Hundred Years War on Palestine
2021-02-16 18:00 - 19:30 | Virtual
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents a unique Zoom Event:

RASHID KHALIDI & Nora Barrows-Friedman

THE HUNDRED YEARS’ WAR ON PALESTINE
A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history.

“A riveting and original work, the first to explore the war against the Palestinians on the basis of deep immersion in their struggle-a work enriched by solid scholarship, vivid personal experience, and acute appreciation of the concerns and aspirations of the contending parties in this deeply unequal conflict. -Noam Chomsky

Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members-mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists-The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age.

Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.

Rashid Khalidi is the author of seven books about the Middle East, among them the award-winning Palestinian Identity, Brokers of Deceit, and The Iron Cage.

Nora Barrows-Friedman is a longtime broadcaster and journalist who has focused on Palestine and Palestinian rights issues for nearly 20 years.

Suggested Donation $5-$20.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/rashid-khalidi-nora-barrows-friedman-the-hundred-years-war-on-palestine-tickets-131127992355

Conversations with Authors - Vendela Vida (Virtual Event)
2021-02-13 16:00 - 18:00
Vendela Vida’s newest release, We Run the Tides is an achingly beautiful story of female friendship, betrayal, and a mysterious disappearance set in the changing landscape of San Francisco.
Teenage Eulabee and her magnetic best friend, Maria Fabiola, own the streets of Sea Cliff, their foggy oceanside San Francisco neighborhood. They know Sea Cliff’s homes and beaches, its hidden corners and eccentric characters—as well as the upscale all-girls’ school they attend. One day, walking to school with friends, they witness a horrible act—or do they? Eulabee and Maria Fabiola vehemently disagree on what happened, and their rupture is followed by Maria Fabiola’s sudden disappearance—a potential kidnapping that shakes the quiet community and threatens to expose unspoken truths.
Suspenseful and poignant, We Run the Tides is Vendela Vida’s masterful portrait of an inimitable place on the brink of radical transformation. Pre–tech boom San Francisco finds its mirror in the changing lives of the teenage girls at the center of this story of innocence lost, the pain of too much freedom, and the struggle to find one’s authentic self. Told with a gimlet eye and great warmth, We Run the Tides is both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion.
Vendela is the award-winning author of six books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty. She is a founding editor of The Believer magazine, and co-editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She was a founding board member of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing center for youth, and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Virginia Loh-Hagan on Instagram IGTV
2021-02-13 11:00 - 12:00
reading the award-winning Nian, the Chinese New Year Dragon, an illustrated retelling for young readers of the Chinese folktale about a dragon that threatens a village each spring and Mei, the young girl who is destined to defeat him.
Join us on Instagram IGTV. Follow along @MRSDALLOWAYS. Videos disappear after 24 hours so be sure to watch!

Saturday, February 13, 2021 – 11:00am

Mei hates springtime. Why? Because it’s only in the spring that Nian, a fierce dragon, is able to leave his mountain prison under the sea to terrorize the local village. When the villagers hear the rumblings of Nian’s hungry stomach, they know that winter has ended and spring is coming. But this year on the night before the first day of spring, a magical warrior visits Mei in her dreams. He tells Mei that it is her destiny to face and defeat Nian. But she must do it within 15 days or the dragon will be free forever. Author Virginia Loh-Hagan (PoPo’s Lucky Chinese New Year) gives this retelling of the Nian legend an original twist, while explaining the origins of Chinese New Year traditions.

