Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Wednesday, June 16, 7:30 PM
PIPER KERMAN
Orange is the New Black:
My Year in a Woman’s PrisonWhen Piper Kerman was sent to prison for a ten-year-old crime, she barely resembled the reckless young woman she’d been when, shortly after graduating Smith College, she’d committed the misdeeds that would eventually catch up with her. Happily ensconced in a New York City apartment, with a promising career and an attentive boyfriend, she was suddenly forced to reckon with the consequences of her very brief, very careless dalliance in the world of drug trafficking.
Kerman spent thirteen months in prison, eleven of them at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, where she met a surprising and varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. In Orange Is the New Black, Kerman tells the story of those long months locked up in a place with its own codes of behavior and arbitrary hierarchies, where a practical joke is as common as an unprovoked fight, and where the uneasy relationship between prisoner and jailer is constantly and unpredictably recalibrated.
Revealing, moving, and enraging, Orange Is the New Black offers a unique perspective on the criminal justice system, the reasons we send so many people to prison, and what happens to them when they’re there.
“Don’t let the irreverent title mislead: This is a serious and bighearted book that depicts life in a women’s prison with great detail and—crucially—with empathy and respect for Piper Kerman’s fellow prisoners, most of whom did not and do not have her advantages and options. With its expert reporting and humane, clear-eyed storytelling, Orange Is the New Black will join Ted Conover’s Newjack among the necessary contemporary books about the American prison experience.” -- Dave Eggers, author of Zeitoun and co-author of Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
“I loved this book, to a depth and degree that caught me by surprise. Of course it’s a compelling insider’s account of life in a women’s federal prison, and of course it’s a behind-the-scenes look at America’s war on drugs, and of course it’s a story rich with humor, pathos and redemption: All of that was to be expected. What I did not expect from this memoir was the affection, compassion, and even reverence that Piper Kerman demonstrates for all the women she encountered while she was locked away in jail. That was the surprising twist: that behind the bars of women's prisons grow extraordinary friendships, ad hoc families, and delicate communities. In the end, this book is not just a tale of prisons, drugs, crime, or justice; it is, simply put, a beautifully told story about how incredible women can be, and I will never forget it.” --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love
Piper Kerman is vice president of a Washington, D.C.–based communications firm that works with foundations and nonprofits. A graduate of Smith College, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband Larry Smith (editor of the “Six-Word Memoir” website and books).
Monday, June 21, 7:00 PM
FOUND IN TRANSLATION
Book Group Meeting
Bonsai by Alejandro ZambraA prizewinning sensation in Chile, Bonsai is the lightest, yet also the most complex, 90 pages you will read this year. Part story of a love affair (yet on the very first page Zambra informs us "in the end she dies and he remains alone"), part metafictional game (the protagonist eventually starts to write a novel suspiciously similar to the one we're reading), and part meditation on how books are like bonsai trees (they both rely on containers to make sense), this book is perfect for a lengthy discussion.Bonsai has more metaphors and aphorisms than most books twice its length, and we'll have a great time discussing this book that had all of Chile reading.
Please note: this has been rescheduled from Tuesday, June 22.
Join us on the fourth Tuesday (usually!) of every month for spirited conversation about some of the newest writing hitting the U.S. from all over the globe. No foreign language knowledge necessary and no continental savvy required (but will be appreciated!) -- just bring your desire to read some excellent new books, hand-selected for you by the Booksmith's knowledgeable booksellers. You'll also meet some great new people and chat with them about the best new fiction from around the world.
Writing About the News…While It’s Still Being Made
Tuesday, June 22, 7:30 PM
MARTHA McPHEE
Dear MoneyIn this Pygmalion tale of a novelist turned bond trader, National Book Award Finalist Martha McPhee brings to life the greed and riotous wealth of New York during the heady days of the second gilded age.
A few years ago, when a legendary bond trader claimed he could transform her into a booming Wall Street success, McPhee toyed with the notion. She considered the money, the tangible success -- but declined the offer and wrote Dear Money instead, using fiction to explore what might have been. This ambitious novel encapsulates a moment in America's recent history, the moment just before the current collapse of the economy.
Dear Money is a deadly serious, yet deftly witty book in the great American tradition of Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Theodore Dreiser. McPhee adroitly tackles the age-old issues of wealth, ambition and social status with aplomb. With a light-handed irony that is by turns as measured as Claire Messud and as biting as Tom Wolfe, Martha McPhee tells the classic American story of people reinventing themselves, unaware of the price they must pay for their transformation.
Martha McPhee is the author of the novels Bright Angel Time, Gorgeous Lies, andL'America. Her work has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2002 she was nominated for a National Book Award. Her novels have been Best Books of The Year on New York Times, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune lists. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Newark Star Ledger, Vogue, More,Harper's Bazaar, Self, Traveler, Travel & Leisure, among many others. She lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold. Martha teaches writing at Hofstra University.
