Events

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Thursday, January 4th at 7:00 pm when local Berkeley author and UC Berkeley professor DACHER KELTNER will read from, discuss, and sign copies of his book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

From a foremost expert on the science of emotions and consultant to Pixar’s Inside Out, it's a groundbreaking and essential exploration into the history, science, and greater understanding of awe. (Dacher's photo by Natalie Keltner-McNeil)

This is a free event, but you must pre-register at Eventbrite or in the store to attend.  Click here to preorder a paperback copy of Awe.

Awe is mysterious. How do we begin to quantify the goose bumps we feel when we see the Grand Canyon, or the utter amazement when we watch a child walk for the first time? How do you put into words the collective effervescence of standing in a crowd and singing in unison, or the wonder you feel while gazing at centuries-old works of art? Up until fifteen years ago, there was no science of awe, the feeling we experience when we encounter vast mysteries that transcend our understanding of the world. Scientists were studying emotions like fear and disgust, emotions that seemed essential to human survival. Revolutionary thinking, though, has brought into focus how, through the span of evolution, we’ve met our most basic needs socially. We’ve survived thanks to our capacities to cooperate, form communities, and create culture that strengthens our sense of shared identity—actions that are sparked and spurred by awe.

In Awe, Dacher Keltner presents a radical investigation and deeply personal inquiry into this elusive emotion. Revealing new research into how awe transforms our brains and bodies, alongside an examination of awe across history, culture, and within his own life during a period of grief, Keltner shows us how cultivating awe in our everyday life leads us to appreciate what is most humane in our human nature. And during a moment in which our world feels more divided than ever before, and more imperiled by crises of different kinds, we are greatly in need of awe.

If we open our minds, it is awe that sharpens our reasoning and orients us toward big ideas and new insights, that cools our immune system’s inflammation response and strengthens our bodies. It is awe that activates our inclination to share and create strong networks, to take actions that are good for the natural and social world around us. It is awe that transforms who we are, that inspires the creation of art, music, and religion. At turns radical and profound, brimming with enlightening and practical insights, Awe is our field guide, from not only one of the leading voices on the subject but a fellow seeker of awe in his own right, for how to place awe as a vital force within our lives.

DACHER KELTNER is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the faculty director of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center. A renowned expert in the science of human emotion, Dr. Keltner studies compassion and awe, how we express emotion, and how emotions guide our moral identities and search for meaning. His research interests also span issues of power, status, inequality, and social class. He is the author of The Power Paradox and the bestselling book Born to Be Good, and the coeditor of The Compassionate Instinct.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on January 4th.

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 Thursday, January 11th at 7 pm when debut authors CHRISTINE PLATT (right) and CATHERINE WIGGINTON GREENE present their brand new novel, Rebecca, Not Becky. Christine and Catherine will read from and discuss their book and will sign copies after the presentation. The event is free, but you must preregister on Eventbrite or at the bookstore.  Click Here to order a copy of Rebecca, Not Becky. (Christine's photo by Norman E. Jones)

In the vein of Such a Fun Age, a whip-smart, compulsively readable novel about two upper-class stay-at-home mothers—one white, one Black—living in a "perfect" suburb that explores motherhood, friendship, and the true meaning of sisterhood amidst the backdrop of America’s all-too-familiar racial reckoning.

De’Andrea Whitman, her husband Malik, and their five-year-old daughter, Nina, are new to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia—a move motivated by circumstance rather than choice. De’Andrea is heartbroken to leave her comfortable life in the Black oasis of Atlanta, and between her mother-in-law’s Alzheimer's diagnosis, her daughter starting kindergarten, and the overwhelming whiteness of Rolling Hills, she finds herself struggling to adjust to her new community. To ease the transition, her therapist proposes a challenge: make a white girlfriend.

When Rebecca Myland learns about her new neighbors, the Whitmans, she's thrilled. As chair of the Parent Diversity Committee at her daughters’ school, she’s championed racial diversity in the community—and what could be better than a brand-new Black family? It’s serendipitous when her daughter, Isabella, and Nina become best friends on the first day of kindergarten. Now, Rebecca can put everything she’s learned about antiracism into practice—especially those oh-so-informative social media posts. And finally, the Parent Diversity Committee will have some… well, diversity.