Naz Beheshti - Pause. Breathe. Choose. (Virtual Event)
2021-02-11 18:00 - 20:00
A leading-edge guide to how well-being drives success across all aspects of life.
CEO, executive wellness coach, and thought leader Naz Beheshti distills the most valuable lessons she learned from her first boss and mentor, Steve Jobs, into a holistic method to live your best life. Presenting the highly effective framework that Beheshti has used with clients for over a decade, this book is a guide for self-discovery, better choices, and purposeful growth.
Now more than ever, when stress and burnout are ubiquitous, we must access our authentic self by closing the gap between leading with our head and our heart. When we integrate every aspect of our life (career, relationships, self-care, and self-development) and fuel that ecosystem as a whole, we can both be well and do well. Rooted in neuroscience, mindfulness, and positive psychology, Pause. Breathe. Choose. offers more than eighty proven strategies to improve yourself and your workplace and achieve sustainable success.
Naz Beheshti is the author of Pause. Breathe. Choose.: Become the CEO of Your Well-Being. She is an executive wellness coach, speaker, Forbes contributor, and CEO and founder of Prananaz, a company that provides corporate wellness solutions for improving leadership effectiveness, employee engagement and well-being, and company culture. Clients include Nike, JPMorgan Chase, Omega Institute, UCSF, Columbia University, and Stanford University. Naz also cofounded Rise2Shine, a nonprofit helping to alleviate the suffering of young children in Haiti. She lives in New York City. Visit her online at NazBeheshti.com.
BJ Fogg, PhD, is the founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University and author of the New York Times bestselling book Tiny Habits. In addition to his research, Fogg teaches industry innovators how human behavior really works. He created the Tiny Habits Academy to help people around the world. He lives in Northern California and Maui.

VIRTUAL EVENT: LIVING WRITERS SERIES, Valeria Luiselli
2021-02-11 17:20 - 18:55
The UCSC Literature Department and Creative Writing Program Present: LIVING WRITERS SERIES WINTER 2021 “Shelter and Place,” a theme about world building when the world seems to be falling apart, about writing about place, about seeking and finding and not finding shelter in stormy times, and of course, what it means to be a writer and a person writing while sheltering in place.
FEBRUARY 11TH FEATURED WRITER: VALERIA LUISELLI
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa, and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award, and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize.
Register for this FREE event series here.
The Living Writers Series runs on select Thursdays from 5:20-6:55p.m. Authors’ books available for pick up or delivery via Bookshop Santa Cruz. Find them here.

Elizabeth Kolbert & Mark Hertsgaard: Under a White Sky
2021-02-11 17:00 - 18:30 | Virtual
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents an exceptional Zoom event:
ELIZABETH KOLBERT + MARK HERTSGAARD
Under a White Sky, The Nature of the Future
Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Sixth Extinction,” returns to humanity’s transformative impact on our environment, now asking: after doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it is said we now live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In “Under a White Sky” Kolbert takes a hard look at this new world we are creating. She examines how the sorts of intervention that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation.
“Under a White Sky” takes a clear-eyed look at the new world we are creating. She meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish – one that lives in a tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave Desert. She visits a lava field in Iceland, where engineers are turning carbon emissions to stone; an aquarium in Australia, where researchers are trying to develop “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and a lab at Harvard, where physicists are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere in order to reflect sunlight back to space to cool the earth. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, “Under a White Sky” is a thoroughly original view of the challenges confronting us.
Mark Hertsgaard is an American journalist, author and environmental correspondent for The Nation magazine. Formerly a cultural reporter for the New Yorker, he has written seven books, including “Bravehearts: Whistle Blowing in the Age of Snowden, and “Hot: Living through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.”
This event features two outstanding environmental authorities discussing the future of our planet.
$20 one admission, $35 admission + book.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/elizabeth-kolbert-mark-hertsgaard-under-a-white-sky-nature-of-future-tickets-131627494379

Robert B. Reich - The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It (Virtual Event)
2021-02-10 18:00 - 20:00
From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Common Good, comes an urgent analysis of how the “rigged” systems of American politics and power operate, how this status quo came to be, and how average citizens can enact change.
Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy. Using Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase as an example, Reich exposes how those at the top propagate myths about meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, and the “free market” to distract most Americans from their accumulation of extraordinary wealth and power. They have chosen to uphold self-serving policies that line their own pockets and benefit their bottom line. Reich’s objective is not to foster cynicism, but rather to demystify the system so that we might instill fundamental change and demand that democracy works for the majority once again.
Robert B. Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations and has written fifteen books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into twenty-two languages, and the bestsellers The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Supercapitalism, and Locked in the Cabinet. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and he writes a weekly column for The Guardian and Newsweek. He is co-creator of the award-winning film Inequality for All, and the Netflix original Saving Capitalism, and co-founder of Inequality Media. He lives in Berkeley and blogs at robertreich.org.

