Litseen

Conversations with Authors - Sherry L. Smith with Peter Coyote (Virtual Event)
2021-01-30 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA
Sherry L. Smith’s Bohemians West is a revelatory biography of a radical romance at the dawn of the twentieth century.
The opening years of the twentieth century saw a grand cast of radicals and reformers fighting for a new America, seeking change not only in labor picket lines and at women’s suffrage rallies but also in homes and bedrooms. In the thick of this heady milieu were Sara Bard Field and Charles Erskine Scott Wood, two aspiring poets and political activists whose love story uncovers a potent emotional world underneath this transformative time.
Self-declared pioneers in free love, Sara and Erskine exchanged hundreds of letters that chartered a new kind of romantic relationship, and their personal affair frequently intersected with their deeply engaged political lives. As Sara’s star rose in the suffrage movement (including an automobile trip she took across the country in 1915 carrying a petition with thousands of signatures demanding Congress pass the Nineteenth Amendment), she began to ask questions about her own power in her relationship with Erskine. Charting a passionate and tumultuous relationship that spanned decades, Bohemians West offers a deeply personal look at a dynamic period in American history.
Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. A historian of the American West and Native America, Smith’s other books include Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940, both published by Oxford University Press. She is a former president of the Western History Association and received the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for Bohemians West. Smith has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University’s Beinecke Library. She lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California.
Peter Coyote is the author of the 1960’s counter-culture memoir Sleeping Where I Fall, which received universally excellent reviews and has been in continuous print since 1999. His second book about mentors and the search for wisdom, The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education, was nominated as one of the top five non-fiction books published in California in 2015. His third book, Unmasking Your True Self (the Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha) combines 50 years of Buddhist practice with acting and uses masks and improv exercises to foster liberation experiences and teach people “how to get out of their own way.” It is forthcoming from Inner Traditions Press, as his first book of poems, The Tongue of a Crow. He has performed as an actor in over 160 films for theaters and TV. He is a double Emmy-Award winning narrator of over 150 documentary films. An ordained Zen Buddhist priest and transmitted teacher, Peter is currently giving live weekly dharma talks on Facebook, preparing for a fourth book called Vernacular Buddhism.

Virtual Event: Annalee Newitz and Charles C. Mann
2021-02-02 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
JOIN US ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2 AT 6PM PT WHEN ANNALEE NEWITZ IS JOINED BY CHARLES C. MANN FOR THE LAUNCH OF THEIR LATEST BOOK, FOUR LOST CITIES: A SECRET HISTORY OF THE URBAN AGE, ON ZOOM!
PREORDER A COPY TODAY AND RECEIVE A SPECIAL SIGNED POSTCARD!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82512999396
Or iPhone one-tap :
US: +16699009128,,82512999396# or +12532158782,,82512999396#
Webinar ID: 825 1299 9396
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kqZY7eKSG
Praise for Four Lost Cities
“Newitz always sees to the heart of complex systems and breaks them down with poetic ferocity.”— N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth trilogy and The City We Became
“Cheerful, curious, amused, and amusing, Annalee Newitz is a fabulous tour guide through the latest archaeological perspectives on four of humankind’s most remarkable urban experiments. Along the way, Newitz dispels myths, evokes fascinating stories—and makes us think hard about our own urban future.”— Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493
“Annalee Newitz is a brilliant writer with the heart of an archaeologist and the soul of a visionary. Four Lost Cities should open our eyes to all that may happen to our cities in the future. Vibrant and adventurous, this is a necessary book for turbulent times.”— Sarah Parcak, archaeologist and author of Archaeology from Space
About Four Lost Cities
A quest to explore some of the most spectacular ancient cities in human history—and figure out why people abandoned them.
In Four Lost Cities, acclaimed science journalist Annalee Newitz takes readers on an entertaining and mind-bending adventure into the deep history of urban life. Investigating across the centuries and around the world, Newitz explores the rise and fall of four ancient cities, each the center of a sophisticated civilization: the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük in Central Turkey, the Roman vacation town of Pompeii on Italy’s southern coast, the medieval megacity of Angkor in Cambodia, and the indigenous metropolis Cahokia, which stood beside the Mississippi River where East St. Louis is today.
Newitz travels to all four sites and investigates the cutting-edge research in archaeology, revealing the mix of environmental changes and political turmoil that doomed these ancient settlements. Tracing the early development of urban planning, Newitz also introduces us to the often anonymous workers—slaves, women, immigrants, and manual laborers—who built these cities and created monuments that lasted millennia.
Four Lost Cities is a journey into the forgotten past, but, foreseeing a future in which the majority of people on Earth will be living in cities, it may also reveal something of our own fate.

