AUTHOR EVENTS -- MAY 2003

Friday, May 2nd at 7:30 p.m.
James Frey
A Little Million Pieces
(Broadway)

By the age of 23, James Frey had destroyed his body and mind almost beyond repair. He faced a stark choice: accept that he would not see age 24 or step into the fallout of his smoking wreck of a life and take drastic action. Intense, unpredictable, and instantly engaging, his story of drug abuse and rehabilitation is an uncommonly genuine account of a life destroyed and a life reconstructed. Frey's bold and talented literary voice powerfully tells of the extreme desperation that he faced without self-pity or cynicism.

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Tuesday, May 6th at 7:30 p.m.
Raja Shehadeh
Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine
(Penguin)

In this fascinating memoir, leading Palestinian lawyer Shehadeh offers a chilling and moving view of life inside the Occupied Territories. Born into a prominent family around the time of Israel's establishment in 1948, Shehadeh recounts his relationship with his parents, his first love, intellectual experiments in college, world travels, law career and human rights work. Today, Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in Ramallah. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights and the Middle East.

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Wednesday, May 7th at 7:30 p.m.
Nora Okja Keller
Fox Girl
(Penguin)

From the award winning author of Comfort Women comes a heart-wrenching novel about two girls in the aftermath of the Korean War. A group of teenagers, many of whom were abandoned as babies by American GIs, live in poverty and makeshift families in "America Town." Shocking and moving, their story is a rare portrait of war's innocent causalities and of the fierce love between mother and daughter. Fox Girl was voted Best Book of 2002 by the Los Angeles Times.

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Thursday, May 8th at 7:30 p.m.
Antony Beevor
The Fall of Berlin 1945
(Penguin)

The Red Army's invasion of Berlin in January 1945 was one of the most terrifying examples of fire and sword in history. Ill-fed and hungry for vengeance, the Russians unloosed their fury on Berlin in a long siege that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. Drawing upon newly available material from Soviet files and international archives, the best-selling author of Stalingrad and The Spanish Civil War vividly recounts the experiences of the innocent and the guilty caught in the fall of the Third Reich. This accessible and stunning history is a story of pride and fanaticism, as well as astonishing human endurance. The evening will include a slide show.

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Monday, May 12th at 7:30 p.m.
Wayne Muller
Learning to Pray: How We Find Heaven on Earth
(Broadway)

Ordained minister, therapist, and author of Sabbath and How, Then, Shall We Live? speaks clearly to anyone seeking a deeper spiritual life. Bringing a fresh new vision to the Lord's Prayer and to the casual, spontaneous quiet thoughts of our hearts, Muller reminds us we are not alone. "I know that the mountains and the trees, the grasses and the sky, remain hidden in the fog, but I cannot see them with my eyes...This is prayer. This is deep, faithful listening, waiting for what is hidden to be revealed."

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Tuesday, May 13th at 7:30 p.m.
Mark Lee
The Canal House (Algonquin)
and
Ann Cummins
Red Ant House: Stories (Mariner)

Two new masters, two gritty and seductive stories. Mark Lee, a Western reporter expelled from Uganda for writing articles about military genocide, pours his experiences into a novel that follows the risky moves of a war correspondent whose steely approach to life is rocked by a warlord's raid that leaves his companions dead. Shuttering out the world in a canal house in London with a lovely, idealistic doctor, he must decide how to find meaning in the violence of the world outside.

Fiery Ann Cummins, published in The New Yorker and McSweeney's, "has laid claim to a new territory that is wild and lovely and utterly unique," (Brady Udall), and in her daring short stories cultures, genders, and generations collide and the human spirit is pushed to the limit. Dave Eggers says, "I devour anything Ann Cummins does; she's as good as we have."

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Thursday, May 15th at 7:30 p.m.
Addi Somekh
Mary Holmes: Paintings and Ideas
(Very Press)

At age 90, visionary artist Mary Holmes spoke from her Santa Cruz hilltop farm to Addi Somekh and shared her reflections on her paintings and themes of her life - from the way art affects people to their need to lead meaningful lives. Keenly sensitive to the nature of art and life's complexities, Holmes communicated her perceptions over a 70-year-career with the authority of a sage and the timing of a great comic. Her mythological paintings of virtues and gifts of the spirit such as faith, hope, and self-discipline make visible those invisible realities, providing insight into the relation between our physical and spiritual lives.

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Friday, May 16th at 7:30 p.m.
Jonathan Schell
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
(Holt)

At times of global crisis, Jonathan Schell's writings have presented influential alternatives to conventional, dead-end thinking. Now as the world stands once more on the brink of upheaval, Schell reenters the fray with a lucid, impassioned, and provocative book that points the way out of the unparalleled devastation of the twentieth century toward another, more peaceful path. Tracing the relentless expansion of violence to its culmination in nuclear stalemate, Schell uncovers a simultaneous but little-noted history of nonviolent action. His historical journey turns up seeds of nonviolence even in the bloody revolutions of America, France, and Russia, as well as in the people's wars of China and Vietnam. And his investigations into the great nonviolent events of modern times--from Gandhi's independence movement in India to the explosion of civic activity that brought about the surprising collapse of the Soviet Union--suggest foundations of an entirely new kind on which to construct an enduring peace.