Nicole Perlroth in conversation with David Sanger
2021-02-10 18:00 - 20:00
discussing Nicole Perlroth’s new book
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyber Weapons Arms Race
Published by Bloomsbury Books
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
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Event is free, but registration is required.
(Click Here) to register. (link to be posted soon)
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(Click Here) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon)
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From The New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth, the untold story of the cyberweapons market-the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth-and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare.
Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy’s arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election, and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine).
For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world’s dominant hoarder of zero days. U.S. government agents paid top dollar-first thousands, and later millions of dollars- to hackers willing to sell their lock-picking code and their silence.
Then the United States lost control of its hoard and the market.
Now those zero days are in the hands of hostile nations and mercenaries who do not care if your vote goes missing, your clean water is contaminated, or our nuclear plants melt down.
Filled with spies, hackers, arms dealers, and a few unsung heroes, written like a thriller and a reference, This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends is an astonishing feat of journalism. Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, The New York Times reporter Nicole Perlroth lifts the curtain on a market in shadow, revealing the urgent threat faced by us all if we cannot bring the global cyber arms race to heel.
Nicole Perlroth covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. She has covered Russian hacks of nuclear plants, airports, and elections, North Korea’s cyberattacks against movie studios, banks and hospitals, Iranian attacks on oil companies, banks and the Trump campaign and hundreds of Chinese cyberattacks, including a months-long hack of The Times. Her first book, “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends,” about the global cyber arms race, will publish in February 2021. The book, and several of her Times articles, have been optioned for television. A Bay Area native, Ms. Perlroth is a guest lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford University.
David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent and a senior writer. In a 36-year reporting career for The New York Times, he has been on three teams that have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting. His newest book, “The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age,’ examines the emergence of cyberconflict as the primary way large and small states are competing and undercutting each other, changing the nature of global power.
Critical praise for This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
“The best kind of reportage . . . a rollicking fun trip, front to back, and an urgent call for action before our wired world spins out of our control. I’ve covered cybersecurity for a decade and yet paragraph after paragraph I kept wondering: ‘How did she manage to figure *that* out? How is she so good?'” – Garrett M. Graff, Wired, author of New York Times bestseller THE ONLY PLANE IN THE SKY
“A stemwinder of a tale of how frightening cyber weapons have been turned on their maker. Perlroth takes a complex subject that has been cloaked in techspeak and makes it dead real for the rest of us.” – Kara Swisher, co-founder of Recode and host of the New York Times podcast “Sway”
“Perlroth’s terrifying revelation of how vulnerable American institutions and individuals are to clandestine cyberattacks by malicious hackers is possibly the most important book of the year . . . Perlroth’s precise, lucid, and compelling presentation of mind-blowing disclosures about the underground arms race a must-read exposé.” – Booklist, starred review
“The definitive history of cyberwarfare. Nicole Perlroth connects the dots and the behind the scenes action of every serious intrusion, cyberattack and cyberespionage revelation in the last decade, offering recommendations for stopping the cyberwar none of us want to see.” – Clint Watts, author of MESSING WITH THE ENEMY
“A must-read tale of cloak-and-dagger mercenary hackers, digital weapons of mass destruction and clandestine, ne’er-do-well government agencies. Perlroth’s intrepid reporting shows why the consequences could be frightening.” – Lawrence Ingrassia, author of BILLION DOLLAR BRAND CLUB
“Usually, books like this are praised by saying that they read like a screenplay or a novel. Nicole Perlroth’s is better: her sensitivity to both technical issues and human behavior give this book an authenticity that makes its message–that cybersecurity issues threaten our privacy, our economy, and maybe our lives–even scarier.” – Steven Levy, author of HACKERS and FACEBOOK
“Reads like a modern-day John le Carré novel, with terrifying tales of espionage and cyber warfare that will keep you up at night, both unable to stop reading, and terrified for what the future holds.” – Nick Bilton, Vanity Fair, author of AMERICAN KINGPIN
“An essential cautionary tale [that] exposes the motivations and misgivings of the people helping governments hack into our devices. After Perlroth’s incisive investigation, there’s no excuse for ignoring the costs of the cyber arms race. Indeed, we are already deeply vulnerable.” – Sarah Frier, Bloomberg, author of NO FILTER
“100% gripping. For anyone interested in cybersecurity, whether as student, policymaker, or citizen, it is well worth your read.” – P.W. Singer, author of LIKEWAR
“Nicole Perlroth does what few other authors on the cyber beat can: she tells a highly technical, gripping story as if over a beer at your favorite local dive bar. A page-turner.” – Nina Jankowicz, author of HOW TO LOSE THE INFORMATION WAR
“[A] wonderfully readable new book. Underlying everything Perlroth writes is the question of ethics: what is the right thing to do? Too many of the people she describes never seemed to think about that; their goals were short-term or selfish or both . . . a rip-roaring story of hackers and bug-sellers and spies that also looks at the deeper questions.” – Steven M. Bellovin, Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University
“From one of the literati, a compelling tale of the digerati: Nicole Perlroth puts arresting faces on the clandestine government-sponsored elites using 1s and 0s to protect us or menace us-and profit.” – Glenn Kramon, former senior editor, The New York Times
“The murky world of zero-day sales has remained in the shadows for decades, with few in the trade willing to talk about this critical topic. Nicole Perlroth has done a great job tracing the origin stories, coaxing practitioners into telling their fascinating tales and explaining why it all matters.” – Kim Zetter, author of COUNTDOWN TO ZERODAY
“Reads like a thriller. A masterful inside look at a highly profitable industry that was supposed to make us safer, but has ended up bringing us to the brink of the next world war.” – John Markoff, former New York Times cybersecurity reporter
“A whirlwind global tour that introduces us to the crazy characters and bizarre stories behind the struggle to control the internet. It would be unbelievable if it wasn’t all so very true.” – Alex Stamos, Director of the Stanford Internet Observatory and former head of security for Facebook and Yahoo
“Lays bare the stark realities of disinformation, hacking, and software vulnerability that are the Achilles’ Heel of modern democracy. I work in this field as a scientist and technologist, and this book scared the bejesus out of me. Read it.” – Gary McGraw, author of SOFTWARE SECURITY
“A powerful case for strong cybersecurity policy that reduces vulnerabilities while respecting civil rights.” – Kirkus Reviews