VIRTUAL EVENT: Gretel Ehrlich, Unsolaced
2021-02-02 19:00 - 21:00 | CA
Gretel Ehrlich, author of the enduring classic The Solace of Open Spaces, will share her new book Unsolaced—a wondrous meditation on how water, light, wind, mountain, bird, and horse have shaped her life and her understanding of a world besieged by a climate crisis.
Register for this free Crowdcast event by clicking here!

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

Amid species extinctions and disintegrating ice sheets, this stunning collection of memories, observations, and narratives is acute and lyrical, Whitmanesque in breadth, and as elegant as a Japanese teahouse. “Sentience and sunderance,” Ehrlich writes. “How we know what we know, who teaches us, how easy it is to lose it all.” As if to stave off impending loss, she embarks on strenuous adventures to Greenland, Africa, Kosovo, Japan, and an uninhabited Alaskan island, always returning to her simple Wyoming cabin at the foot of the mountains and the trail that leads into the heart of them.
“In lush, evocative prose, Ehrlich details some breathtakingly perilous journeys . . . A vigorous plea for responsible environmental stewardship and a treat for all fans of nature writing.” — Kirkus Review (starred)
GRETEL EHRLICH is the author of Facing the Wave, The Future of Ice, Heart Mountain, The Solace of Open Spaces, and This Cold Heaven, among other works of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. Ehrlich studied at Bennington College and UCLA film school. She divides her time between Montana and Hawaii.

Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri | GGP Online Book Club
2021-02-02 19:00 - 21:00 | CA
Please join us on Tuesday, February 2, 2021 at 7 PM PST for a GGP Online Book Club discussion of Everything Sad Is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri.
The Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88666921359,
You can order a print copy at http://bit.ly/ggpEverythingSadIsUntrue or in audiobook from Libro.fm, GGP’s audiobook partner, at http://bit.ly/EverythingSadAB.
Staff Reviews

A true refugee story told in a Scheherazade-like format. It’s the most engrossing book I’ve read this year: it’s magical, haunting, uplifting, funny, and sad all at once. I love this boy and I loved learning about his Iranian childhood and one-of-a-kind immigrant experience in Oklahoma. A MUST READ!
— Donna

One of my Top 3 Books of 2020: a rich history of a young Iranian refugee making a life in Oklahoma, his relationship with his parents, and finding an identity.
— Amy

One of my Top 3 Books of 2020: This beautiful book made me laugh and cry. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator’s voice is everything. He uses humor and myths to tell the tale of his Iranian family settling in Oklahoma and though it was written for kids, it is great for all ages.
— Sarah

Description

At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”) stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much.
But Khosrou’s stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them, back to the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy.and further back to the fields near the river Aras, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of sunset burst over everything, and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan.
We bounce between a school bus of kids armed with paper clip missiles and spitballs to the heroines and heroes of Khosrou’s family’s past, who ate pastries that made people weep and cry “Akh, Tamar!” and touched carpets woven with precious gems.
Like Scheherazade in a hostile classroom, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story).
It is Daniel’s.
About the Author

Daniel Nayeri was born in Iran and spent a couple of years as a refugee before immigrating to Oklahoma at age eight with his family. He is the publisher of Odd Dot, an imprint of Macmillan, making him one of the youngest publishers in the industry. He has served on the CBC diversity committee and the CBC panel committee.

