Offsite

The Spanish Open Mic is BACK! Join us on Zoom and support our Spanish-language writers and poets, followed by the traditional Open Mic at 7pm!

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Village Books invites everyone to enjoy local talents as they share their own stories, poems and essays. Published and unpublished writers are encouraged to attend and enjoy a welcoming audience. Our regular emcee and celebrated local author, Sean Dwyer, will host as he does every month. Pre-registration to read is required and spaces are limited so please email Sean at sean@seandwyerauthor.com to secure your spot! Spanish open mic is held the last Monday of each month at 6pm on Zoom.

Join us for an evening of mystery with celebrated local author, Bharti Kirchner as she presents her new book, Murder at Andaman!

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Maya Mallick, Private Detective, is called when her best friend’s husband, a book publisher, is murdered in the Andaman Islands in India. Maya travels there, endangering herself, only to discover he’d been living a secret life. Her quest is made more difficult when she starts to suspect her friend of wrongdoing.

Bharti Kirchner, author of eight acclaimed novels and four cookbooks, is the 2020 winner of the prestigious SALA Award. Bharti has written for Food & Wine, Vegetarian Times, The Writer, San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, and eleven anthologies. She’s been honored as a Living Pioneer Asian-American Author. Visit www.bhartikirchner.com.

Interested in writing? Sign up for our monthly Just Write enewsletter today!

Village Books and WCC Community and Continuing Education have established a writing instruction collaboration called Chuckanut Writers. Writing classes, seminars, and conferences will inspire and encourage writers at all stages of their writing journey.

We're welcoming these two fantastic authors BACK to the Virtual Readings Gallery and this time the tables are turned! We're celebrating the paperback release of Clyde Ford's award-winning memoir with a conversation between him and George Dyson.

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In this thought-provoking and heartbreaking memoir, an award-winning writer tells the story of his father, John Stanley Ford, the first black software engineer at IBM, revealing how racism insidiously affected his father’s view of himself and their relationship. 

In 1947, Thomas J. Watson set out to find the best and brightest minds for IBM. At City College he met young accounting student John Stanley Ford and hired him to become IBM’s first black software engineer. But not all of the company’s white employees refused to accept a black colleague and did everything in their power to humiliate, subvert, and undermine Ford. Yet Ford would not quit. Viewing the job as the opportunity of a lifetime, he comported himself with dignity and professionalism, and relied on his community and his "street smarts" to succeed. He did not know that his hiring was meant to distract from IBM’s dubious business practices, including its involvement in the Holocaust, eugenics, and apartheid.

While Ford remained at IBM, it came at great emotional cost to himself and his family, especially his son Clyde. Overlooked for promotions he deserved, the embittered Ford began blaming his fate on his skin color and the notion that darker-skinned people like him were less intelligent and less capable—beliefs that painfully divided him and Clyde, who followed him to IBM two decades later. From his first day of work—with his wide-lapelled suit, bright red turtleneck, and huge afro—Clyde made clear he was different. Only IBM hadn’t changed. As he, too, experienced the same institutional racism, Clyde began to better understand the subtle yet daring ways his father had fought back.

Clyde W. Ford was born in NYC. He’s the author of thirteen works of fiction and non-fiction. He's also a psychotherapist, an accomplished mythologist, and a sought-after public speaker. In 2006, Ford received the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award in African American fiction. He was named a “Literary Lion” by the King County Library System in 2006, 2007, and 2008. Clyde was voted “Best Writer of Bellingham, Washington” in 2006 and 2007 by readers of the Cascadia Weekly and he received the 2007 Bellingham, Washington Mayor’s Arts Award in Literature. Ford is currently a speaker for Humanities Washington, an affiliate of the NEA, where he presents a program entitled, "Let's Talk About Race," around the state. Clyde has participated in hundreds of media interviews and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, New Dimensions Radio, and National Public Radio. He lives in Bellingham, Washington. 

George Dyson, a dual citizen of the United States and Canada, is an independent historian of technology whose subjects have included the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986), the evolution of artificial intelligence (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997), a path not taken into space (Project Orion, 2002), and the transition from numbers that mean things to numbers that do things in the aftermath of World War II (Turing’s Cathedral, 2012). His newest book, Analogia, where he presents a startling look back at the analog age and life before the digital revolution—and an unsettling vision of what comes next. Dyson lives in Bellingham.