Following her therapist’s suggestion, De’Andrea reluctantly joins Rebecca’s committee. The painfully earnest white woman is so overly eager it makes De’Andrea wonder if Rebecca’s therapist told her to make a Black friend! But when Rolling Hill’s rising racial sentiments bring the two women together in common cause, they find it isn’t the only thing they have in common. . . .

CHRISTINE PLATT writes literature for children and adults that centers African diasporic experiences—past, present, and future. She holds Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in African and African American studies as well as a juris doctorate in general law. She currently serves as Executive Director for Baldwin For The Arts.

CATHERINE WIGGINTON GREENE is a writer and filmmaker whose storytelling focuses on strengthening human connection and understanding. Her feature documentary I’m Not Racist . . . Am I? continues to be used throughout the US as a teaching tool for starting racial dialogue. A graduate of Coe College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Catherine is currently pursuing her doctorate from The George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

Platt and Greene both live in Washington, DC.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on January 11th.

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 Tuesday, January 16th at 7:00 pm when author PETER COVIELLO reads from, discusses, and signs copies of his new book Is There God After Prince?: Dispatches From an Age of Last Things, a collection of  essays considering what it means to love art, culture, and people in an age of accelerating disaster.

This event is free, but you must register on Eventbrite or in the store to attend. Click here to order a copy Is There God After Prince?

This is a book about loving things—books, songs, people—in the shadow of a felt, looming disaster. Through lyrical, funny, heart-wrenching essays, Peter Coviello considers pieces of culture across a fantastic range, setting them inside the vivid scenes of friendship, dispute, romance, talk, and loss, where they enter our lives. Alongside him, we reencounter movies like The Shining, shows like The Sopranos; videos; poems; novels by Sam Lipsyte, Sally Rooney, and Paula Fox; as well as songs by Joni Mitchell, Gladys Knight, Steely Dan, Pavement, and the much-mourned saint of Minneapolis, Prince.

Navigating an overwhelming feeling that Coviello calls “endstrickenness,” he asks what it means to love things in calamitous times, when so much seems to be shambling toward collapse. Balancing comedy and anger, exhilaration and sorrow, Coviello illuminates the strange ways the things we cherish help us to hold on to life and to its turbulent joys. Is There God after Prince? shows us what twenty-first-century criticism can be, and how it might speak to us, in a time of ruin, in an age of “Last Things.”

PETER COVIELLO is the author of six books, including Make Yourselves Gods, a finalist for the 2020 John Whitmer Historical Association Best Book Prize; Tomorrow’s Parties, a 2013 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies; and Long Players, a memoir selected as one of ARTFORUM’s Ten Best Books of 2018. His newest book, Is There God After Prince?: Dispatches from an Age of Last Things, was selected for The Millions’ “Most Anticipated” list for 2023. He taught for many years at Bowdoin College and since 2014 has been at UIC, where he is Professor and Head of English.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on January 16th.

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 Tuesday, January 23rd at 7:00 pm when local Berkeley poet KATIE PETERSON comes to read from her new book Fog and Smoke: Poems, in which she unfurls the quotidian fabric of our lives, patterned with the difficulties of language and this moment. Katie will be joined in discussion by poet MATTHEW ZAPRUDER, and she will sign copies of her book after the presentation. (Katie's photo by Young Suh; Matthew's photo by B.A. VanSise)

This is a free event, but you must register on Eventbrite or in the store. Click Here to preorder a copy of Fog and Smoke: Poems.

Confusion frames the human predicament. In Katie Peterson’s Fog and Smoke, confusion is, literally, our climate. Writing to, and from, the California landscape, Peterson sees fog and smoke as literal—one a natural weather event, the other an aftereffect of the West’s drought-caused fires—but they are also metaphysical. Fog and smoke subsume the poet and reflect the true conditions (and frustrations) of our ability to perceive and to connect. She writes, “I’ve been speaking about it at a distance. / Now I want to talk about its thickness. / A person could get killed in here.”