Virtual Event: Anna North and Esmé Weijun Wang
2021-02-03 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Join us on Wednesday, February 3rd at 6pm PT when Anna North is joined by Esmé Weijun Wang to discuss her latest novel, Outlawed, on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87370850619

Praise for Outlawed
“I’m dazzled by this feminist Western about a world in which women’s worth and right to live are determined by the vagaries of fertility. Set in an alternate past, one all too similar to our today, Outlawed is terrifying, wise, tender, and thrilling. A masterpiece.” —R.O. Kwon, author of THE INCENDIARIES

“Outlawed flips the script on the beloved Western genre and gives us the iconic heroine-on-the-run we deserve. Anna North is a riveting storyteller . . . Reader, you are in for a real treat.” —Jenny Zhang, author of SOUR HEART

“A moving and invigorating complication of the Western, highlighting chosen family, love, and survival among outcasts in another American timeline. As she mines the genre for vital new stories, North beautifully shines a light on our real past and conveys a warning for the future.” —Lydia Kiesling, author of THE GOLDEN STATE

About Outlawed
The Crucible meets True Grit in this riveting adventure story of a fugitive girl, a mysterious gang of robbers, and their dangerous mission to transform the Wild West.

In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada’s life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows.
She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she’s willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

Featuring an irresistibly no-nonsense, courageous, and determined heroine, Outlawed dusts off the myth of the old West and reignites the glimmering promise of the frontier with an entirely new set of feminist stakes. Anna North has crafted a pulse-racing, page-turning saga about the search for hope in the wake of death, and for truth in a climate of small-mindedness and fear.

Berkeley Lunch Poems: Kiki Petrosino
2021-02-04 12:00 - 13:00 | online
Berkeley Lunch Poems
A noontime poetry reading series
Readings will take place remotely for the 2020-2021 academic year. Zoom links will be available approximately two weeks before the event. All readings will be recorded and posted to youtube. To keep up to date, please join our list by emailing poems@library.berkeley.edu.
Link for all readings: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/96370640480

Kiki Petrosino
Kiki Petrosino is the author of four books of poetry: White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020), Witch Wife (2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, The Nation, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House and on-line at Ploughshares. She teaches at the University of Virginia as a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Al Smith Fellowship Award from the Kentucky Arts Council.

The Life Beyond: A Conversation About Grief and Cancer with Authors and Survivors Christine Corrigan and Laraine Herring (Virtual Event)
2021-02-04 16:00 - 18:00 | CA
Again: Surviving Cancer Twice with Love and Lists tells Christine Shields Corrigan’s story of receiving a breast cancer diagnosis at forty-nine, and how that forces her, as a wife, mom, and meticulous list-maker, to confront her deepest fears of illness, death, and loss of control as she struggles to face cancer again. From the discovery of a “junky” cyst, to chemotherapy and surgery, sleepless nights filled with rosaries and “what ifs,” and shifting family dynamics, her adult experience mirrors her teen bout with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with one exception—she no longer has parents keeping her in the dark. With the ghosts of cancer past hovering around her, Chris falls into the same overprotective traps her taciturn Irish-Catholic parents created, striving to keep her family’s life “normal,” when it is anything but, and soldiering through on her own, until a neighbor’s unexpected advice and gift move her to accept others’ help. With fierce honesty, poignant reflection, and good humor, Chris shares a journey filled with sorrow, grace, forgiveness, and resilience, as she wends her way through cancer for the second time. Again offers practical guidance and hope to individuals that they have the strength to forge a path beyond a diagnosis.
What if a gift lived inside grief? Laraine Herring’s The Grief Forest follows Bunny, who captures her grief in a bubble the color of her father’s soul after her dies. She carries this grief with her, afraid that if she lets it go, she will lose her daddy. Bunny’s grief leads her to The Grief Forest and Grandmother Bunny, who meets her at the Forest’s edge. Bunny is afraid of all the grief she sees there, so she runs away and meets Death, who guides her deeper into the Forest. Each animal she meets expresses an aspect of grief. As Bunny’s grief begins to take on a life of its own, she becomes desperate to hold onto it, afraid of who she would be without it. She falls deeper into the Forest, meeting creatures of the sea and creatures of the night. When she meets Cobra, everything she thought she knew about grief falls away and she has to make a choice: hold on to a life that has gone, or learn how to be alive in a new environment. For all ages, The Grief Forest is a journey through complicated grieving, showing examples of delayed grief, absent grief, PTSD, attachment, disenfranchised grief, and many more. Bereavement is a place. When we grieve, we enter this mysterious world and we do not leave it unchanged. And by meeting our grief, sitting quietly with it and listening to it, we can access its deeper wisdom, helping to heal not only the griever, but the whole world.
Christine Shields Corrigan, a two-time cancer survivor, wife, and mom, gives voice to the beautiful ordinary in her lyrical and practical essays. Her work about family, illness, writing, and resilient survivorship has appeared in The Brevity Blog, Dreamer’s Creative Writing and Anthology, Grown & Flown, The Potato Soup Journal and Anthology, Purple Clover, Ravishly.com, Wildfire Magazine, and the Writer’s Circle 2 Anthology. Corrigan’s essay about how her cancer experiences helped her cope with the COVID-19 pandemic is included in (Her)orics: Women’s Lived Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic. A graduate of Manhattan College and Fordham University School of Law, Chris teaches creative nonfiction writing for an adult education program, provides writing workshops for cancer support groups, and serves on the programming committee of the Morristown Festival of Books. She lives in Somerset County, New Jersey, with her family and devoted Cavalier King Charles spaniel.
Laraine Herring is a tenured professor of creative writing and psychology. Her fiction has won the Barbara Deming Award for Women, and her nonfiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has volunteered for Hospice of the Valley, directed the New Song Center for Grieving Children’s support group, worked with women in transitional housing and women recovering from addiction. Her work—whether it’s her paid employment, her volunteer work, or her creative work—focuses on the power of stories to heal what’s hidden within us. Her most recent book is The Grief Forest, a book about what we don’t talk about. Her trilogy of writing books from Shambhala have been on Poets & Writers top ten books for writers. Her memoir, A Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravenswill be released in October 2021 from Regal House Publishing. She is a colon cancer survivor and lives with many wise cats in northern AZ.

