Events

In celebration of World Migratory Bird Day, join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Saturday, October 14th at 4:30 pm when acclaimed children's book author MADELEINE DUNPHY comes to read her two children's picture books The Peregrine's Journey  and The Turtle Dove's Journey.  Madeleine will be joined in conversation by MARY MALEC, Cal Falcons Raptor Expert, to discuss the peregrine falcons nesting on the Campanile, a mile from the bookstore! Madeleine will also sign copies of her books after the reading.

To register for this free event, sign up on Eventbrite or at the store. Click below to order a copy of Madeleine's books prior to the event.

The Peregrine's Journey - Paperback

The Turtle Dove's Journey

The Peregrine's Journey vividly describes one of the most remarkable feats in the animal kingdom. Beginning in Alaska and ending two months later in Argentina, the peregrine falcon's annual migration is an 8,000-mile flight across the Americas. This beautifully illustrated book allows young readers to follow one bird on its journey. Based on the actual migration of a real bird that was tracked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the book is filled with amazing facts about the bird's diet, habits, and navigational abilities, as well as stunning views of the many habitats the peregrine visits along the way.

The Turtle Dove's Journey follows a turtle dove on his 4,000 mile migration from England to Mali, Africa. Starting in the prim hedges of Suffolk, England, instinct drives the dove high into the night skies for a 4,000 mile trip to the savannahs of Mali, in West Africa. Along the way there are lonely, moonlit flights above the sea, a cozy hideout in the bushes of Bordeaux, France, a meeting of the birds at Gibraltar, the fountains of Casablanca, winds flowing "like a river" down canyons of the Atlas Mountains, and a Sahara sandstorm churning below. With carefully researched prose and luminous paintings, this book is perfect for anyone who has ever wondered about the mysterious journeys of Earth's feathered creatures.

MADELEINE DUNPHY has studied and visited many of the world’s ecosystems, and was inspired to write books about our world’s great diversity of life. Her books have been published by Hyperion Books for Children, Millbrook Press, and her own publishing company, Web of Life Children’s Books—a publishing company devoted to publishing picture books about the environment. Madeleine is also a teacher, activist and mother. She lives in Oakland, California.

MARY MALEC saw her first peregrine on a bridge during those last few years before there were no East Coast peregrines left. It would be 50 years before she saw a second peregrine. In the intervening years biologists used captive breeding and hacking and cross-fostering, combining science and falconry to help the peregrine recovery process. She has been monitoring nest sites and participating in urban fledgewatch for over 15 years, learning about this crazy and magnificent species

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 3:30 pm on October 14th.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 4:15 - 4:30 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Tuesday, October 17th at 7 pm when author STUART REID comes to discuss and sign copies of his new book The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination. Reid's book is a spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo. Stuart will be joined in conversation by ADAM HOCHSCHILD. (Stuart's photo by Mark Jaworski)

To attend this free event, you must register on Eventbrite or in the store.  Click here to preorder a copy of The Lumumba Plot. 

It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.

Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.

STUART A. REID is an executive editor of Foreign Affairs. He has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Politico Magazine, Slate, and other publications. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

ADAM HOCHSCHILD is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven books, including King Leopold's Ghost and To End All Wars (both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and Bury the Chains (a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award). He lives in Berkeley, California.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on October 17th.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Thursday, October 19th at 7 pm when acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist NAVIED MAHDAVIAN  will read from, discuss, and sign copies of his new graphic novel This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America. It's a gorgeously illustrated and written debut graphic memoir about belonging, identity, and making a home in the remote American West. Navied will be joined in conversation by AMY KURZWEIL. (Navied's photo by Garth Bowden)

To sign up for this free event, go to Eventbrite or contact the store. Click Here to preorder a copy of This Country.

Before Navied Mahdavian moved with his wife and dog in November of 2016 from San Francisco to an off-the-grid cabin in rural Idaho, he had never fished, gardened, hiked, hunted, or lived in a snowy place. But there, he could own land, realize his dream of being an artist, and start a family—the Millennial dream. Over the next three years, Mahdavian leaned into the wonders of the natural Idaho landscape and found himself adjusting to and enjoying a slower pace of living. But beyond the boundaries of his six acres, he was confronted with the realities of America’s political shifts and forced to confront the question: Do I belong here?

