Tag archives: authors

October Thrills
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   October 8, 2024

‘Dorothy Parker in Hollywood’ Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther is a revelatory look at the writer and Algonquin member’s time in Hollywood. For over 35 years Parker worked on screenplays’ trademark snappy dialogue (mostly uncredited) with husband Alan Campbell. The two cavorted with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Orson Welles while punching up scripts with […]

Mandy Jackson-Beverly’s “Lunch with An Author Literary Series” at El Encanto
By Joanne A Calitri   |   August 27, 2024

El Encanto, A Belmond Hotel, holds a monthly “Lunch with an Author Literary Series,” led by lectiophile and host of The Bookshop Podcast, Mandy Jackson-Beverly. The program includes meeting the author, a signed copy of the book, the author interview hosted by Jackson-Beverly, a three-course lunch, and complimentary valet parking. This year saw A-List authors […]

Holiday Stories for Everyone
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   December 5, 2023

Meet the Benedettos by Katie Cotugno is exactly as the cover promotes – The Kardashians meets Pride and Prejudice. Five famous sisters, famous for being famous, are living in a crumbling mansion when the man (or men) of their dreams moves in next door. It’s light, it’s funny. Lost Hours is Paige Shelton’s latest mystery. […]

Tonia at Tecolote, Authors Assemble at Library 
By Steven Libowitz   |   December 5, 2023

Artist Symeon Shimin’s name may not be a household word, but his most famous work might be one of the better-known images in American history: the original poster for Gone with the Wind. But Shimin, who died in 1984, not only painted such promotional images for Hollywood films but was also an award-winning illustrator of […]

SBPL Invites You to Our Local Author Book Fair
By Kim Crail   |   November 21, 2023

Santa Barbara Public Library (SBPL) will be hosting local authors, particularly independent authors, to participate in this year’s Local Author Book Fair, taking place in the Faulkner Gallery at the Santa Barbara Central Library on Saturday, December 2 from 2-4 pm. The public is cordially invited to come, meet the authors, browse a selection of […]

Shooting for the Shelves
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 19, 2023

Local authors who have yet to chalk up sales enough to attract Chaucer’s but want to reach area readers might want to get in touch with the Santa Barbara Public Library, which offers a small display area at the Central Library downtown for Santa Barbara County writers to share their work. Get more details or […]

Book ‘em 
By Steven Libowitz   |   June 6, 2023

Chaucer’s has booked a whopping four in-store signings at its Loreto Plaza location this week, starting with No. 1 New York Times bestselling Young Adult author P. C. Cast on Sunday afternoon, June 4. Cast, whose novels count more than 20 million copies in print in over 40 countries, had the last installment of herTales […]

Book ’em
By Steven Libowitz   |   March 7, 2023

Cancer physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee, who has been praised for making scientific discoveries read like riveting mysteries, is coming to town to talk about his new book, The Song of the Cell, an exploration of medicine and our radical new ability to manipulate cells. The author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Emperor of All Maladies […]

July Firecrackers
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   July 5, 2022

Set on the shores of Southampton in the summer of 1957, On Gin Lane by Brooke Lea Foster is a charming story about Lee, a young socialite, and her handsome fiancé who sweeps her off her feet to a vacation amongst Society where he presents her with a hotel he has built and named after […]

Taylors Guide Readers on Soul Pilgrimage
By Scott Craig   |   May 10, 2022

James E. Taylor and Jennifer Moe Taylor, husband and wife, have teamed up to co-author a new book, Soul Pilgrimage: Knowing God in Everyday Life (Cascade Books). The volume takes readers on a sacred pilgrimage to deepen their relationship with God.  In fall 2018, the Taylors traveled to Northern Spain to walk the Camino de […]

Joe Donnelly’s SoCal is a Strange and Stirring Cornucopia
By Jeff Wing   |   May 3, 2022

The pantheon of male American writers is a grab bag. Terkel, Mailer, Hamill, Hemingway — these tough guys and their generally hormonal prose are almost a literary brand. Plimpton — with his willowy erudition, patrician accent, and Paris Review creds — runs with another herd. Our Joe Donnelly is a third species, as evidenced by […]

Little Book Brings Big Crowd
By Richard Mineards   |   March 29, 2022

A boffo bunch of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote in the Upper Village to mark the publication of Steven Gilbar’s Little Book of Montecito Writers, a 160-page paperback including more than 60 authors, which derived from a talk he gave at the village library last summer. The book signing, which benefitted the Montecito Library, also featured […]

Spring Travels
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   March 29, 2022

First off, let’s visit a small town in Texas. In Samantha Jayne Allen’s Pay Dirt Road, waitress Annie is drawn into her family’s private investigation firm after a fellow waitress disappears from a party they both attended. Allen slowly builds her characters and the atmosphere of a recession-hit town with hardscrabble characters in grimy honky-tonks […]

Mysterious March Madness
By Leslie Zemeckis   |   March 1, 2022

March Madness begins with Lisa Barr’s Woman on Fire. Jules Roth is a journalist given the assignment to find a painting stolen by the Nazis 75 years earlier. The piece? Ernst Engel’s Woman on Fire. Meanwhile, a ruthless heiress is determined to find the painting first. What follows are secrets, love, the aftermath of war […]

3 Qs with Delila Moseley: Finally Free to Dance on Film
By Steven Libowitz   |   April 28, 2021

The opening sequence of UCSB Dance Department’s COVID-coping triptych of dance films shows a series of eerily empty spaces all over the seaside campus. But it’s not meant to be a metaphor or pandering to the pandemic, said artistic director Delila Moseley, a longtime professor of dance at UCSB. Moseley has been able to actually […]

Spewing Out Stories One Minute at A Time
By Calla Corner   |   August 8, 2019

Roald Dahl could have invented the Short Story Dispenser. The Dahlian gizmo, that spews out free stories to an on-the-go or bored public at the push of a button, is the machination of Short Édition, a French company based in Grenoble. The publishing company, created in 2011, has more than 9,000 authors, who submit short, […]

Fostering Love
By Lynda Millner   |   November 16, 2017

“Love begins at home and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into that action.” – Mother Teresa CALM (Child Abuse Listening Mediation) knows all about that. They are there for abused children. Today was their sixth Fostering Love event. That is in addition to the CALM Authors luncheon […]