Our So-Called Lives: Oliver de la Paz, Tishani Doshi, and Marie Mockett September 17, 2010

Why do we want to escape the places we were raised? How much do its bleachers and stadiums, its nosy neighbors and long-distance phone calls shape our coming-of-age? Poet Tishani Doshi reads from her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers. Called "captivating, delightful" by Salman Rushdie, The Pleasure Seekers follows the cross-cultural love affair sparked by a young man's solitary move from Madras to London and the tupsy-turvy Patel-Jones family that ensues. In Picking Bones from Ash Marie Mutsuki Mockett builds a lavish world in which characters journey from Buddhist temples to the black market of international antiques in California, tracing generations of women through different locales with different expectations on who they should become. Oliver de la Paz's Requiem for the Orchard, poems follow a speaker's boyhood to fatherhood where he wants to take his son back "to the small town of my youth and hold the book of wildflowers / open for him, and look."

This event is opened to the public with a $5 suggested donation