Tim Harford in conversation with Randall Munroe (creator of xkcd)
2021-02-10 12:00 - 14:00
Tim Harford, called “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), and Randall Munroe in conversation about The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics (Riverhead Books).
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About The Data Detective
From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics.
Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.
As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.
About the participants
Tim Harford is an award-winning columnist, broadcaster, and economist. He is the author of Messy, Fifty Inventions That Shaped the Modern Economy, and the million-selling The Undercover Economist, and is the host of the Cautionary Tales podcast. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and in 2019 he was awarded an OBE for services to improving economic understanding.
Randall Munroe is the author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers What If? and Thing Explainer, the science question-and-answer blog What If, and the popular webcomic xkcd. A former NASA roboticist, he left the agency in 2006 to draw comics on the internet full-time. He lives in Massachusetts.

VIRTUAL EVENT: Ada Calhoun, Why We Can't Sleep
2021-02-09 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for a virtual event with Ada Calhoun who will discuss We Can’t Sleep: Women’s New Midlife Crisis (available in paperback on January 19th), an in-depth exploration of the “new” midlife crisis hitting Generation X women—a topic she began writing about in a viral essay on Oprah.com.
Register for this free Crowdcast event here.

This is a free event. The book may be preordered below.
You can make a donation to help support Bookshop Santa Cruz here. Thank you!

