Book ‘em: From the Page to the Stage

In her new book How to Stand Up to a Dictator, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa expresses the fear that the world is “in the last two minutes of democracy” and wonders if we’re at the tipping point for democracy, or fascism. Ressa discusses the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts and how social media is killing our freedoms at UCSB’s Campbell Hall on January 19.

Carpinteria’s Chuck Graham, the writer and photographer who has contributed to major national magazines as well as penning travel columns for the Montecito Journal, delivers an illustrated presentation called “Paddling into a Natural Balance” about his adventures hiking and kayaking in the Channel Islands and elsewhere at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, also on January 19.

Chaucer’s Choices

Local author Jana Zimmer, a second-generation Holocaust survivor, talks about Chocolates from Tangier, her new book that weaves together fragments of her family’s history and witness testimony in narrative and collage, on January 19… On January 22, Santa Barbara children’s author Laura VonDracek reads from and discusses Jemma and The Mermaid’s Call, an ecological ethical tale that finds a spunky and spirited mermaid harnessing all of her fellow ocean dwellers to combat a massive island of floating trash.