An Evening With Rebecca Solnit & THE BEGINNING COMES AFTER THE END

Join us on Friday, March 6 at 7:00 PM for a special evening with Rebecca Solnit. Presented by Mrs. Dalloway's Bookstore and Elmwood Business Association, this event will be held at St. John's Presbyterian Church of Berkeley.

In this sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit surveys a world that has changed dramatically since the year 1960. Despite the forces seeking to turn back the clock on history, change is not a possibility; it is an inevitability.

The changes amount to nothing less than dismantling an old civilization and building a new one, whose newness is often the return of the old ways and wisdoms. In this rising worldview, interconnection is a core idea and value. But because the transformation is obscured within a longer arc of history, its scale is seldom recognized.

While the white nationalist and authoritarian backlash drives individualism and isolation, this new world embraces antiracism, feminism, a more expansive understanding of gender, environmental thinking, scientific breakthroughs, and Indigenous and non-Western ideas, pointing toward a more interconnected, relational world.

REBECCA SOLNIT is the author of more than 25 books, including Orwell’s Roses, Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A longtime climate and human rights activist, she serves on the boards of Oil Change International and Third Act. Her newsletter of essays and analyses can be found at meditationsinanemergency.com.

ANNIE LEONARD is the  former Executive Director of Greenpeace US, creator of The Story of Stuff, and co founder of the Jane Fonda Climate PAC. Her upcoming book, Protest - Respect it, Defend it, Use it, will be published by Patagonia Books in April 2026.

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