Dispatches from the Race War
2021-02-04 17:00 - 19:00 | CA
Essays on racial flashpoints, white denial, violence, and the manipulation of fear in America today.
“What Tim Wise has brilliantly done is to challenge white folks’ truth . . . to see that they have a responsibility to do more than sit back and watch, but to recognize their own role in co-creating . . . a fair, inclusive, truly democratic society.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
In this collection of essays, renowned social-justice advocate Tim Wise confronts racism in contemporary America. Seen through the lens of major flashpoints during the Obama and Trump years, Dispatches from the Race War faces the consequences of white supremacy in all its forms. This includes a discussion of the bigoted undertones of the Tea Party’s backlash, the killing of Trayvon Martin, current day anti-immigrant hysteria, the rise of openly avowed white nationalism, the violent policing of African Americans, and more. Wise devotes a substantial portion of the book to explore the racial ramifications of COVID-19, and the widespread protests which followed the police murder of George Floyd.
Concise, accessible chapters, most written in first-person, offer an excellent source for those engaged in the anti-racism struggle. Tim Wise’s proactive approach asks white allies to contend with—and take responsibility for—their own role in perpetuating racism against Blacks and people of color. Dispatches from the Race War reminds us that the story of our country is the history of racial conflict, and that our future may depend on how—or if—we can resolve it. “To accept racism is quintessentially American,” writes Wise, “to rebel against it is human. Be human.”
“Tim Wise’s new book gives us the tools we need to reach people whose understanding of our country is white instead of right. And without pissing them off!”—James W. Loewen, author, Lies My Teacher Told Me
“Tim Wise’s latest is more urgent than ever. Unflinchingly, and page after page, Wise calls out a brutal truth, one unwelcome to so many white people: The racial trauma playing out across this nation, hour after hour, day after day, is inflicted—be it actively or unwittingly—by them. But as Wise also, so rightly, notes, this isn’t the whole story. Despite what some would hope for this nation, we are not doomed to a white-sparked race war. Just as this nation’s history is steeped in racial oppression, so too is it rich with anti-racist resistance. It is to this anti-racist resistance that white people in particular, but the country as a whole, must now commit. . . . no matter what.”—Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy

VIRTUAL EVENT: LIVING WRITERS SERIES, Lauren Groff
2021-02-04 17:20 - 18:55 | CA
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 4TH FEATURED WRITER: LAUREN GROFF
Lauren Groff is the author of five books, most recently Fates and Furies, a novel, and Florida, a short story collection. She has twice been shortlisted for the National Book Award, has won the Story Prize and France’s Grand Prix de L’héroïne, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. Her next novel, Matrix, is slated for publication by Riverhead in September 2021.
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.