The collection moves through three sections: First, the poet follows her local fog’s cyclical journey of descent and dispersion; second, in a sort of pastoral interlude, she travels widely, almost erratically, to the California desert, the greater world, and ancient history; finally, she descends into the enclosed space of the household, and the increased confinement and intimacy of raising a child during the pandemic. Peterson unfolds the small moments that make up our lives and reveals the truths contained within them, and her poems capture the lyricism of our daily rhythms—the interruptions, dialogues, and epiphanies.

KATIE PETERSON is the author of the poetry collections This One Tree; Permission; The Accounts, winner of the Rilke Prize; and A Piece of Good News. She lives in California and teaches at the University of California, Davis.

MATTHEW ZAPRUDER is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently Father’s Day, as well as Why Poetry, and Story of a Poem. He lives in Northern California, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s College of California, and is editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and he was the Editor of Best American Poetry 2022. His forthcoming collection of poetry, I Love Hearing Your Dreams, will be published by Scribner in early 2025.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on January 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 Wednesday, January 24th at 7:00 pm when international bestselling author JEN GUNTER comes to the store to present her new book,  Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation. Jen will be joined in discussion by author INA PARK and will sign copies of her book after the presentation. (Jen's photo by Chloe Jackman)

This is a free event, but you must register in advance at Eventbrite or in the store.  Click here to preorder a copy of Blood.

Get empowering, period-positive, no-nonsense facts about the science, medicine, and myths surrounding menstruation from Dr. Jen Gunter, New York Times bestselling author of The Vagina Bible!

"The world's most famous and outspoken gynecologist” (The Guardian) fights myths and fearmongering with real science, inclusive facts, and shame-free advice on the topic

Most women, transgender, and non-binary people who menstruate can expect to have hundreds of periods in a lifetime. So why is real information so hard to find? Despite its significance, most education about menstruation focuses either on increasing the chances of pregnancy or preventing it. And while both are important for many people, those who menstruate deserve to know more about their bodies than just what happens in service to reproduction. At a time when charlatans, politicians, and social media are succeeding in propagating damaging misinformation with real and devastating consequences, Dr. Jen provides the antidote with science, myth busting, and no-nonsense facts.

Not knowing how your body works makes it challenging to advocate for yourself. Consequently, many suffer in silence thinking their bodies are uniquely broken, or they turn to disreputable sources. Blood is a practical, empowering guide to what’s typical, what’s concerning, and when to seek care—recounted with expertise and frank, fearless wit that have made Dr. Jen today’s most trusted voice in gynecology.

Blood is about much more than biology. It’s an all-in-one, revolutionary guide that will change the way we think about, talk about—and don’t talk about—our bodies and our well-being.

DR JEN GUNTER is an internationally bestselling author, obstetrician, and gynecologist with more than three decades of experience as a vulvar and vaginal diseases expert. Considered “the world's most famous—and outspoken—gynecologist,” (The Guardian), her New York Times and USA Today bestselling books, The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto, have been translated into 25 languages. She is the host of Jensplaining, a CBC/Amazon Prime video series that highlights the impact of medical misinformation on women, and the recipient of the 2020 NAMS Media Award from The North American Menopause Society. Her 2020 TED Talk, “Why Can’t We Talk About Periods?” received more than two million views in its first six months, leading to the launch of her popular podcast on the TED Audio Collective, “Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter.” Originally from Winnipeg, Canada, she lives with her sons in San Francisco.

INA PARK MD, MS, is a professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, Medical Consultant at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Division of STD Prevention, and Medical Director of the California Prevention Training Center. She holds degrees from the University of California Berkeley, UCLA School of Medicine, and the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Recently, Park served as a co-author of the 2020 CDC STD Treatment Guidelines and contributor to the Department of Health and Human Services STI Federal Action Plan. Ina published the book Strange Bedgellows with Flatiron Books in 2021. A fierce advocate for public health, she lives in Berkeley with her husband and two sons.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on January 24th.

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.