When Ada Calhoun found herself in the throes of a midlife crisis, she thought that she had no right to complain. She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?
Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.
Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to “have it all,” Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.
In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.
“A superb mix of personal stories and deep research about a generation of women who are facing unprecedented pressure as they enter middle age. It’s at once realistic, but positive, asking women to face up to reality, let go of expectations, find a support system and accept this stage isn’t forever.” — Huffington Post
ADA CALHOUN is the author of the memoir Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, named one of the top ten memoirs of 2017 by W magazine; and the history St. Marks Is Dead, one of the best books of 2015, according to Kirkus and the Boston Globe. She has collaborated on several New York Times bestsellers, and written for the New York Times, New York, and The New Republic.

Kim Stanley Robinson
2021-02-09 19:00 - 21:00
Kim Stanley Robinson is joined in conversation by Robin Sloan to discuss his latest novel, The Ministry for the Future (Orbit Books).
“If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future.” —Ezra Klein
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About The Ministry for the Future
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2020
From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a remarkable vision of climate change over the coming decades.
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us—and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
It is a novel both immediate and impactful, desperate and hopeful in equal measure, and it is one of the most powerful and original books on climate change ever written.
About Kim Stanley Robinson
Kim Stanley Robinson is a New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. He is the author of more than twenty books, including the bestselling Mars trilogy and the critically acclaimed Forty Signs of Rain, The Years of Rice and Salt and 2312. In 2008, he was named a “Hero of the Environment” by Time magazine, and he works with the Sierra Nevada Research Institute. He lives in Davis, California.

Conversations with Authors - Suleika Jaouad with Elizabeth Gilbert (Virtual Event)
2021-02-09 18:00 - 20:00
A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission and, ultimately, a road trip of healing and self-discovery.
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.
It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.
When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after three and a half years of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.
How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.
Suleika Jaouad is an Emmy Award–winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor, and activist. She served on Barack Obama’s President’s Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting, and speaking has been featured at the United Nations, on Capitol Hill, and on the TED Talk main stage. When she’s not on the road with her 1972 Volkswagen camper van and her rescue dog Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love, as well as the short story collection, Pilgrims—a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award-nominated journalist, she works as writer-at-large for GQ. Her journalism has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Spin, and The New York Times Magazine, and her stories have appeared in Esquire, Story, and the Paris Review. Her most recent novel is City of Girls.

VIRTUAL: Launch for Liat Berdugo / The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East: Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in Israel and Palestine
2021-02-09 17:30 - 19:30
Booksmith and The Bindery are very pleased to host the virtual launch for Liat Berdugo and her new book The Weaponized Camera in the Middle East: Videography, Aesthetics, and Politics in Israel and Palestine.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order *signed copies* of The Weaponized Camera here – we’re currently offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay.
About the book
Drawing on unprecedented access to the video archives of B’Tselem, an Israeli NGO that distributes cameras to Palestinians living in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, Liat Berdugo lays out an argument for a visual studies approach to videographic evidence in Israel/Palestine.
Using video stills as core material, it discusses the politics of videographic evidence in Israel/Palestine by demonstrating that the conflict is one that has produced an inequality of visual rights. The book highlights visual surveillance and counter surveillance at the citizen level, how Palestinians originally filmed to “shoot back” at Israelis, who were armed with shooting power via weapons as the occupying force. It also traces how Israeli private citizens began filming back at Palestinians with their own cameras, including personal cell phone cameras, thus creating a simultaneous, echoing counter surveillance. Complicating the notion that visual evidence alone can secure justice, the Weaponized Camera in The Middle East asks how what is seen, but also who is seeing, affects how conflicts are visually recorded. Drawing on over 5,000 hours of footage, only a fraction of which is easily accessible to the public domain, this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies and battlegrounds of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
About the author
Liat Berdugo is Assistant Professor in Art and Architecture at the University of San Francisco. She is also an artist, writer and curator and has exhibited in galleries and festivals nationally and internationally. Her work has won several awards, including fellowships at the Hambidge Center, the Vermont Studio center, and a year-long residency in Tel Aviv, Israel, through the Dorot Foundation.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.