Mahdavian’s beautifully written and unflinchingly honest graphic memoir charts his growth and struggles as an artist, citizen, and new father. It celebrates his love of place and honors the relationships he makes in rural America, touching on dynamics like culture, environment, and identity in America, and even articulating difficult moments of racism and brutality he found there as a Middle Eastern American. With wit, compassion, and a sense of humor, Mahdavian’s insider perspective offers a unique portrait of one of the most remote and wild areas of the American West.

"In Mahdavian's hands, comics feel like poetry. Perfect ink drawings bring land, beast, and humans, with all their delicacy and yearning, viscerally to life. This Country … made me want to grant my own surroundings the grace, humor, and dignity of Mahdavian's observant study." —Amy Kurzweil, cartoonist and author of Flying Couch: A Graphic Memoir

NAVIED MAHDAVIAN has been a contributing cartoonist to The New Yorker since 2018, where his cartoons and comics appear regularly. His work has also been featured in the LA Times, Reader's Digest, Wired, Alta Online, and in the cartoon collections, The Rejection Collection (2022) and Send Help!(2021). Before becoming a cartoonist, he taught the 5th grade in the East Bay where he learned most of his jokes.

AMY KURZWEIL is a cartoonist who is the author of two graphic memoirs: Flying Couch (2016) and her new book, Artificial: A Love Story (2023). Flying Couch was named a 2016 New York Times Editor’s Choice and a Kirkus Best Memoir of 2016. Her comics appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Believer, and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in Longreads, Literary Hub, The Toast, and other publications.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on October 19th.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Join us on Monday, October 23rd at 7:00 PM when author CAROL ROH SPAULDING appears to read from, discuss, and sign her new book of short stories, Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories. Carol will be joined in conversation by VANESSA HUA.

This is a free event, but you must register through Eventbrite or at the bookstore. Click Here to preorder a copy of Waiting For Mr. Kim and Other Stories.

This collection of linked stories follows four generations of the Songs, a Korean American family, beginning in 1924 just prior to the Immigration Act and extending to near the end of the century. Linked stories, or stories that form a story cycle, are a common book-length form seen in Asian American literature that accommodates multiple perspectives across generations and locations. Through this story cycle, patterns emerge as cultural identity and individuality, often in tension with one another, shape choices and outcomes.

With these stories, Carol Roh Spaulding charts shifting definitions of “Americanness” across time through the arc of a family narrative. She also explores desire and belonging as articulated, in turns, by the mother, father, granddaughter, great-grandson, and even a ghost child who died after a tragic accident. But these linked stories center on the life experiences of Gracie Song. They follow her from girlhood to young motherhood, through her children’s teenage years, and finally to her elderly solitude, when to her great astonishment she finds romance with a younger man and reconciliation with an estranged daughter—both unexpected gifts of later life.

CAROL ROH SPAULDING received the 2022 Flannery O’Conner Award for Short Fiction from University of Georgia Press, selected by Lori Ostlund. Her stories and essays have appeared in several publications including Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and December magazine. Awards for her work include a Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays 2019 Notable Mention, and the Eludia prize from Hidden River Arts for her forthcoming novel, Helen Button (Sowilo Press). A California native and grand-daughter of Korean immigrants, she teaches at Drake University in Des Moines and lives in rural Iowa with her family.

VANESSA HUA is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. A former longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is required. Registration ends at 4:30 pm on October 23rd.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Thursday, October 26th at 7 pm when Bay Area author NANCY JOOYOUN KIM will read from, discuss, and sign copies of her new novel What We Kept To Ourselves. The New York Times bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick The Last Story of Mina Lee returns with a timely and surprising new novel about a family’s search for answers following the disappearance of their mother. Nancy will be joined in conversation by Berkeley author HANNAH MICHELL.  (Nancy's photo by Andria Lo)

This is a free event, but you must register on Eventbrite or at the store.  Click here to preorder a copy of What We Kept To Ourselves. 

1999: The Kim family is struggling to move on after their mother, Sunny, vanished a year ago. Sixty-one-year-old John Kim feels more isolated from his grown children, Anastasia and Ronald, than ever before. But one evening, their fragile lives are further upended when John finds the body of a stranger in the backyard, carrying a letter to Sunny, leaving the family with more questions than ever about the stranger’s history and possible connections to their mother.