Dr. Larry Ward - America's Racial Karma: An Invitation to Heal (Virtual Event)
2021-02-04 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
“I am a drop in the ocean, but I’m also the ocean. I’m a drop in America, but I’m also America. Every pain, every confusion, every good and every bad and ugly of America is in me. And as I transform myself and heal and take care of myself, I’m very conscious that I’m healing and transforming and taking care of America. I say this for American cynics, but this is also true globally. It’s for real.” So says Zen Buddhist teacher Dr. Larry Ward.
Shot at by the police as an 11-year-old child for playing baseball in the wrong spot, as an adult, Larry Ward experienced the trauma of having his home firebombed by racists. At Plum Village Monastery in France, the home in exile of his teacher, Vietnamese peace activist and Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, Dr. Ward found a way to heal. In these short reflective essays, he offers his insights on the effects of racial constructs and answers the question: how do we free ourselves from our repeated cycles of anger, denial, bitterness, pain, fear, violence? Larry Ward looks at the causes and conditions that have led us to our current state and finds, hidden in the crisis, a profound opportunity to reinvent what it means to be a human being. This is an invitation to transform America’s racial karma.
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the catalyst that sparked the young Larry Ward’s journey into a life of planetary peacemaking. Dr. Ward’s introduction to Buddhist practice began in Calcutta in 1977, but it was when he met Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 1991 that the practice became truly central to his life. He is ordained as a Dharma teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition and has accompanied Thich Nhat Hanh on peace-building missions internationally, as well as throughout the United States. Dr. Ward brings 25 years of experience in organizational change and local community renewal in 20 countries to his work as director of the Lotus Institute and as an advisor to the Executive Mind Leadership Institute at the Drucker School of Management, in Claremont, California. Dr. Ward holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and research on the neuroscience of meditation.

Dantiel W. Moniz in conversation with C Pam Zhang
2021-02-04 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
celebrating Dantial W. Moniz new novel
Milk Blood Heat
published by Grove Atlantic Press
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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 coming soon.
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(Click Here) to purchase book. Link coming soon.
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A livewire debut from Dantiel W. Moniz, one of the most exciting discoveries in today’s literary landscape, Milk Blood Heat depicts the sultry lives of Floridians in intergenerational tales that contemplate human connection, race, womanhood, inheritance, and the elemental darkness in us all. Set among the cities and suburbs of Florida, each story delves into the ordinary worlds of young girls, women, and men who find themselves confronted by extraordinary moments of violent personal reckoning. These intimate portraits of people and relationships scour and soothe and blast a light on the nature of family, faith, forgiveness, consumption, and what we may, or may not, owe one another.
A thirteen-year-old meditates on her sadness and the difference between herself and her white best friend when an unexpected tragedy occurs; a woman recovering from a miscarriage finds herself unable to let go of her daughter—whose body parts she sees throughout her daily life; a teenager resists her family’s church and is accused of courting the devil; servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable cravings of their wealthy clientele; and two estranged siblings take a road-trip with their father’s ashes and are forced to face the troubling reality of how he continues to shape them.
Wise and subversive, spiritual and seductive, Milk Blood Heat forms an ouroboros of stories that bewitch with their truth, announcing the arrival of a bright new literary star.
Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, the Yale Review, Joyland, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. She lives in Northeast Florida.
C Pam Zhang is the author of the novel How Much of These Hills is Gold published by Riverhead Books in 2020, and was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize.