This is Now: Susan Liautaud
2021-02-09 12:00 - 13:00
This event is online.
If you’re trying to do the right thing but you’re not sure how, you’re not alone.
CRISPR. Robot caretakers. COVID-19. Voting. Facial recognition. Everything Chidi Anagonye has ever done. Our modern world bombards us daily with ethical challenges, and the stakes for ethical decision-making have never been higher, but a path forward on some of today’s toughest decisions may seem as clear as mud. How do I vote if I don’t like either candidate? Should I try a home genetic testing kit like 23andMe? Should I post photos of my children on social media? What should I do if I witness harassment at work?
In a compulsively readable, powerful simple and easy format, world-class Stanford ethicist Susan Liautaud offers help in a timely new book The Power of Ethics: How to Make Good Choices in a Complicated World. An approachable, practical guide for making the best possible decision on even the thorniest of issues, this book has been praised alike by CEOs, nonprofit presidents, and even the creator of The Good Place . Drawing on decades as an ethics advisor to large organizations, Liautaud shows how simple questions based on a few key ethical dimensions can create a sea change of positive decision-making, rippling outward to transform our own lives and the world. All you need are the right tools.
In conversation with in-house journalist Angie Coiro for a well-timed This Is Now hour, this February 9th conversation promises fun, deep insight, and practical knowledge. Sign up today to shine a light on your toughest quandaries… because how we approach hard ethical choices today can radically transform the world.

SUSAN LIAUTAUD teaches cutting-edge ethics courses at Stanford University, serves as chair of Council of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and is the founder of the nonprofit platform The Ethics Incubator. She is the managing director of Susan Liautaud & Associates Limited, which advises clients from global corporations to NGOs on complex ethics matters. She also chairs and serves on numerous global nonprofit boards. She divides her time between Palo Alto, California, and London.

**Get your tickets early, as webinar space is limited! Bring up to one additional friend on a second screen with our “Bring a Friend” option, and turn it into a book club event.**

Rabbit Island Launch
2021-02-09 | online
Rabbit Island Launch

Virtual Event

Join Community Bookstore and Two Lines Press for an event celebrating Elvira Navarro’s Rabbit Island, a collection of stories that traverse the fickle, often terrifying terrain between madness and freedom, brilliantly translated by Christina MacSweeney.
More information coming soon!

CONTACT:

Leslie-Ann Woofter
lwoofter@catranslation.org
415.512.8812

Virtual Event: Mark Wunderlich and Diane Seuss
2021-02-08 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Join us on Monday, February 8th at 6pm PT when Mark Wunderlich is joined by Diane Suess for a reading and conversation celebrating his latest collection, God of Nothingness, on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89625882370

About God of Nothingness
A magnificent book of hope and resolve written out of profound losses, by award-winning poet Mark Wunderlich.

God of Nothingness is a book for those who have seen death up close or even quietly wished for it. In these poems, honed to a devastating edge, Mark Wunderlich asks: How is it we go on as those around us die? And why go on at all? This collection is a brilliant testament to the human ability to make something tough-minded and resilient out of despair and the inevitability of death drawing near. Some poems are moving elegies addressed to mentors, friends, and family recently gone; some contend with the unasked-for responsibilities of inheritance and the family name; others call forth the understanding of being the end of a genetic line; still others remember a rural midwestern coming-of-age and, chillingly, an encounter with the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Present all the while are the prevailing comforts and wonders found in the natural world, work, and the longing for traditions that seem to be passing from our time. Exquisite in its craft and capaciousness, God of Nothingness is an unflinching journal of solitude and survival.

About the Author
Mark Wunderlich is the author of The Earth Avails, winner of the Rilke Prize; Voluntary Servitude; and The Anchorage, winner of the Lambda Literary Award. He teaches at Bennington College and lives in the Hudson Valley in New York.

