Events

March 2024



Join us on Tuesday, March 19th 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.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Is There God after Prince?: Dispatches from an Age of Last Things By Peter Coviello Cover Image
$18.00
ISBN: 9780226828084
Availability: Most titles are on our shelves or available within 1-5 days.
Published: University of Chicago Press - October 6th, 2023

 

Join us on Thursday, March 21st at 7pm when New York Times bestselling author MARGOT LIVESEY comes to the store to share her latest novel The Road From Belhaven. Margot will read from and discuss her book and will sign copies after the presentation. She will be joined in conversation by author SARAH STONE. (Margot's photo by Michael Lionstar).

This is a free event, but you must register in advance on Eventbrite or in the store.  Click Here to order a copy of The Road From Belhaven before her event.

From the author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy comes a novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in late-nineteenth-century Scotland.

“Bewitching and seductive.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You

“A treasure: a writer who understands the magic and mysteries of the human soul." —Chris Bohjalian, author of Hour of the Witch

“This book is a cold, clear, perfect lake." —Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.

Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.

Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven once again displays “the marvelous control of a writer who conjures equally well the tangible, sensory world . . . and the mysteries, stranger and wilder, that flicker at the border of that world.” —The Boston Globe

MARGOT LIVESEY was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Mercury, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, MA and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

SARAH STONE is the author of the novels The True Sources of the Nile and Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th Annual Northern California Book Awards. She is also the co-author, with Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. Her work has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, 100 Word Story, StoryQuarterly, The Millions, Scoundrel Time, The Believer, and A Kite in the Wind: Fiction Writers on Their Craft, and was included in the list of distinguished stories of 2020 in The Best American Short Stories 2021. She teaches creative writing online for Stanford Continuing Studies and works with writers one on one.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on March 21st.

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.

Thursday, March 21, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
The Road from Belhaven: A novel By Margot Livesey Cover Image
$29.00
ISBN: 9780593537046
Availability: Most titles are on our shelves or available within 1-5 days.
Published: Knopf - February 6th, 2024

April 2024

 

Join us on Tuesday, April 2nd at 6:30 pm when bestselling Oakland author/illustrator BOOKI VIVAT, creator of the bestselling Frazzled series, comes to the store to launch her new graphic novel for young readers Meet Me On Mercer Street - think Harriet the Spy meets Front Desk. Booki will be joined in conversation by THIEN PHAM, author/illustrator of Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam.

This is a free event, but you must pre-register on Eventbrite or in the store to ensure seating. Click Here to preorder a copy of Meet Me On Mercer Street.

Aspiring artist Kacie spends most of her time on Mercer Street with her best friend, Nisha, people-watching and doodling whatever is happening in their neighborhood. But when she comes back from a summer away, the local corner store is boarded up, the adults in town are all on edge, and Nisha is nowhere to be found! Everything is changing, and Kacie’s not sure what to do about it. Especially without Nisha to help her.

But Kacie has a knack for noticing things, and with her sketchbooks and observational skills, she just might have what it takes to figure out what’s really happening on Mercer Street.

Filled with both cartoons and graphic comic panels, Booki Vivat draws a hilarious-yet-deeply-perceptive portrait of a changing neighborhood, a mysterious disappearance, and the girl who’s determined to understand how she fits in to the picture.

BOOKI VIVAT grew up in Southern California, telling stories and doodling. Before becoming an author, she taught middle school English abroad and worked in publishing in New York. Now she lives in Oakland and makes books for kids! Follow her on Instagram at @bookibookibooki and learn more at www.bookivivat.com.

THIEN PHAM is a graphic novelist, comic artist, and educator based in Oakland. He is the author and illustrator of the acclaimed graphic memoir Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam and the graphic novel Sumo. He also did the art for the middle-grade graphic novel Level Up, written by Gene Luen Yang. He is an ongoing comic contributor to EaterSF and as such eats. A lot. Follow Thien on Instagram at @thiendog .

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:00 pm on April 2nd.

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 6:15 and 6:30 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.

Tuesday, April 2, 2024 - 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
Meet Me on Mercer Street By Booki Vivat Cover Image
$12.99
ISBN: 9781338788686
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Scholastic Press - April 2nd, 2024

 

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:00 PM when Berkeley author SHERYL KASKOWITZ comes to the store to launch her new book A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression--One Song at a TimeSheryl will sign copies of her book after the presentation. It's the remarkable story of a hidden New Deal program that tried to change America and end the Great Depression using folk music, laying the groundwork for the folk revival and having a lasting impact on American culture. (Sheryl's photo by Shira Bezalel)

 

This is a free event, but you must sign up in advance on Eventbrite or in the store.  Click Here to preorder a copy of A Chance To Harmonize.

