Update: This event is sold out. If you were unable to reserve a spot, we will have limited space for standing room viewing available to walk-in guests. We will also livestream the event on the Berkeley Public Library Instagram Page.
Location: The Hillside Club | 2286 Cedar St, Berkeley, CA 94709
Join us for an evening with author Tommy Orange to discuss his new book, Wandering Stars. The author will be joined in conversation by Caro de Robertis, author of the forthcoming novel The Palace of Eros.
Attendees will be able to purchase signed copies of Tommy's books, courtesy of Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore.
Registration is required for this event. Limited standing room only space will be available for walk-up guests at the event.
About Wandering Stars:
Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star's son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father's jailer. Under Pratt's harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.
In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There--warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts--asking what it means to bethe children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange's monumental gifts.
About Tommy Orange:
Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.
About Caro de Robertis:
A writer of Uruguayan origins, Caro De Robertis is the author of the forthcoming novel The Palace of Eros, as well as the international bestseller The Invisible Mountain, which received Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize. Their books have been translated into seventeen languages and have received numerous other honors, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. De Robertis is also an award-winning translator of Latin American and Spanish literature, and anthology editor. They are a professor at San Francisco State University, and live in Oakland, California with their two children.
This event is made possible by a generous gift from the Pace Trust in support of the Berkeley Public Library North Branch.