A monthly prose reading series hosted by English department faculty Vikram Chandra and Melanie Abrams, and featuring distinguished prose writers from the Bay Area and beyond.
Thursday, 5 - 6 pm • Admission Free
Daniel Handler, 09.10.09 | Annie Barrows, 10.08.09 | Daniel Alarcón, 11.12.09 | Mary Roach, 12.03.09 | Dave Eggers, 02.11.10 | Sara Houghteling, 03.11.10 | Michelle Richmond, 04.08.10 | Student Reading, 05.06.10
View the 2008 series featuring Oakley Hall, Vikram Chandra, Daniel Mason, and Melanie Abrams
September 10, 2009
Daniel Handler
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Daniel Handler is the author of the literary novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, and, most recently, Adverbs. Under the name Lemony Snicket he has also written a sequence of books for children, known collectively as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which have sold more than 53 million copies and were the basis of a film starring Jim Carrey. His intricate and witty writing style has won him numerous fans for his critically acclaimed literary work and his wildly successful children's books.
Watch the complete webcast
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
October 8, 2009
Annie Barrows
190 Doe Library (across from the Morrison Library), 5 – 6 pm
Annie Barrows is co-author, with her aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. A New York Times bestseller, Guernsey has been translated into twenty-six languages and was named one of the “Best Books of 2008” by the Washington Post, TIME magazine, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. Annie is also the author of the award-winning children’s series Ivy and Bean and The Magic Half. She lives in Northern California and is currently writing one novel for adults and one for children.
This digital collection is produced and housed by webcast.berkeley Events and Educational Technology Services
November 12, 2009
Daniel Alarcón
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Daniel Alarcón is the Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine published in his native Lima, Peru, and a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Latin America Studies at UC Berkeley. He is the author of three works of fiction, including the novel Lost City Radio (PEN USA Award 2008), and most recently El rey siempre está por encima del pueblo, a story collection published in Mexico and Peru. In 2007, the journal Granta named Alarcón one of the Best Young American Novelists.
December 3, 2009
Mary Roach
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Mary Roach is author of New York Times bestsellers Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. Stiff has been translated into 17 languages, and Spook was a 2005 New York Times Notable Book. Bonk was chosen as a 2008 best book by the San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis-Post Dispatch, and Boston Globe. Mary has written for Outside, National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York Times Magazine, and NPR's "All Things Considered," among many others. She is the editor of the 2011 Best American Science and Nature Writing, a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award, in a category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant. Find her at maryroach.net
February 11, 2010
Dave Eggers
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Dave Eggers is the author of books including What Is the What, a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. That book gave birth to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, dedicated to building schools in Sudan, and run by Mr. Deng, a survivor of that country’s civil war. Eggers is the founder and editor of McSweeney’s, a publishing house based in San Francisco that produces a quarterly journal, monthly magazine The Believer, and Wholphin, a quarterly DVD of short films and documentaries. With Nínive Calegari he co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth in the Mission District of San Francisco. Local communities have since opened sister 826 centers across the country. In 2004, Eggers taught at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and with Dr. Lola Vollen, he co-founded Voice of Witness, a series of books using oral history to illuminate human rights crises.
Jonathan Sprague photo
March 11, 2010
Sara Houghteling
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Sara Houghteling, author of Pictures at an Exhibition, graduated from Harvard College in 1999 and received her master's in fine arts from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of a Fulbright scholarship to Paris, first prize in the Avery and Jules Hopwood Awards, and a John Steinbeck Fellowship. She currently lives in Berkeley and teaches high school English at Marin Academy.
Misty Richmond photo
April 8, 2010
Michelle Richmond
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Michelle Richmond is author of No One You Know, the New York Times bestseller The Year of Fog, award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, and the novel Dream of the Blue Room, a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. She is the recipient of the 2009 Hillsdale Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize, and the Associated Writing Programs Award. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Playboy, Oxford American, Salon, The Kenyon Review, and The Missouri Review. Michelle holds an MFA from the University of Miami, where she was a James Michener Fellow. She taught in MFA programs at University of San Francisco, California College of the Arts, St. Mary’s College, and Bowling Green State University. A native of Mobile, Alabama, Michelle lives in San Francisco and writes full time.
May 6, 2010
Student Reading
Morrison Library, 5 – 6 pm
Story Hour in the Library celebrates the writers in our campus community with an annual student reading. The event will feature short excerpts of work by winners of the year’s biggest prose prizes, Story Hour in the Library interns, and faculty nominees.