Tue, January 26 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.” Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed When the unimaginable is occurring, how do we navigate…

Tue, February 2 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

Marilynne Robinson’s first novel, Housekeeping, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1982. In 2005, she was awarded the Pulitzer for her second novel, Gilead. In this seminar we will read both novels; a subsequent seminar will focus on Robinson’s third and fourth novels, which take up and expand upon the story told in Gilead. All novels are concerned with questions of family, home, memory, and the often fraught nature of human relationships. In Housekeeping, two sisters struggle…

Wed, February 24 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

This Delve will focus on the work of perhaps one of the most celebrated contemporary Spanish authors, Enrique Vila-Matas (Barcelona, 1948) has been the recipient of numerous literary awards including the Premio Rómulo Gallegos, Prix Médicis and Premi Nacional de Cultura de la Generalitat. Widely translated and with a body of work that expands over 30 novels and several books of essays and short stories, Vila-Matas’ characters are writers who have stopped writing, who have fallen ill from reading too…

Thu, February 25 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

This Delve seminar looks at two acclaimed authors of modern Turkish literature and their dystopian novels, The Black Book and Night. Dystopian narratives portray oppressive systems, and they display a deep suspicion of power structures and their alliance with scientific progress and technology. Published in 1985 in the aftermath of a brutal military coup in Turkey, Night depicts a violent secretive regime set out to murder its dissidents. Dystopian imagery of an unnamed city is permeated with dismembered bodies, silence,…

Tue, March 9 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PST

Many of us have described the past year as “apocalyptic” or “dystopian.” We’ve been living through a global pandemic, a critical presidential election, ravaging wildfires, and a national reckoning with our country’s legacy of racism and police violence. Utopic and dystopic fiction can help us make sense of our experience and ask questions about our future. In this seminar we’ll read three works of utopic and dystopic fiction written by women authors. In our reading and discussion of each text,…

Thu, March 25 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm PDT

...we still want justice. We are still America. We know the rumors of our demise. We spit them out. They die soon. -Joy Harjo,“American Sunrise” Our current poet laureate Joy Harjo describes her work as writing that both “tells the truth and creates the truth", providing a “memory on which to build.” Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is the author of nine books of poetry, one memoir, several plays, children’s books, and most recently, the editor of…