This evening, she’ll be talking about the writing process, writing about money, its challenges, and its pleasures. Writers, would-be writers, and simply readers are all welcome to join this discussion!
Wednesday, June 23, 7:30 PM
JACOB PAUL
Sarah / SaraAn engrossing meditation on the meaning of faith in the modern world, Sarah/Sara is the story of a young Orthodox Jewish woman who undertakes a solo kayaking journey across the Arctic Ocean after her parents are killed and she is disfigured by a terrorist bomb in a Jerusalem café. Haunted by her parents' death, and in particular by memories of her father, a 9/11 survivor whose dream was to kayak through the Arctic, Sarah embarks on her expedition unprepared for the strenuous physical and emotional trial that lies ahead. What begins as a series of diary entries on her struggle with faith ends in a fight for survival, as Sarah slowly comes to realize that she is lost in the Arctic wilderness, the ice closing in around her.
“This solo kayak adventure along the coast of Alaska becomes the perfect cauldron for this ardent, introspective young woman with two names. Everywhere there is danger and grace. In the trials of her past, the rigors of her faith; and in the icy world as it unfolds before her, there are promises of redemption. Jacob Paul offers us in this powerful novel Sarah's many layered season of discovery.” -- Ron Carlson, author of Five Skies and The Signal
Jacob Paul teaches creative writing at the University of Utah, where he earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. A 9/11 World Trade Center survivor, he won the 2008 Utah Writers' Contest, and the 2007 Richard Scowcroft Prize. Sarah/Sara is his first novel. Read more about him here.
Thursday, June 24, 7:30 PM
KATE WALBERT
A Short History of WomenA Short History of Women spans more than one hundred years and five generations of women—beginning with the death by starvation of a suffragette in England and ending with a playdate on the Upper West Side. Filled with humor and rage, it is a complex, compact novel that claims England and America in its epic scope -- from the politicization of women for the vote in the early 20th century to the free-floating, un-nameable anxiety of mothers and daughters in the early 21st century. The novel looks backward and forward, each century a striation of rock, each character defined by the pressures and weather of her particular moment; through this layering the characters react in lively and unpredictable ways to what came before, furthering the ambitious woman’s ongoing argument with history. Named one of the 10 Best Books of 2009 by the New York Times Book Review, A Short History of Women is this talented novelist’s most audacious and ambitious work yet.
“A Short History of Women is an accomplished, absorbing, and ferociously graceful work…. The novel’s technical grace is remarkable, Walbert’s prose masterful.” -- Laura Van Den Berg, The Rumpus
Kate Walbert is the author of Where She Went, a New York Times notable book of 1998, The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the Connecticut Book Award for best fiction in 2002, and Our Kind, finalist for the National Book Award in 2004. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories and numerous other publications. She lives in New York City and Connecticut with her family.
Author photographs and book jacket images available upon request.Wednesday, July 7, 7:30 PM
WILLOW WILSON
The Butterfly Mosque:
A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and IslamTwenty-seven-year-old G. Willow Wilson has already established herself as an accomplished writer on modern religion and the Middle East in publications such asThe Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. In her memoir, The Butterfly Mosque, she tells her remarkable story of converting to Islam and falling in love with an Egyptian man in a turbulent post–9/11 world.
When Willow leaves her atheist parents in Denver to study at Boston University, she enrolls in an Islamic Studies course, hopeful that it will help her to understand her inchoate spirituality. As she reads through the teachings and events of the Quran, Willow is astounded and comforted by how deeply this fourteen-hundred-year-old document speaks to who she is, and decides to risk everything to convert to Islam and embark on a fated journey across continents and into an uncertain future.
She settles in Cairo where she teaches English and attempts to submerge herself in a culture based on her adopted religion. And then she meets Omar, a passionate young man with a mild resentment of the Western influences in his homeland. They fall in love, entering into a daring relationship that calls into question the very nature of family, belief, and tradition. Torn between the secular West and Muslim East, Willow -- identifiably Western with her shock of red hair, shaky Arabic, and candor -- records her intensely personal struggle to forge a “third culture” that might accommodate her own values without compromising them or the friends and family on both sides of the divide.
Part travelogue, love story, and memoir, The Butterfly Mosque is a brave, inspiring story of faith -- in God, in each other, in ourselves, and in the ability of relationships to transcend cultural barriers and exist above the evils that threaten to keep us apart.
Willow Wilson was born in New Jersey in 1982 and raised in Colorado. Shortly after graduating from Boston University, Willow moved to Cairo, where she converted to Islam. She divides her time between Cairo and Seattle. Wilson is also the author of the graphic novel Cairo.