1977: Sunny is pregnant and has just moved to Los Angeles from Korea with her aloof and often-absent husband. America is not turning out the way she had dreamed it to be, and the loneliness and isolation are broken only by a fateful encounter at a bus stop. The unexpected connection spans the decades and echoes into the family’s lives in the present as they uncover devastating secrets that put not only everything they thought they knew about their mother but their very lives at risk.

Both a riveting page-turner and moving family story, What We Kept to Ourselves masterfully explores the consequences of secrets between parents and children, hus­bands and wives. It is the story of one unforgettable family’s search for home when all seems lost, and a powerful meditation on identity, migration, and what it means to dream in America.

NANCY JOOYOUN KIM is the New York Times bestselling author of What We Kept to Ourselves and The Last Story of Mina Lee, a Reese’s Book Club pick. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

HANNAH MICHELL grew up in Seoul. She studied anthropology and philosophy at Cambridge University and now lives in California with her husband and children. She teaches in the Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies Program at UC Berkeley. Her U.S. debut novel Excavations was published in 2023.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on October 26th.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be accommodated only if space allows.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 6:45 and 7:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

OUR shared restrooms are not accessible after 6:30 PM, please plan accordingly.

Mrs. Dalloway's is pleased to present a special off-site event on Sunday, November 5th at 4:00 pm with author MANDY AFTEL, the owner of Aftelier Perfumes and the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, California. Mandy will discuss and sign copies of her new book The Museum of Scent: Exploring the Curious and Wondrous World of Fragrance.  Breathe in the natural and cultural history of scent with this richly illustrated book inspired by the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents. (Mandy's photo by Aya Brackett)

To attend this free event, you must register on Eventbrite. Space is limited to 40 attendees for this special event so sign up early!  Click here to preorder a copy of The Museum of Scent. 

EXCLUSIVE OFFER: the first 20 people to preorder the book will also receive a complimentary ticket to the Aftel Archive of Curious Scent — a $25 value!

Please note, this event is offsite at the author's beautiful backyard garden located at 1518 Walnut St. in Berkeley, not in the bookstore.

Mandy Aftel is one of the world’s preeminent natural perfumers, with a clientele ranging from the singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen to Ivy Ross, head of hardware design at Google. Eschewing the synthetic molecules that dominate commercial perfumes, Aftel creates her complex and subtle fragrances using only natural essences. For her, each of these essences is a gateway to a lost world of scent, stretching back to the beginnings of human civilization and intertwined with the history of medicine, cuisine, adornment, sexuality, and spirituality. In 2017, Aftel opened a one-room museum—the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents—in her backyard in Berkeley, California, to help a modern audience rediscover the enchantment of this lost world. Her museum has attracted thousands of enthusiastic visitors and has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Goop, O: The Oprah Magazine, and numerous other media outlets.

Now Aftel has created this beautiful book, illustrated with treasures from her museum’s collection, so that readers at home can immerse themselves in the world of scent. She guides us through the different families of botanical fragrances (including flowers, woods, leaves and grasses, and resins), depicting each plant with a hand-colored antique woodcut and revealing its olfactory notes and lore. Special chapters are devoted to the most rare and precious fragrances—such as ambergris, formed of a rare secretion of the sperm whale—and to antique essential oil bottles, handwritten recipe books, and other evocative artifacts. The Museum of Scent, which includes a bookmark subtly scented with a natural essence, invites us on a sensuous, imaginative journey.

MANDY AFTEL, an internationally known artisan perfumer and authority on natural fragrance, is the owner of Aftelier Perfumes and the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents in Berkeley, California. Her other books include Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume, which helped sparked the natural perfume renaissance and has been translated into eight languages. Aftel's work has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and numerous other major outlets.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is REQUIRED. Registration ends at Noon on November 5th.

BECAUSE SEATING is limited, please register only if you plan to attend.

DUE TO SPACE limitations, we may not be able to accommodate every person at an event, so early registration is encouraged.

WALK-INS will be allowed at this event only if space allows.

THE MUSEUM will not be accessible during the event.

WE ASK that attendees arrive between 3:45 and 4:00 PM for the event.

PLEASE leave your non-support companion animals at home.

NO RESTROOM access during the event so please plan accordingly.