In 1934, the Great Depression had destroyed the US economy, leaving residents poverty-stricken. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt urged President Roosevelt to take radical action to help those hit hardest—Appalachian miners and mill workers stranded after factories closed, city dwellers with no hope of getting work, farmers whose land had failed. They set up government homesteads in rural areas across the country, an experiment in cooperative living where people could start over. To boost morale and encourage the homesteaders to find community in their own traditions, the administration brought in artists to lead group activities—including folk music.

As part of a music unit led by Charles Seeger (father of Pete), staffer Sidney Robertson traveled the country to record hundreds of folk songs. Music leaders, most notably Margaret Valiant, were sent to homesteads to use the collected songs to foster community and cooperation. Working almost entirely (and purposely) under the radar, the music unit would collect more than 800 songs and operate for nearly two years, until they were shut down under fire from a conservative coalition in Congress that deemed the entire homestead enterprise dangerously “socialistic."

Despite its early demise, the music unit proved that music can provide hope and a sense of belonging even in the darkest times. It also laid the groundwork for the folk revival that followed, seeing the rise of artists like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Odetta, and Bob Dylan.

Award-winning author and Harvard-trained American music scholar Sheryl Kaskowitz has had the unique opportunity to listen to the music unit’s entire collection of recordings and examine a trove of archival materials, some of which have never been made available to the public.

A Chance To Harmonize reveals this untold story and will delight readers with the revelation of a new and previously undiscovered chapter in American cultural history.

SHERYL KASKOWITZ PHD, is the author of God Bless America: The Surprising History of an Iconic Song, which won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Book Award for music writing. Her articles have been published in the New York Times, Slate, Bloomberg News, and other outlets. Kaskowitz earned her PhD in music with an ethnomusicology focus from Harvard in 2011 and completed her BA in music at Oberlin. She has served as a lecturer at Brandeis University and Brown University and lives with her family in Berkeley, California.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 3rd.

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.

Wednesday, April 3, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time By Sheryl Kaskowitz Cover Image
$29.95
ISBN: 9781639365715
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Pegasus Books - April 2nd, 2024

 

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's on Wednesday, April 10th at 7:00 PM when host of “The Moth” and author COREY ROSEN comes to the store to lead a live storytelling event. Does your storytelling sometimes feel stuck? Improvisation to the rescue! His appearance also celebrates his debut book, Your Story, Well Told: Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories that Wow an Audience, which teaches how you can get past telling “the same” stories and find stories worth telling from your own life.

 

Tickets are required for this event and your $16.95 (plus tax and Eventbrite fees) includes 1 or 2 seats and a copy of Corey's book. Get your tickets here.

Actor, visual effects producer and author Corey Rosen worked at Jim Henson Productions, interned for Saturday Night Live actor (and later Senator) Al Franken, and spent 20-plus years making special visual effects at Industrial Light + Magic, Disney, and Tippett Studio. Rosen has also worked on blockbuster movies like Mission: Impossible, Ted, and several Star Wars movies.

Rosen is now the Berkeley host of “The Moth,” a nationally broadcast radio show (NPR), which features people telling live (true) stories in front of an audience. His debut book, Your Story, Well Told, is an accessible guide for all ages and skill levels. His book shakes people out of telling “the same” stories so they can find new ones worth telling to develop from their life experiences, offering brief lessons about finding ideas, and applying basic structures to stories attendees tell all the time. It will jog your memories to inspire you to tell your own stories - WELL.

COREY ROSEN lives in San Francisco. He is a regular host of The Moth StorySlam series in the Bay Area, and his stories have been featured on The Moth Radio Hour. Corey began his career writing for Jim Henson Productions, Comedy Central, and Lucasfilm. His film credits (as a VFX Artist) include Iron Man, Grindhouse, Ted, and several Star Wars movies.  For More Information about Corey Rosen visit: www.coreyrosen.com. Instagram, TikTok and Facebook: @storyrosen. Twitter & YouTube: @coreyrosen.

THIS EVENT is ticketed and pre-registration is required. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 10th.

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.

