Our monthly Open Mic Night is back and it's going virtual! 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 Published and unpublished writers are encouraged to attend and enjoy a welcoming audience.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!
Open mic is usually held the last Monday of every month at 7pm.
CLICK HERE TO ATTEND THE EVENT
Seán Dwyer teaches Spanish at Western Washington University and his memoir, A Quest for Tears: Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury continues to be a bestseller at Village Books. He is also the author of a number of published short stories. As an advocate for other writers, he hosts the open mic at Village Books.
Join us in the Virtual Readings Gallery for this timely event, just two days after the first presidential debate! Amy will present with several contributors to the book.
Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Trump Era brings together a diverse community of women who reveal the impact Donald Trump’s behavior, words, and presidency has had on each one of them, how each is confronting the problem, and how she is fighting back. Most readers will identify with more than one of these powerfully authentic and revealing personal essays representing a refreshingly broad representation of viewpoints. And that is exactly why Fury matters: it will help the reader feel less alone, work through some of their own hurt and pain, and formulate a plan for what they can do to bring about an end to the Trump presidency. Fury is a cohesive narrative of the times we live in, and chronicles a unique chapter in history for the edification of generations of women and allies to follow.
Amy Roost is a documentary podcaster and freelance journalist. She is an Annenberg School of Journalism 2019 California Health Journalism Fellow and recipient of numerous journalism awards for her op-ed columns appearing in San Diego Union Tribune publications.
Other contributors to present at this event:
Alissa Hirshfeld (co-editor) is a psychotherapist and writer. She is the co-editor of Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences During the Trump Era, as well as the author of a novel, Living Waters: From Harvard Halls to Sacred Falls and a memoir, This Whole Wide World is Just a Narrow Bridge. Her academic articles have appeared in several psychological journals.
Meg Weber writes memoir, crafting true stories from her days. Meg's writing gives voice to how her life unfolds outside the boundaries prescribed for her. She writes about transgression, about edges, and about finding her way back into connection with her family through tragedy.
Sarah Mina Osman is a writer and teacher residing in Los Angeles, CA. Her work has been in Argot Magazine, HelloGiggles, and Vocally. She loves to travel and has a deep appreciation for sloths.
Elena Perez works to advance environmental justice, address climate change, and engage marginalized populations to promote healthier and more resilient communities.
Monday, October 5, 7:00pm
Join Village Books co-owners Kelly Evert and Paul Hanson for a lively discussion of books from a variety of genres. We'll meet on Zoom, the first Monday of each month at 7pm. Register here to access the meeting.
Please remember that if you purchase a copy of our monthly book group selection from Village Books, you'll get our book group discount of 15%, so order your copy by following the link below and mention in the comments field that it's for book group!
Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner
The daughter of a Burmese mother and a white American father, Alex Wagner grew up thinking of herself as a “futureface”—an avatar of a mixed-race future when all races would merge into a brown singularity. But when one family mystery leads to another, Wagner’s post-racial ideals fray as she becomes obsessed with the specifics of her own family’s racial and ethnic history.
Drawn into the wild world of ancestry, she embarks upon a quest around the world—and into her own DNA—to answer the ultimate questions of who she really is and where she belongs. The journey takes her from Burma to Luxembourg, from ruined colonial capitals with records written on banana leaves to Mormon databases, genetic labs, and the rest of the twenty-first-century genealogy complex. But soon she begins to grapple with a deeper question: Does it matter? Is our enduring obsession with blood and land, race and identity, worth all the trouble it’s caused us?
Wagner weaves together fascinating history, genetic science, and sociology but is really after deeper stuff than her own ancestry: in a time of conflict over who we are as a country, she tries to find the story where we all belong.
The Cookbook and Cooking Lit book group is led by Diana, VB employee, former Consumer and Family Science teacher, and avid home cook.
Join Diana from 4-5 pm the first Wednesday of most months, on Zoom to discuss a featured cookbook or cooking literature selection. Most months we focus on a particular cookbook, discussing the techniques or recipes that we have tried or would like to try. The majority of the cookbooks that we discuss are newer ones that have gotten a lot of buzz, and have been published in the past two years. Occasionally we throw in a classic cookbook, or a book of food-related fiction to mix things up. Register here to access the meeting!
Please remember that if you purchase a copy of our monthly book group selection from Village Books, you'll get our book group discount of 15%, so order your copy by following the link below and mention in the comments field that it's for book group!
