Tag archives: book

Join the Couture Pattern Museum in Santa Barbara for the exclusive West Coast premiere of Chanel in Vogue, the extensive, two-volume artbook published earlier this year that traces the 110-year history of the design house in the world’s most famous fashion magazine in both words and stunning photography. Vogue first featured Gabrielle Chanel in the […]

“He’d just taken us to dinner at Bettina with two other couples,” Michael Cox explains. “Andrew and Helen Waters paid the bill, of course. We’re walking back to our cars – I remember this so explicitly – and we passed a couple who’d just come out of the grocery store. The guy has a six […]

Hello Loves! Monday, April 27, I was invited to Kerry Docherty’s book tour stop in Ojai at the Light and Space Yoga Center owned by Samantha Jones Garrison. She was promoting her second book that just landed April 21, 2026, titled, Selfish: Unlearning, Reclaiming, and Telling the Truth. Yes, that Kerry Docherty.The woman who co-owns […]

Before we left for Southern Patagonia, our South American travel agent insisted, “The most important thing to remember is you must go with a driver and a guide. The roads are terrible, and each hotel is isolated. There are no gas stations between hotels, and no place to stay if you cannot reach the next […]

Santa Barbara native multi-hyphenate Rod Lathim has just published a memoir, but don’t expect it to read like typical autobiographical efforts. Finding The Divine Child: A Journey of Spirit, Light & Art is a bit like Lathim’s life in the arts – where his endeavors include serving as an actor, director, producer, photographer, singer, writer […]

Here it comes now, written in a hurried and bulleted present tense meant (frankly) to offset the section’s brevity with a mitigating sense of telegram-like urgency. Please play ball, reader.    •Roger Sherman Gates Boutell, Sr. retires from the Library of Congress and moves to, of all places, Santa Barbara, California.    •A comfortably liquid […]

It’s no hidden secret that Hollywood’s elite have a long history of escaping the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles for the secluded coastal charm offered up in Santa Barbara County. But only a small handful can claim true roots in the celebrity friendly oasis — actor, Josh Brolin is one of them. From his […]

Carpinteria TV host Conan O’Brien is hosting the next Oscars. Announcing Taco Bell’s new Cheesy Chalupa Supreme, O’Brien then said: “In other news, I’m hosting the Oscars.” He told his fans at the weekend. It will be his first time as Oscars host. He has emceed other high profile shows like the Emmy Awards in […]

Montecito author David Gersh, a Harvard Law School graduate and retired attorney, just launched his ninth book – and the third in his comic novel series Unleashed: A Comic Relief – with a bijou bash at the bustling bibliophile bastion Tecolote in the upper village. “It poses the existential question of whether people can trust […]

Peter Martin is launching his third children’s book The Mystery of Trash Island, with a distinct environmental message. Peter – husband of Santa Barbara Symphony president Kathryn Martin – took a year to write the colorful issue with illustrations by local artist Danuta Bennett. He says it is also an introduction to geography teaching as […]

Jenna Tico – the multi-generational Santa Barbara native who has served as everything from a dancer to community organizer to grant writer for local nonprofits, Summer Solstice aficionado to AHA! staffer – is also the driving force behind Backbone Storytelling, a The Moth-style program that hosts periodic pop-up events at local watering holes. (Latest themes […]

Gayle D. Beebe, entering his 18th year as president of Westmont College, will sell and sign copies of his new book, The Crucibles That Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership, on Thursday, Aug. 29, from 4-6 pm in front of the turtle fountain at La Arcada Plaza, 1114 State Street in downtown Santa […]

In search of the ‘shibui’ in life, Montecito author William Dalziel touches upon inspirational musings and insights while doodling and sketching his way through observations, life lessons, and experiences in his latest book, Ink & Inklings. Bill portrays life with its many twists and turns, through colorful portraits, daily renderings and fantastical graphic designs as […]

Writer and comedian Steve Martin turned up at Tecolote, the bijou bibliophile bastion in the upper village, when prolific Montecito author Steven Gilbar launched his latest tome Montecito Noir: True Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Paradise. Gilbar has lived in our rarefied enclave for 40 years and has written myriad works over four decades.

‘The Devil in My Friend’ by Ivor Davis Malibu has been called a colony, an enclave, and several other things along an overwrought continuum that can stray into bad poetry. The very idea of Malibu can be so frankly dazzling it beggars reliable description, this macabre strip of trillion-dollar stilted waterfront huts peopled by reclusive […]

Montecito’s lawyer turned prolific author-about-town Steven Gilbar, who has written some 20 “shamelessly non-commercial” volumes in and about Santa Barbara since 1979, has spent the last several years more micro-focused on Montecito. Gilbar penned The Little Book of Montecito Writers in 2022 and followed it up a year later with a similarly casual treatise about […]

David Starkey is one of Santa Barbara’s most entrenched writers. His varied literary career spans poetry, textbooks and fiction, and a term as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. Starkey was Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at SBCC, co-editor of the California Review of Books, and the publisher and co-editor of Gunpowder Press. Over […]

How fitting that on the 60th anniversary of The Beatles “invasion” of America, an old friend, Ivor Davis – who toured with the Fab Four as an “embedded” correspondent for the London Daily Express, one of the world’s largest newspapers at the time with five million readers – should give a fascinating talk at the […]

It wasn’t exactly Dr. Dolittle, but Montecito oceanographer resident Dove Joans, who writes under the pseudonym Dolphingirl, claims to be able to communicate with animals, particularly whales and dolphins. In 2019, she wrote We Are the Ocean: 50 Waves to Wonder! and has just published the second edition of Dolphin Talk, which she wrote in […]

Celebrated advocate of the profound healing properties of writing, Dr. Diana Raab will be discussing and signing her book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors at Tecolote Bookshop in Montecito’s Upper Village, and at Summerland’s enchanting and indescribable Sacred Space. “Hummingbird coincides with my 70th birthday, a time when many of us intuitively reflect on our […]