The Chicken Sisters: Author KJ Dell'Antonia in Conversation With Nancy Davis Kho
2021-02-04 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
Please join us on Thursday, February 4, 2021 at 6 PM PST for an online discussion of one of Kathleen’s recent favorites, THE CHICKEN SISTERS, with author KJ Dell’Antonia in conversation with Nancy Davis Kho, author of THE THANK YOU PROJECT.
Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82283219224.
(Order your copy of THE CHICKEN SISTERS at http://bit.ly/ggpChickenSisters or in audiobook at http://bit.ly/ChickenSistersAB.)
December 2020 Indie Next List

“I am charmed by The Chicken Sisters! Family fights, fried chicken, a dog and her puppies, mental illness, a shaky marriage, a potential romance, and a reality show taping all combine for a great small-town story. Generations of feuding sisters with competing chicken shack restaurants hash it out for the cameras, their loved ones, and themselves. The Chicken Sisters is a delightful read.”
— Susan Williams, M. Judson Booksellers & Storytellers, Greenville, SC
Description

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
“A charming, hilarious, feel-good story about the kind of bonds & rivalries only sisters can share. Also, a great present for your sister for the holidays!!”–Reese Witherspoon
Three generations. Two chicken shacks. One recipe for disaster.
In tiny Merinac, Kansas, Chicken Mimi’s and Chicken Frannie’s have spent a century vying to serve up the best fried chicken in the state–and the legendary feud between their respective owners, the Moores and the Pogociellos, has lasted just as long. No one feels the impact more than thirty-five-year-old widow Amanda Moore, who grew up working for her mom at Mimi’s before scandalously marrying Frank Pogociello and changing sides to work at Frannie’s. Tired of being caught in the middle, Amanda sends an SOS to Food Wars, the reality TV restaurant competition that promises $100,000 to the winner. But in doing so, she launches both families out of the frying pan and directly into the fire. . .
The last thing Brooklyn-based organizational guru Mae Moore, Amanda’s sister, wants is to go home to Kansas. But when her career implodes, helping the fading Mimi’s look good on Food Wars becomes Mae’s best chance to reclaim the limelight–even if doing so pits her against Amanda and Frannie’s. Yet when family secrets become public knowledge, the sisters must choose: Will they fight with each other, or for their heritage?
About the Author

KJ Dell’Antonia is the former editor of Motherlode and current contributor to The New York Times, as well as the author of How to Be a Happier Parent. She lives with her family on a small farm in Lyme, New Hampshire, but retains an abiding love for her childhood in Texas and Kansas.

Catana Chetwynd / In Love & Pajamas: A Collection of Comics about Being Yourself Together
2021-02-04 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
Booksmith is thrilled to host a virtual event with #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Catana Comics, Catana Chetwynd (Snug and Little Moments of Love) for her third book In Love & Pajamas: A Collection of Comics about Being Yourself Together. Come meet Catana and her boyfriend John and get a signed copy of the book, plus a chance to win limited edition prints, live drawings from the event, and other special, custom-designed gifts!
Please note:

This is a ticketed event, with each ticket including a copy of the book – no exceptions.
We’re happy to say we have *signed copies* while supplies last. More information about this will be announced soon.
Each ticket holder will be entered into a raffle to win a limited edition print, live drawings, and other custom-designed gifts.
If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact us: events@booksmith.com.

When you’ve reached that sweatpants-wearing cozy place in your relationship, it’s all In Love & Pajamas! This brand-new collection of Catana Comics presents 50 percent never-before-seen comics and some fan favorites that delight and amuse readers of all ages. Wholesome, sweet, feel-good humor, a perfect gift for your other half and a welcome add-on to any wedding, anniversary, or Valentine’s Day gift.
Catana Chetwynd is a self-taught traditional artist and the enthusiastic author of Catana Comics. She grew up in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she spent her time creating art and pursuing an education in psychology until accidentally stumbling into the world of comics. Not only is her fiancé, John, the daily inspiration for her drawings, but he was also the one who suggested a comic series about their relationship in the first place. Thanks to his idea and his inspiring daily antics, Catana was able to pursue her childhood dream of being a cartoonist. She currently lives on the East Coast with John and their tiny, angry dog, Murph.
Please note: This is a ticketed, all-ages event. Each ticket includes a signed copy of In Love & Pajamas (while supplies last) – no exceptions. If you already have a copy, remember that books make great gifts! If you’ve already gifted this title to all of your friends, please write events@booksmith.com and we’ll work things out.

