READERS CALENDAR FOR 11/18

November 20, 2013 (San Diego) – For complete Calendar including Authors Events, go to www.SDWriteWay.org

FOR ALL SAN DIEGO COUNTY LIBRARY EVENTS, Go to: http://www.sandiego.gov/public-library/news-events/index.shtml

November 20 (Wednesday, 7:30 pm) — Warwick's will host an evening of tastings, table decor demonstrations, art, and book signing, as we help launch the newest book from Chef's Press, Living Coastal by Jolee Pink. Special guests include Chef Bernard Guillas from the Marine Room, Chef Tim Johnson from Zenbu, Kim Blaylock from Venom Vodka, artist Karen Athens, and author Jolee Pink who will create a table setting. Come enjoy a uniquely fun evening of California entertaining, food, and design. This event is free and open to the public.

Background: Living Coastal: Inspirations for Entertaining, Decorating and Cooking California Style is an art book, a cookbook, a celebration that captures the spirit of San Diego artists and chefs inspired by the breathtaking Pacific Ocean.

"From Tapas by the Sea to Baja – Style Bash, each of the 16 fun – filled chapters in Living Coastal showcases a different theme for entertaining both indoors and out," says author Jolee Pink. "This unique mix of tantalizing seafood recipes, extraordinary artistic creations, eco table linens and clever decorating tips will inspire your next celebration."

For more information regarding the event, please contact Warwick's Books | 7812 Girard Avenue | La Jolla, Ca | 92037 | Ph. (858) 454-0347 | www.warwicks.com.

November 21 (Thursday, 7:30 pm) — Warwick's will host Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author H.W. Brands as he discusses and signs The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace. This event is free and open to the public, although Reserved Seating is available. Please contact the Warwick's Book Dept. for details. In order to be signed, the author's most current book must be purchased from Warwick's.

Background: From New York Times bestselling author H.W. Brands, a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history.

Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands's sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right. He was a beloved commander in the field but willing to make the troop sacrifices necessary to win the war, even in the face of storms of criticism. He worked valiantly to protect the rights of freedmen in the South; Brands calls him the last presidential defender of black civil rights for nearly a century. He played it straight with the American Indians, allowing them to shape their own fate even as the realities of Manifest Destiny meant the end of their way of life. He was an enormously popular president whose memoirs were a huge bestseller; yet within decades of his death his reputation was in tatters, the victim of Southerners who resented his policies on Reconstruction. In this page-turning biography, Brands now reconsiders Grant's legacy and provides a compelling and intimate portrait of a man who saved the Union on the battlefield and consolidated that victory as a resolute and principled political leader.

For more information regarding the event, please contact Warwick's Books | 7812 Girard Avenue | La Jolla, Ca | 92037 | Ph. (858) 454-0347 | www.warwicks.com.

November 22 (Friday, 2:00 pm) — Barnes & Noble Oceanside will host two authors as part of Discovery Friday, a national event featuring special deals and fun events for the whole family. Los Angeles based author, Shawn Stern will be signing copies of his debut novel, Doppelganger, an adventure of murder, betrayal and chaos.

Barnes & Noble, Oceanside, 2615 Vista Way, Oceanside: Lisa Kovach - Community Relations Manager, at 760-529-0270 or crm2153@bn.com for additional information.

November 22 (Friday, 6:00 pm) — Barnes & Noble, Oceanside: Salina Yoon, a San Diego-based children’s author and illustrator, will read and perform a play based on her picture book, Penguin and Pinecone. Yoon will also sign copies of her books. She is the author/illustrator of Penguin on Vacation, Penguin in Love, Five Silly Turkeys, Pinwheel, Kaleidoscope, plus many more. She has written and/or illustrated more than 100 books for children.

Barnes & Noble, Oceanside, 2615 Vista Way, Oceanside: Lisa Kovach - Community Relations Manager, at 760-529-0270 or crm2153@bn.com for additional information.

November 22 (Friday, 7:00 pm) — John Billheimer signs at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego.

