Tag archives: writer
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.
Yes, there are people in the area you are more likely to have heard of than to have actually met. Jeff Bridges. Carol Burnett. Beloved local mononyms Ellen, Oprah, and Harry. Steven Gilbar is in this category, but with a caveat. The name rings a deafening bell, but where the hell have you heard it? […]
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 […]
In celebrating Black History Month, this week we honor America’s First Black Woman novelist, Hannah Bond, whose self-styled pen name was Hannah Crafts. Her novel, written in the 1850s, is titled The Bondwoman’s Narrative. It remained an unpublished manuscript until 2001, when it was purchased at an auction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. from the […]
To Chaucer’s, the bibliophile bastion in Loreto Plaza, to hear Chicago-based author Melanie Benjamin, 60, expound on her latest novel California Golden, about two sisters navigating the surf culture and tangled ties between mothers and daughters in the ‘60s. A prolific historical novelist, Benjamin wrote The Aviator’s Wife on Anne Morrow Lindbergh, which has been […]
Through her decades-long work as an executive, producer, and on-air reporter for Court TV and the Nancy Grace show on HLN, Wendy Whitman has become an acknowledged expert on the subject of murder in America. A graduate of the Boston University School of Law, Whitman, who also used to work for comedians Lily Tomlin and […]
The complexities of reviewing literature cannot be overstated, especially in the cosmic case of T.C. Boyle, an award-winning writer of 30-plus novels published in 24 languages, done on a cyclical exchange with books of short stories and other works. He writes continuously and is not here to people please anyone. Like it or love it, […]
Retired Montecito corporate attorney David Gersh has published his latest art mystery tome featuring Jonathan Benjamin Franklin, All’s Fair. It is the fourth in the series and one of eight books David, a Harvard Law School graduate, has written. “This is undoubtedly the best art scam work I have ever created,” he enthuses. The novel […]
Bloomsday is the commemoration and celebration of the life and literary output of Irish writer James Joyce, and particularly his epic Ulysses, held annually on June 16, the single day span featured in the book and named after its protagonist Leopold Bloom. Santa Barbara joined the Bloomsday community last year on the 100th anniversary of […]
If I had to pick a favorite park in the world, it would have to be the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. Not just for its rolling green lawns, ornamental fountains, and sycamore-lined promenades, but for its marvelous statues and busts. Instead of honoring the typical senators and soldiers, the Jardin du Luxembourg also features memorials […]
Montecito doctor Joe Purpura has published his first book Code Crisis, a fast-paced thriller about a lonely gynecologist who risks everything for love and his country. “I love the thriller genre and for years had been bouncing around the idea of writing a novel about a physician as a reluctant hero who gets dragged into […]
Montecito author and illustrator Bill Dalziel has published his second children’s book Charlie’s Dream, a sequel to his first Ulma, the Kidnapped Tree, which he will help launch at Tecolote in the Upper Village on December 3, with 10 percent of the book purchases at the bash donated to Storyteller Children’s Center, a local nonprofit. […]
As Time Goes By, the new novel from SBCC English professor emeritus W. Royce Adams, follows his protagonist called Old, who is now near death and reflecting on key life moments dealing with love, lust, friendships, betrayal, and illness. Working on his memoir, Old asks himself “playful existential questions with no pertinent answers,” examining whether […]
Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Parallel Stories investigates the concept that while something gets lost in translation, maybe also there’s something to be gained in the process, at least in relation to poetry, serving to build bridges across borders and between cultures via introducing new syntactic strategies, rhythms, and image repertoires. Poet, translator, and literary […]
On a personal note, my thoughts are with writer Sir Salman Rushdie, 75, as he recovers after being stabbed repeatedly by an Iranian sympathizer as he was about to speak at the Chautauqua Institute literary festival in upstate New York. It follows the fatwa issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 after his 1988 […]
The pandemic might have been a cause for pause for most of us, but Claudia Hoag McGarry took a different path. Not only did the screenwriter-turned-playwright take up watercolor painting – she’s created more than 575 pieces in 27 months, several hundred of which have sold online or, more recently, at Kathryne Designs in Montecito […]
Carpinteria’s international bestselling children’s author Hal Price and entertainment artist Michael Bayouth have gained national recognition as winners of the inaugural Bedside Reading Book Cover Award for their children’s rhyming verse chapter work, A Heart’s Journey Home. “It has been a magical experience working with such an amazing talent like Michael,” says Price. “We first […]
Writers and friends gathered at Tecolote recently to celebrate Steven Gilbar’s latest tome, having published over 20 books. This one is titled The Little Book of Montecito Writers and includes over 50 names. This doesn’t count journalists or memoirists. No garrets or starving poets here, with the median home costing about $5 million. Gilbar thinks […]
One of the gems presented in the short film program of the 2022 Santa Barbara International Film Festival was a 13-minute beautifully shot piece titled Kissy and the Shark helmed by writer/director Lola Blanche. In its brief running time, the film covers a myriad of topics that include nuanced views of interpersonal relationships, humanity’s deep […]
Prolific local literature lover Steven Gilbar, who probably spends as much time involved in books, research, and writing as he does practicing law, has just added another new title to his two dozen-strong published collection, this one sharpening the local angle to focus on writers who call Montecito home. Titled The Little Book of Montecito […]
