Contra Costa County Library - El Cerrito Library

Angel Island played an important role in Chinese American history as the place where new immigrants had to prove their legal status by submitting to lengthy interrogations. Personal ties inspired Wong to research and write about the Chinese detainment experience. He is the son and brother of immigrants ... (more)once detained on Angel Island as the result of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Wong is also the author of "Oakland’s Chinatown."

Richard Schwartz, author of “Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley” will give a slide talk featuring highlights of Berkeley’s history from 1850 to 1925. Schwartz brings to life Berkeley's defining men and women from the past - squatters and speculators, missionaries and mystics, vendors, ... (more)inventors and industrialists. The result is not only an authoritative history but also a delightful storyteller's anthology, full of humor, drama, sadness and hard-earned wisdom.

Richard Schwartz is a California historian and author of other regional history books. He lives in Berkeley where he also works as a building contractor. “Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley” was a San Francisco Chronicle critics’ choice for the 2007 holiday season.

"David Corbett - author of political crime thrillers, including Blood of Paradise and Done for a Dime, Corbett spent 15 years as an operative with a San Francisco private investigation firm, an experience that informs his writing on the ubiquity of crime, corruption and violence in this ... (more)world."

Join Shelly Rivoli for a talk on her book covering all the basics of traveling with young children.

Ms. Rivoli, an El Cerrito Mom, travels as often and as far as she can with her husband and two small children. Making their way over both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and around the Mediterranean ... (more)Sea by airplane, elephant, train, cruise ship, and long tail boat, she has mastered the technical details of sightseeing with babies and small children!

Join Anita Amirrezvani, author of “The Blood of Flowers” for a talk on her book. Set in seventeenth century Iran, the story offers a rare and insightful look inside the lives of Iranian women. This stunning debut weaves centuries-old folklore, craft traditions, and national history into an observation ... (more)of gender roles and cultural mores that are as timely today as ever.

Anita Amirrezvani was born in Tehran. She currently lives in Northern California and is pursuing an MFA in fiction at San Francisco State University.

Join Dave Weinstein for a slide talk on his latest book, “It Came from Berkeley: How Berkeley Changed the World,” an amusing and anecdote-filled social history of this unique city. Weinstein focuses on the events and people that made Berkeley famous and why this matters to the rest of the world. ... (more) He explores the Free Speech Movement, disability rights, national parks, the environmental movement, California cuisine, and much more!

An El Cerrito resident, Dave Weinstein wrote the text for “Berkeley Rocks: Building with Nature” and is the author of “Signature Architects of the San Francisco Bay Area”.

Richie Unterberger will present rare recordings and film clips of the Beatles from throughout their career, from the days before they had a record contract until just before their breakup in the late 1960s. This material, and much more, is covered in his recent book, “The Unreleased Beatles: Music ... (more)and Film.” A San Francisco resident, Richie Unterberger is the author of several rock history books, including “Unknown Legends of Rock'n'Roll” and a two-volume history of 1960s folk-rock, “Turn! Turn! Turn! / Eight Miles High.” “The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film” won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

Join Steve Fainaru, Washington Post correspondent and author of “Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq,” for a reading and discussion. Fainaru won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his series on the rise of private security companies during the Iraq War. On ... (more)assignment in Iraq, he embedded with some of the thousands of mercenaries that support the U.S. military yet are exempt from Iraqi law and U.S. government oversight. An El Cerrito resident, Fainaru has worked as a correspondent for the Washington Post since 2000. He received the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire-service reporting from abroad for his stories on private security contractors. He was also a Pulitzer finalist in 2006 for his coverage of U.S. troops as the insurgency in Iraq intensified.

Judy Yung and Eddie Fung will give a slide talk on their book, “The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of War.” Fung tells his story in this moving and unforgettable memoir. He is the only Chinese American soldier ever to be captured by the Japanese during World War II ... (more)and put to work on the Burma-Siam railroad, made famous by the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” This event is part of Contra Costa County Library’s 2009 Reading Festival – celebrating Reading, Libraries and Community.

Join Marta Acosta, author of the Casa Dracula Series, for a reading and discussion of her popular vampire novels. Ms. Acosta is a Bay Area resident and will talk about how this influences her writing as well as introduce her soon to be published works, a romantic comedy titled, "Nancy's Theory of Style" ... (more)and a gothic book for teens. A Stanford graduate, Ms. Acosta is a Steinbeck Institute honoree and a U.C. Chicano Literary Contest winner. She's been a frequent contributor of columns and features to the San Francisco Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times and has spoken at many events, including Litquake, Stanford Alumni Authors Day, the San Francisco Writers Conference, and Writers with Drinks.

Join M.J. Ryan for a talk on her most recent book, “AdaptAbility: How to Survive Change You Didn’t Ask For.” Ryan offers cutting edge tools to see past today’s turmoil and spot the opportunities that lie within unasked-for change. She will present strategies to not only survive, but to thrive ... (more)during the enormous upheavals we’re all going through right now. M.J. Ryan combines psychology, brain science, and the wisdom traditions to help individuals and teams around the world maximize success and fulfillment. She is one of the creators of the “Random Acts of Kindness” series and author of “This Year I Will…How to Finally Change a Habit, “The Happiness Makeover,” and many other self-help and motivational books.

Richie Unterberger will give a presentation on his latest book, “White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day”. He will incorporate rare audiovisual material about this legendary band, including little-heard recordings from throughout their career, film clips of the band, and pictures ... (more)and posters of the group in their 1965 – 1970 prime. Unterberger is the author of numerous rock history books, including “The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film” that won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

Join Kathryn Ma for a talk on her debut short story collection, “All That Work and Still No Boys.” Through mainly Chinese American characters, Ma illuminates the immigrant experience and explores duty, transformation, and loss. In the title story, a mother refuses to let her son save her life, insisting ... (more)instead on a sacrifice by her daughter. As the winner of the 2009 distinguished Iowa Short Fiction Award, Ma is the first Asian American to receive this prize in its forty year history. She lives in San Francisco with her family and is a first generation American whose parents are from Wuxi and Mengzi, China.