Wednesday, October 7, 4:00pm
Cannelle et Vanille: Nourishing, Gluten-Free Recipes for Every Meal and Mood by Aran Goyoaga
Recipes are organized around the day: start off with Spicy Carrot, Grapefruit, and Sunflower juice Soft-cooked Eggs with Dukkah and Bitter Greens; and move on to Tomato, Corn, and Bread Salad at midday. There is a chapter of everyday dinners you can prepare on a weeknight, such as a simple spaghetti and meatballs supper or Braised Chicken with Apples and Cider. You'll also find a chapter of menus to inspire you when you want to gather together a larger group of friends and family which Aran heartily encourages! She is especially known for her tender, gluten-free baking, and the book includes recipes for her sourdough bread, caramelized onion and fennel biscuits, and apple tarte tatin (with flour substitutions are included for those who aren't gluten-free).
Filled with Aran's gorgeous photographs, you will also find suggestions sprinkled throughout the book for creating a welcoming space with lighting, linens, flowers, and flatware, along with gentle encouragement to spend time in the kitchen nourishing yourself as well as those you love.
Join us for an event that will address climate change and what a group of activists are doing to make change.
When 21 youth activists filed Juliana v. United States, they asserted that the government’s continued negligence of the environment constituted a violation of their rights to life, liberty, and property. In As the World Burns, Lee van der Voo follows the still-evolving legal case as she tells the plaintiffs’ stories, all against the backdrop of the current climate-related crises and the mass protests happening and around the world. Granted unparalleled access to the plaintiffs and their legal team, van der Voo reveals the human side of the climate crisis, the dire effects of decades of inaction, and the reasons why tackling our environmental issues in the courts is possibly our last real hope for meaningful intervention.
Lee van der Voo is an award-winning investigative and environmental journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian, among others. Her 2016 book The Fish Market, which chronicles the gentrification of the sea in the name of sustainable seafood, won an Oregon Book Award for General Nonfiction.
This event is part of the Nature of Writing Series run in partnership with the North Cascades Institute.
Motherhood by the Book is led by Claire, VB staffer, mother, and grandmother.
The book group meets on the second Sunday of every month at 2pm on Zoom, for an hour of spirited discussion of books that celebrate the trials, tribulations, and rewards of motherhood, and what it means to be a mother. This group is by no means exclusive to moms with kids still at home. We read fiction and non-fiction, older and newer titles, all with the theme of Motherhood. Join us! Register here to access the meeting!
Sunday,October 11, 2:00pm
And Now We Have Everything: On Motherhood Before I Was Ready by Meaghan O'Connell *AUTHOR IS ATTENDING!
When Meaghan O'Connell got accidentally pregnant in her twenties and decided to keep the baby, she realized that the book she needed -- a brutally honest, agenda-free reckoning with the emotional and existential impact of motherhood -- didn't exist. So she decided to write it herself.
And Now We Have Everything is O'Connell's exploration of the cataclysmic, impossible-to-prepare-for experience of becoming a mother. With her dark humor and hair-trigger B.S. detector, O'Connell addresses the pervasive imposter syndrome that comes with unplanned pregnancy, the fantasies of a "natural" birth experience that erode maternal self-esteem, post-partum body and sex issues, and the fascinating strangeness of stepping into a new, not-yet-comfortable identity.
Channeling fears and anxieties that are still taboo and often unspoken, And Now We Have Everything is an unflinchingly frank, funny, and visceral motherhood story for our times, about having a baby and staying, for better or worse, exactly yourself.
We're so excited to welcome one of our favorite local poets to the Virtual Readings Gallery! Order a signed copy of The Generosity exclusively from Village Books!
The Generosity is Luci' Shaw's 38th book. In it Shaw celebrates the beautiful diversity of nature and human nature in lyric poems with wide-ranging themes. The writing is both accessible and profound, and has been described as reminiscent of Dylan Thomas.
"Luci Shaw's poems have always been welcome company, but how much more so in anxious times. There is a substantial comfort in her instinct for pleasure--in language, creation, people, habits. Her poems reveal a mind marked by humor, curiosity, good nature, and, well, generosity. Each poem in this new book is a short lesson in noticing the world attentively, and a reminder to slow down and find the wonder, not just in the natural world, but in the less lovely things that make up our ordinary lives and duties. Time spent with Luci is time redeemed." -- Mary Kenagy Mitchell, Executive Editor, Image
Luci Shaw was born in London, England, in 1928. A poet and essayist, since 1986 she has been Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver. Author of thirty-eight books of poetry and creative non-fiction, her writing has appeared in numerous literary and religious journals. In 2013 she received the 10th annual Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. She lives with her husband, John Hoyte, in Bellingham, WA.