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Monday, May 19th at 7:30 p.m.
Hugh Raffles
In Amazonia
(University of California)

Anthropologist Hugh Raffles has set a new standard for the genre of natural history, artfully bringing to life the people, history, and science of this highly romanticized region detailed in his new book, In Amazonia. In engaging prose, this UC Santa Cruz professor traces the mystique of the Amazon back to 16th-century explorers and describes how it captivated Europeans' imagination as "a paradise full of riches" and simultaneously became the target of European anxiety about disease and the horror of unbridled nature.

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Tuesday, May 20th at 7:30 p.m.
Poetry Santa Cruz

Poetry Santa Cruz presents poetry readings and workshops in the Santa Cruz area. This month PSC continues a bi-monthly series of readings at Capitola Book Cafe. This is a must see event for poetry lovers. Arrive early to secure a seat.

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Wednesday, May 21st at 7:30 p.m.
Dana MacKenzie
The Big Splat, or How the Moon Came to Be
(Wiley)

This lively science history relates one of the great recent breakthroughs in planetary astronomy---a successful theory on the birth of the Moon. Science journalist Dana MacKenzie traces the evolution of this theory, one little known outside the scientific community: A Mars-sized object collided with Earth some four billion years ago, and the remains of this colossal explosion---the Big Splat---came together to from the Moon. Come celebrate this innovative theory and listen to someone who can explain it in clear, crisp prose so that we all can understand the wonder of the Moon.

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Thursday, May 22nd at 7:30 p.m.
Cris Mazza
Indigenous: Growing Up Californian
(City Lights)

A spirited rebuttal to pop-culture stereotypes of growing up female in Southern California, Indigenous shines with memories of a childhood of the 70's and 80's that do not include surfing or cheerleading. Though her story has exotic elements - her family hunts and gathers food in the coastal hills - Mazza sets herself in the familiar Americana California and richly explores themes of gender, madness, ordinary lives, and the desire to seamlessly belong again to her native state. Honest, surprising, and deeply personal, Mazza's memoir stylishly illustrates the vibrancy and diversity of Californians.

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Thursday, May 22nd at 7:00 p.m.
World Affairs Book Club
Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns by David Lamb

To date, this monthly book discussion group has read books on Afghanistan, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the border dispute between India and Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Latin America, Africa, China and North Korea. This month, we will be discussing Vietnam, Now: A Reporter Returns by acclaimed journalist David Lamb. As always, we welcome people of all backgrounds and affiliations to come and participate. For more information you may email Graham Parsons at parsons402@yahoo.com or call the store at 462-4415.

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Tuesday, May 27th at 7:30 p.m.
Isabel Allende
My Invented Country
(Harper)

Join us in welcoming the author of Stories of Eva Luna, The House of the Spirits, and Paula for her memoir of life in her country, Chile. In My Invented Country Allende evokes the magnificent landscape of Chile---the country she was raised in---with its charming, idiosyncratic people, violent history, and distinctive politics, myth and magic. Two life-altering events mark the narration of this book: The military coup and violent death of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. Then, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgement that she had indeed left home. The memoir speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Please Note: This event is free and open to the public. If you wish to have Ms. Allende sign your books, you must first purchase a copy of My Invented Country, either in Spanish or English, at the Book Cafe. Save your receipt! It allows you to enter the signing line.

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Wednesday, May 28th at 7:30 p.m.
lê thi diem thúy
The Gangsters We Are Looking For
(Knopf)

lê thi diem thúy was born in Phan Thiet, southern Vietnam. She and her father left Vietnam in 1968, by boat, eventually settling in Southern California. In her debut novel we meet a family not unlike her own. In 1978 six refugees-a girl, her father, and four "uncles"-are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child's imagination, the world of itchy dresses and run-down apartments is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother now gone and, most inescapable, her father's hopeless rage for a father's order. In The Gangsters We Are All Looking For, lê thi diem thúy has illuminated a world of great beauty and enormous sorrows.

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Thursday, May 29th at 7:30 p.m.
Pico Iyer
Abandon
(Knopf)

As a respected journalist and travel writer, Pico Iyer has earned a loyal following with books like Video Nights in Katmandu and The Lady and the Monk. Come help us celebrate the publication of his first novel. In it, John Macmillan is an Englishman studying Sufism, and in particular Rumi, the thirteenth-century Islamic mystic. Traveling to Damascus, he hears rumors of a secret, heretical manuscript that might have escaped from Iran during the chaos of its Revolution, and, taking a message back to California, ends up encountering Camilla Jensen who seems connected to the world of fugitive texts. Following the trail of mystical poems through Spain and India to Iran, and trying to unravel the mystery that lies behind Camilla, John finds himself descending ever deeper into a world of passion and bewilderment. Abandon is a mystical romance in the classic Persian tradition brought into the bleached sunlight of Southern California today. But it is also an unexpected and distinctive look at the clash between Islam and the West, at a time when Los Angeles is partly run by Iranian exiles and the long-closed cities of Iran are slowly opening up to Westerners.