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Your Story, Well Told: Creative Strategies to Develop and Perform Stories That Wow an Audience (How to Sell Yourself) By Corey Rosen, Patrick Combs (Foreword by) Cover Image
By Corey Rosen, Patrick Combs (Foreword by)
$16.95
ISBN: 9781642504651
Availability: Most titles are on our shelves or available within 1-5 days.
Published: Tma Press - March 30th, 2021

 

Join us on Tuesday, April 16th at 7pm when LEAH HUNT-HENDRIX (left) and ASTRA TAYLOR (right) come to the store to discuss, and sign copies of their new book Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea - which examines solidarity not just as a rallying cry, but as a potent political movement with potential to effect lasting change. Leah and Astra will be joined in conversation by author IAN HANEY LÓPEZ. (Leah's photo by Emily Lambert; Astra's photo by Nye Taylor)

This is a free event, but you must preregister on Eventbrite or in the store to ensure seating.  Click Here to preorder a copy of Solidarity.

Solidarity is often invoked, but it is rarely analyzed and poorly understood. Here, two leading activists and thinkers survey the past, present, and future of the concept across borders of nation, identity, and class to ask: how can we build solidarity in an era of staggering inequality, polarization, violence, and ecological catastrophe? Offering a lively and lucid history of the idea—from Ancient Rome through the first European and American socialists and labor organizers, to twenty-first century social movements like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter—Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor trace the philosophical debates and political struggles that have shaped the modern world.

Looking forward, they argue that a clear understanding of how solidarity is built and sustained, and an awareness of how it has been suppressed, is essential to warding off the many crises of our present: right-wing backlash, irreversible climate damage, widespread alienation, loneliness, and despair. Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor insist that solidarity is both a principle and a practice, one that must be cultivated and institutionalized, so that care for the common good becomes the central aim of politics and social life.

LEAH HUNT-HENDRIX was born and raised in New York City. She has a PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Princeton University where she wrote her dissertation on the Ethics of Solidarity. Leah has founded multiple organizations that have impacted the American political landscape. In 2012, she co-founded Solidaire, a national network of philanthropists dedicated to funding progressive movements, and in 2017, she co-founded Way to Win, a network with a similar structure, this time dedicated to electoral strategy. Both organizations are grounded in building solidarity between major donors and grassroots organizing.


ASTRA TAYLOR is cofounder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors. She is the director of numerous documentaries and the author of The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and The People’s Platform (winner of an American Book Award), among other works. Her writing has appeared in periodicals including The New Yorker, The New York Times, n+1, and The Baffler. She is an advisor to Lux Magazine and is on the editorial board of Hammer & Hope. She was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecturer.

IAN HANEY LÓPEZ teaches and writes about race and law (a.k.a. "critical race theory") at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is the Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Public Law as well as a Distinguished Professor, the institution's highest academic rank. He currently focuses on strategic racism in electoral politics and its connection to surging economic inequality. His writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other places, and his most recent books are Dog Whistle Politics (2014) and also Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (2019).

 

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 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 5:45 and 6:00 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.

Tuesday, April 16, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea By Leah Hunt-Hendrix, Astra Taylor Cover Image
$30.00
ISBN: 9780593701249
Availability: Most titles are on our shelves or available within 1-5 days.
Published: Pantheon - March 12th, 2024

 

Join us  on Wednesday April 17th at 7pm when LISSA SOEP comes to the store to read from, discuss, and sign copies of her new book Other People's Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End. Lissa, senior editor for audio at Vox Media, has written a deeply moving read that is an original life-affirming take on grief.

Other People’s Words is one of those books that changes you forever. Now I can hear the ‘double voicing’ in my own life: the ways the language of my past—of dear friends and family--has fused into and shapes the language of my present; how it keeps people I have lost with me always.”—Peggy Orenstein

This is a free event, but you must preregister on Eventbrite or in the store to ensure seating. Click Here to preorder a copy of Other People's Words.

What if the great love of your life is friendship?

In their twenties, Lissa Soep and her boyfriend forged deep friendships with two other couples—Mercy and Christine; and Emily and Jonnie—until, decades later, Jonnie died suddenly, in an accident, and Christine passed away after a mysterious illness. Christine had been a writer, Jonnie a storyteller. Lissa couldn’t imagine a world without their letters, postcards, texts—a world without their voices. Then she found comfort in a surprising place. As a graduate student, she had studied the philosophy of the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, who wrote about the many voices that can echo through a single person’s speech. Suddenly, Bakhtin’s theory that our language is “filled to overflowing with other people’s words” came to life. Lissa began hearing Jonnie and Christine when least expected. In a conversation with Emily, a familiar phrase was spoken, and suddenly, there was Jonnie, with his riotous laugh, vibrant in her mind. Mercy recited an Adrienne Rich poem in just the way Christine used to and, for a moment, Christine was with them in the room.