Conversations with Authors - Chang-rae Lee (Virtual Event)
2021-02-06 16:00 - 18:00
Chang-rae Lee‘s latest novel, My Year Abroad, is an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure—and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection.
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
In the breathtaking, “precise, elliptical prose” that Chang-rae Lee is known for (The New York Times), the narrative alternates between Tiller’s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs. Tinged at once with humor and darkness, electric with its accumulating surprises and suspense, My Year Abroad is a novel that only Chang-rae Lee could have written, and one that will be read and discussed for years to come.
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, as well as On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.

Neurotica Erotica: Love Poems for the Nervous & Highly Strung
2021-02-06 13:00 - 15:30 | Virtual
Surprise the Line presents a special one-time guest workshop led by experienced writers on a topic of their choosing every first Saturday of the month. This month, you are invited to attend a very fun generative poetry workshop where we will dive into all the juicy messiness of love—just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Cathartic Release for the Pain of Broken-Hearted, Unrequited, Disappointed or Simply Messy LOVE. Let’s make a BIG MESS.
What You’ll Get From This Workshop:
• Examples and discussion of “neurotic erotica” poems
• Introduction to the anthology Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous & Highly Strung
• Generative writing prompt to pen your own love/anti-love poem
• Time to write and share in a non-judgmental and supportive group setting (not critique)
What We’ll Do Together:
This is not your typical “love poem” workshop. Whether you’re single, married, in love, in regret, in denial, in yearning, or anywhere else around the outskirts of the heart, you are invited to come and explore your *neuroses* around the phenomenon of love. We all know we have them, so this is a space to write about them, let them out, face them, love them, transform them…
In this workshop, we will explore the questions: Do love poems have to be sweet? Isn’t love messy and complicated? We will read and write poems that are dynamic in their imperfections. Whether you are in or out of a relationship, you are invited to explore your neuroses around love and turn your wounds into words.
Armine will be giving prompts from one of her favorite poetry anthologies, Bleeding Hearts: Love Poems for the Nervous & Highly Strung, to get us in the mood to write some messy, beautifully disheleved lovin’ (or non-lovin’) poems. However you come, come as you are! Hugs and laughter will be provided.
About the Teacher:
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Arminé Iknadossian immigrated to the United States in 1978 to escape the civil war. She is the author of All That Wasted Fruit (Main Street Rag Press, 2018). She earned an MFA from Antioch University where she was awarded a fellowship from Summer Poetry in Idyllwild. After teaching English for 20 years, Iknadossian wrote United States of Love & Other Poems (2015). During her tenure as a teacher, The Los Angeles Writing Project awarded Iknadossian a fellowship for their summer residency. Iknadossian currently lives close to the sea with Henry the Cat.

Virtual Class: Art History with Kerrin Meis - The Aesthetic Movement: The Cult of Beauty Revisited (via Zoom)
2021-02-06 13:00 - 15:00
In their operetta Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan skewered the Aesthetic movement—the anti-industrial stance adopted by a talented and opinionated group of artists, poets, and architects that had an enormous impact on painting, architecture, interior design, and dress. Closely related to the Arts and Crafts movement, Aestheticism attempted to redefine the relationship between “Fine Arts” and design. An exhibit in 2012, originated by the Victoria and Albert Museum, celebrated the creations of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, James McNeill Whistler, Burne-Jones, Godwin, William Morris, and a host of others. Let’s educate ourselves about the philosophy, interaction, and production of these creative geniuses. We look at paintings, sculpture, furniture, household objects, and houses—and read some poetry.
Kerrin Meis taught art history at SFSU for ten years and has led study tours in Europe. Her Book Passage classes have been favorites for years.