Policies

Refund Policy:
No refunds or returns. Contact events@booksmith.com with any questions.
Cancellation Policy:
If we have to cancel an event, you will be refunded within 4 business days of the event date.

Lunar New Year Poetry and Calligraphy with Poets Michael Warr, Chun Yu, and Calligrapher Aiqin Zhou
2021-02-04 19:00 - 20:00 | online
Celebrate the Year of the Ox with us! Poets Michael Warr and Chun Yu read works in English and Chinese (Mandarin) that reflect the essence of the New Year — vanquishing the past, embracing new beginnings, and venerating ancestors — while Aiqin Zhou demonstrates her skillful calligraphy by illustrating some of the poems.
Reserve your tickets:
https://calendar.asianart.org/…/lunar-new-year-poetry…/

Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross: Black Women's History of the US
2021-02-04 19:00 - 20:30 | Virtual
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM and Marcus Books present:
Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
A Black Women’s History of the United States
With Sabrina Jacobs
Reaching from the year 1600 to the present day, A Black Women’s History of the United States – written by renowned authors and historians Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross – provides a necessary, long-awaited re-centering of American history from the perspective of all those folks who have been left out of our history books. Wide-ranging and inclusive, this book examines a diversity of Black women, including cisgender and transgender women, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, reformers, enslaved women, artists, activists, imprisoned women leaders, and everyday people. A critical survey of their complex legacy, A Black Women’s History of the United States considers not only the exploitation and victimization of Black Women, but also their undeniable and substantial contributions to the country since its inception.
“Remarkably comprehensive and accessible, introductory and sophisticated, two groundbreaking historians have come together to produce a new history of Black women in the United States.” -Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped From the Beginning
Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or co-editor of seven previous books, including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation – winner of the 2017 SHEAR Book Award for Early American History.
Kali Nicole Gross is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her previous books include Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Dismembered Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America, winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction.
Suggested Donation $5-$20.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/diana-ramey-berry-kali-nicole-gross-a-black-womens-history-of-the-us-tickets-130506218613

Eves at the (Virtual) Beat: Womxn Reading Curated by Georgina Marie!!
2021-02-04 19:00 - 21:00 | online
During Women’s History month a constellation of events brought together a group of fabulous womxn+ writers. The meeting of these hearts and minds exploded into something powerful and a new monthly reading series concept was born, “Eves at the Beat”.
This month’s Eves at the Beat is curated by Georgina Marie!! And MC’s by Mia Ruiz
Lineup of readers:
Brenda Yeager, Beulah Vega, Charity E. Yoro, Lauren Traetto, Melissa Eleftherion Carr, K.R. Morrison

Topic: Eves at the (Virtual) Beat: Womxn Reading w/Georgina Marie!
Time: Feb 4, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every month on the First Thu, 6 occurrence(s)
Feb 4, 2021 07:00 PM
Mar 4, 2021 07:00 PM
Apr 1, 2021 07:00 PM
May 6, 2021 07:00 PM
Jun 3, 2021 07:00 PM
Jul 1, 2021 07:00 PM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Monthly: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZ0pdeqgqjgpGdWQXBj…/ics…
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Zoom Forward! A Tribute to Jory Post
2021-02-05 17:00 - 19:00 | CA
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

Virtual Event: Dr. Judy Melinek and T.J. Mitchell with Faith Salie
2021-02-05 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
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.

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.

Generation Rising Book Launch
2021-02-06 13:00 - 15:00 | CA
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

Virtual Class: Art History with Kerrin Meis - The Aesthetic Movement: The Cult of Beauty Revisited (via Zoom)
2021-02-06 13:00 - 15:00 | CA
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.

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.

Conversations with Authors - Chang-rae Lee (Virtual Event)
2021-02-06 16:00 - 18:00 | CA
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.

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.

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

This is Now: Susan Liautaud
2021-02-09 12:00 - 13:00 | CA
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.**

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 | CA
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.

Conversations with Authors - Suleika Jaouad with Elizabeth Gilbert (Virtual Event)
2021-02-09 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
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.

Kim Stanley Robinson
2021-02-09 19:00 - 21:00 | CA
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.