Other People’s Words shows us how we carry within us the language of loved ones who are gone, and how their words can be portals to other times and places. Language—as with love—is boundless, and Other People’s Words is an intimate, original, and profoundly generous look at its power to nurture life amid the wreckage of grief. Dialogues do not end when a friendship or person is gone; instead, they accrue new layers of meaning, showing how the conversations we share with those we love continue after them, and will continue after us.

“A moving meditation on the role of language in mitigating grief and loss.”—Amy Fusselman, author of Savage Park

LISSA SOEP is senior editor for audio at Vox Media and special projects producer and senior scholar-in-residence at YR Media. She has a PhD from Stanford, where she studied education, social theory, and linguistic anthropology with leading Bakhtin scholars. She lives in San Francisco.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 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.

 

Wednesday, April 17, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
Other People's Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End By Lissa Soep Cover Image
$27.00
ISBN: 9781954118355
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Spiegel & Grau - April 16th, 2024

Join us on Wednesday, April 24th, 7:00 pm when acclaimed Berkeley author SYLVIA BROWNRIGG comes to Mrs. Dalloway's to launch her new memoir, The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and FoundShe will be joined in conversation by author PEGGY ORENSTEIN. (Sylvia's photo by Gina Logan)

 

This is a free event, but you must preregister on Eventbrite or in the store. Click Here to preorder a copy of The Whole Staggering Mystery.

When Sylvia Brownrigg received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over 50 years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it, so she and her brother finally did.

Nick, an absent father, was a hippie and would-be Beat writer who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen–also absent–had been a well-born Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told he had likely died by suicide.

Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. In her uncovering of this lost family, she finally makes her own story whole.

SYLVIA BROWNRIGG is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction, including the novels Morality Tale; The Delivery Room, winner of the Northern California Book Award; Pages for You, winner of the Lambda Award; and The Metaphysical Touch; and a collection of stories, Ten Women Who Shook the World. Brownrigg’s works have been included in The New York Times and Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions and have been translated into several languages. Her novel for children, Kepler’s Dream, written under the name Juliet Bell was published in 2012 and turned into a feature film. Brownrigg lives with her family in London and Berkeley

PEGGY ORENSTEIN is the New York Times bestselling author of UnravellingBoys & Sex, Girls & Sex, Don’t Call Me Princess, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Waiting for Daisy, Flux, and Schoolgirls. A contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and AFAR, her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Tmes, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and other publications, and she has contributed commentary to NPR’s All Things Considered and PBS NewsHour. Her TED Talk has been viewed over 5.7 million times.

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

Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found By Sylvia Brownrigg Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781640096561
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Counterpoint - April 23rd, 2024

Join us at Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore on Thursday, April 25th at 7:00 pm when author ELIZABETH ABEL comes to read from, discuss, and sign copies of her new book Odd Affinities: Virginia Woolf's Shadow Genealogies.  Experience a new reading of Virginia Woolf in the context of “long modernism.” She will be joined in conversation by CLAIRE KAHANE.

This is a free event, but you must pre-register on Eventbrite or at the store to guarantee seating. Click Here to preorder a copy of Odd Affinities.

In recent decades, Virginia Woolf’s contribution to literary history has been located primarily within a female tradition. Elizabeth Abel dislodges Woolf from her iconic place within this tradition to uncover her shadowy presence in other literary genealogies. Abel elicits unexpected echoes of Woolf in four major writers from diverse cultural contexts: Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, Roland Barthes, and W. G. Sebald. By mapping the wayward paths of what Woolf called “odd affinities” that traverse the boundaries of gender, race, and nationality, Abel offers a new account of the arc of Woolf’s career and the transnational modernist genealogy constituted by her elusive and shifting presence. Odd Affinities will appeal to students and scholars working in New Modernist studies, comparative literature, gender and sexuality studies, and African American studies.

ELIZABETH ABEL is the John F. Hotchkis Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Virginia Woolf and the Fictions of Psychoanalysis and Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow and the editor or coeditor of four collections, most recently, Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism.

CLAIRE KAHANE is a Professor of English Emerita at the University at Buffalo and a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley. A feminist-psychoanalytic critic, she has written on modern American and British fiction, Gothic literature, and Holocaust trauma. Her book Passions of the Voice: Hysteria, Narrative and the Figure of the Speaking Woman, 1850-1915 (1995) concludes with a chapter on Virginia Woolf’s The Voyage Out. A memoir, Nine Lives: Adventures in Pursuit of a Self, is forthcoming later this year from Brandylane Publishers, Inc.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on April 25th.

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.