Generation Rising Book Launch
2021-02-06 13:00 - 15:00
Join us for the book launch of “Generation Rising: A New Politics of Southeast Asian American Activism” with author Loan Thi Dao and Providence Youth Student Movement (PrYSM)
Hosted by Eastwind Books of Berkeley and co-sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Asian American Research Center (AARC)
RSVP at https://generationrising.eventbrite.com
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To purchase copies of the featured authors’ work, visit www.asiabookcenter.com
Paperback: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p2721/GENERATION_RISING%3A_A_NEW_POLITICS_OF_SOUTHEAST_ASIAN_AMERICAN_ACTIVISM_Available_to_order.html
E-book: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p2866/GENERATION_RISING%3A_A_NEW_POLITICS_OF_SOUTHEAST_ASIAN_AMERICAN_ACTIVISM_%28EBOOK-PERSONAL%29_.html
15% off all purchases with discount code HOLIDAY15!
Choose to ship your orders (free shipping for orders $30+) to your home or select in-store pick up at Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave., Berkeley, CA 94704. See Less

Words out Loud Spoken Word Series
2021-02-05 19:30 - 21:30 | Virtual
Derek N. Otsuji and Mark Tarren read from their poetry. Include open mic and literary trivia quiz.
Derek N. Otsuji is the author of The Kitchen of Small Hours, winner of the 2021 Crab Orchard Review Poetry Series Open Competition. It will be published by SIU Press in fall 2021. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, Rattle, Poet Lore, and Pleiades.
Mark Tarren is a poet and writer who lives on remote Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. A Pushcart nominee, his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary journals including The New Verse News, The Blue Nib, Poets Reading The News, Street Light Press, Spillwords Press, Tuck Magazine and Impspired Magazine.

Virtual Event: Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell with Faith Salie
2021-02-05 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 AT 6PM PT WHEN DR. JUDY MELINEK AND T.J. MITCHELL ARE JOINED BY FAITH SALIE TO DISCUSS THEIR LATEST BOOK, AFTERSHOCK, ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82704963550
Or iPhone one-tap :
US: +16699009128,,82704963550# or +12532158782,,82704963550#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kewskyOUPs
About Aftershock
When an earthquake strikes San Francisco, forensics expert Jessie Teska faces her biggest threat yet in this explosive new mystery from the New York Times bestselling authors of Working Stiff and First Cut.
On first glance, the death appears to be an accident. The body is located on a construction site under what looks like a collapse beam. But when Dr. Jessie Teska arrives on the scene, she notices the tell-tale signs of a staged death. The victim has been murdered. A rising star in the San Francisco forensics world, Jessie is ready to unravel the case, help bring the murderer to justice, and prevent him from potentially striking again.
But when a major earthquake strikes San Francisco right at Halloween, Jessie and the rest of the city are left reeling. And even if she emerges from the rubble, there’s no guaranteeing she’ll make it out alive.
With their trademark blend of propulsive prose, deft plotting and mordant humor, this electrifying new installment in the Jessie Teska Mystery series offers the highest stakes yet.
About the Authors
Judy Melinek & T.J. Mitchell are the New York Times bestselling co-authors of Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner, and the novel First Cut. Dr. Melinek studied at Harvard and UCLA, was a medical examiner in San Francisco for nine years, and today works as a forensic pathologist in Oakland and as CEO of PathologyExpert Inc. T.J. Mitchell, her husband, is a writer with an English degree from Harvard, and worked in the film industry before becoming a full-time stay-at-home dad to their children.

Zoom Forward! A Tribute to Jory Post
2021-02-05 17:00 - 19:00
Join us online for a tribute to Jory Post, beloved Bookshop friend and champion of the written word. From coordinating Santa Cruz’s Open Read to producing the Zoom Forward Poetry Series to co-creating phren-Z, Jory had a hand in so many aspects of local literary life. We will miss the many ways he turned his passion for the written word into creating community.
This special reading is sponsored by Catamaran, The Hive Poetry Collective, and Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Register to attend here.
PLEASE NOTE: Though previous messaging said the event would be held January 29th, we have pushed the date back to adequately prepare this tribute. We will feature some of Jory’s friends reading his work as well as photos and words from his family.
To subscribe directly to the Santa Cruz Writes email list, which will provide you with weekly announcements for upcoming readings, use https://mailchi.mp/cruzio/zoomforward where you will be sent a link to JOIN MEETING on Friday.
The Zoom room will be open by 4:30, so come early in case you have technical difficulties. If you need assistance, email hannah@santacruzwrites.org