Native West Virginian, John Billheimer, now lives in Portola Valley, California. When an early research project took him back to the coalfields of his native state, he observed the poverty, independence, and resourcefulness of coal miners and his first novel, The Contrary Blues, was born. His latest book, A Player to Be Maimed Later, reflects his love for baseball and is just right for sports mystery aficionados, providing plenty of baseball chatter and a sideline of poker exploits. Appearing with John will be Monte Schulz, author of Naughty.

For additional information, go to http://www.mystgalaxy.com/event/John-Billheimer-Signs-SD-112213. Mysterious Galaxy is located at 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Ste 302, San Diego.

November 23 (Saturday, 7:00 pm) — Internationally renowned poet, translator and editor Jerome Rothenberg will read from and discuss his magisterial new book Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader at D.G.Wills Books, 7461 Girard Avenue, La Jolla, 456-1800, www.dgwillsbooks.com.

Fifty years in the making, Eye of Witness is the culminating work of Jerome Rothenberg's lifelong project, to construct a grand collage that brings together a wide range of poems and other language works and in the process speaks to and of a larger humanity with which and to which the poet acts as conduit and witness. In his own words in summation: "Two final points: first, my pursuit of a kind of transcultural or global poetics: a poetry rooted in its place but capable of crossing borders and languages to become a virtual omni – poetics. And secondly that that moves in its later stages explores a multivocal poetry of witness – the ubiquity of an I-as-speaking-subject that we all share – personal and transpersonal at once."

"Jerome Rothenberg is one of the truly contemporary American poets who has returned U.S. poetry to the mainstream of international modern literature. At the same time, he is a true autochthon. Only here and now could have produced him – a swinging orgy of Martin Buber, Marcel Duchamp, Gertrude Stein, and Sitting Bull. No one writing poetry today has dug deeper into the roots of poetry." Kenneth Rexroth.

"For us, [Jerome Rothenberg] played (and plays) the role Picasso and Braque did for the painters, and Leiris and Bataille later for the French poets: opening the sparkling world that comes when you crack open literature and see the primal gestures of oral energy and sudden imagery from which it all surges. Kabbalah, cave painting, Iroquois legend, Navajo chant, Hasidic tales, Central Asian epic, German avant-garde, immigrant histories – he summoned us to attend to the deep literature of which the 'literary' is only a sheen. He is a great figure, who stands above and beyond the schools and tendentiousnesses of poetics; he has given us, in his poetry, criticism, translation, anthologies, a body of work that exhibits what I suddenly realize is an ethical purity, a touchstone for the genuine." — Robert Kelly.

Jerome Rothenberg, UCSD Professor Emeritus of Literature and Visual Arts, has published over eighty books, booklets and pamphlets of poetry, several of which have been translated into French, Spanish, Dutch, Finnish, Flemish, German, Polish, Swedish and Portuguese. In addition, he has assembled, edited, and annotated ten enormously germinal anthologies of experimental and traditional poetry and performance, beginning with Technicians of the Sacred in 1968, and has been a leading voice in the approach to creative work and mind that he named "ethnopoetics." He has also acted as editor and co-editor of several notably influential magazines including Some/Thing, Alcheringa, and New Wilderness Letter, and has appeared as a performance poet and artist at many of the most distinguished venues in North and South America and Europe. Rothenberg's poetic work, Poland/1931, has been staged by the Living Theater in New York, and several of his soundplays have been produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Germany. His recent works include a translation of PPPPPP: Poems Performances Pieces Proses Plays Poetics by Kurt Schwitters; and Poems for the Millennium, a two-volume global anthology of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

November 30 (Saturday, 4:00 pm) — Event: Join us for a free Downton Abbey Party for fans of the MASTERPIECE on PBS drama. The event, featuring show trivia and many fun activities, is for fans of all ages of the English Crawley family and their household. Featured activities include high tea, costume contests, BYOTC (Bring your Own Teacup), and more.

Barnes & Noble, 2615 Vista Way, Oceanside. crm2153@bn.com or (760) 529-0270.

ATTENTION AUTHORS: Have your book featured in Local Authors Books. Go to Local Writers Lounge for details.

Sam Warren is the publisher and editor of www.SDWriteWay.org. Visit the site for additional news and calendar events for both Readers and Writers. Sam now lives in Tijuana, Mexico, and is available for tours.