Thursday, April 25, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
Odd Affinities: Virginia Woolf's Shadow Genealogies By Professor Elizabeth Abel Cover Image
$32.50
ISBN: 9780226832678
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: University of Chicago Press - April 19th, 2024

May 2024

 

Join us on Tuesday, May 7th at 7pm  when MELISSA BRODER comes to the store to celebrate the paperback release of her novel Death Valley. She will read from and discuss her book and will sign copies after the presentation. "One of the best books I've read in years: funny, brilliant, gutting, and easily devoured over the course of one blissful afternoon." - Elle (Melissa's photo by Ryan Pfluger)

 

This is a free event, but we ask you to pre-register on Eventbrite or in the bookstore to ensure seating. Click Here to preorder a paperback copy of Death Valley.

In Melissa Broder’s astonishingly profound new novel, a woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has fled to the California high desert to escape a cloud of sorrow—for both her father in the ICU and a husband whose illness is worsening. What the motel provides, however, is not peace but a path discovered on a nearby hike.

Out along the sun-scorched trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there, with a gash through its side that beckons like a familiar door. So she enters it. What awaits her inside this mystical succulent sets her on a journey at once desolate and rich, hilarious, and poignant.

Death Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest, and is “a journey unlike any you’ve read before” (
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black).


“A hilarious and hallucinatory journey into the badlands of California. . . . Like grief itself, this book is at once surreal, absurd, lucid, and wise; it will change you.” —O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Books of 2023

 

MELISSA BRODER is the author of the novels Milk Fed, The Pisces, and Death Valley, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. She has written for The New York Times, Elle, and New York magazine’s The Cut. She lives in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @SoSadToday and @MelissaBroder and Instagram @RealMelissaBroder.

 

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on May 7th.

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.

Tuesday, May 7, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
Death Valley: A Novel By Melissa Broder Cover Image
$17.99
ISBN: 9781668024867
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Scribner - May 7th, 2024

 

Join us  on Tuesday, May 21st, at 7:00 pm when Oakland author EVA DES LAURIERS comes to the store to launch her debut young adult novel I Wish You Would, a love story in which explosive secrets threaten to tear everyone apart, including best friends (or maybe more?), Natalia and Ethan. Eva will read from and discuss her book and will sign copies after the presentation. Eva will be joined in conversation by author KRISTIN DWYER.

 

This is a free event, but you need to preregister on Eventbrite or in the store to ensure seating.  Click Here to preorder a copy of I Wish You Would.

It’s the epic overnight at the beach that kicks off senior year. But for Natalia and Ethan, it’s the first time seeing each other after junior prom—when they almost crossed the line from best friends to something more and ruined everything. Natalia is desperate to pretend she doesn’t care and Ethan is desperate to fix his mistake.

When the senior class carries out their tradition of writing private letters to themselves—what they would do if they were braver—Natalia pours her heart out. So does Ethan. So does their entire class. But in Natalia’s panicked attempt to retrieve her confession, the wind scatters seven of the notes across the beach. Now, Ethan and Natalia are forced to work together to find the lost letters before any secrets are revealed—especially their own.

"Eva Des Lauriers' writing brims with fragile, hopeful beauty—the way I ached for these characters and their huge, complicated hearts as they reveal their truest selves over the course of a single life-changing day. One of the best YA novels I've read in a long time." —Rachel Lynn Solomon, author of Today Tonight Tomorrow

EVA DES LAURIERS is a California girl who became a diehard romantic when she married her best friend, the boy she sat next to in eleventh grade Calculus. She was a delight to have in class if only she stopped talking and now holds both an MSW and BA in Psychology. As a clinical social worker, she had the privilege of working with the vibrant and complicated teens for whom she now writes. When she isn’t writing, you can find her wandering through the redwoods, staring at the sea, or pretending she’s in a music video while listening to music. She lives with her husband, their two children, and her collection of kissing books in Northern California.

KRISTIN DWYER grew up under the California sun and prayed every day for a cloudy sky. Now Kristin and her spouse are currently raising their mischief-makers in the hills of North Carolina, where there is just the right amount of clouds. When she’s not writing books about people kissing, Kristin is a part-time hair model and full-time TSA PreCheck. One time a credible news outlet asked for her opinion on K-pop (it was the best day of her life). Please do not talk to her about your fandom; she will try to join.

THIS EVENT is free but pre-registration is requested. Registration ends at 5:30 pm on May 21st.

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.

Tuesday, May 21, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Pre-Order Now Badge
I Wish You Would By Eva Des Lauriers Cover Image
$19.99
ISBN: 9781250910554
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) - May 21st, 2024