We hope some of you will come out to one of our political talks this week--the first is Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 6 p.m. at the Corte Madera Book Passage, Denver Riggleman and Steve Kettmann discussing Denver's NYY-bestselling book The Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6th, and then on Friday at 7 p.m., we'll host an Author Talk event with Riggleman and Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, talking about where…

What kind of kick in the ass would it take, for example, to prod more contemporary writers to stop mailing it in and going belly-up passive in this time of dire crisis, and channel some of the fearless intensity and readability of writers forged in the fire of 1960s California like Hunter S. Thompson and Joan Didion? Then as now, too many in the national press were cautious, callow and cowed, but the…

    Who does not want to talk about politics these days?! If you're like me, you may not even listen to the news most days - out of sanity reasons. But don't we have to talk about what's going on, even if it is scary? So this Saturday we're having another, long overdue Author Talk discussing political writing and activism and are asking ourselves: What would Hunter Thompson do?!  We'll get started at 2…

  We're having another Vegetarian Writer's Lunch on Saturday, September 4, with food grown in the Wellstone garden. Our last gathering of this sort was on May 1st and it was a really wonderful event. Over a dozen writers from in and around Santa Cruz came to celebrate creativity and our vibrant community of writers, journalists, poets and comedians a la fresca. Everyone was responsible and social distanced, which did not diminish one bit the joy over…

  I just came back from a long trip (yay travelling!) and after getting out of the car, the first thing I did was walk into the Wellstone garden. It's like meeting your children again after not having seen them for a year! They're so big!! All the plants exploded in my absence—especially the squash patch, which has been expanding in all directions. And we have cucumbers now and beans and strawberries. The tomatoes and onions…