Story is the Thing

Looking to discover your new favorite author? Join us for our signature reading series, Story Is the Thing, to hear four stellar Northern California fiction authors read from their debut and latest titles.

The Program
6:30 - Reception with the authors
7:00 - Readings, discussion, and Q&A
8:00 - Book Signing 
Our guests are Ellen Barker for Nothing North of Delmar, a novel of one woman’s post-college foray into the adult realities of landlords, economics, and urban politics; Meg Donohue for The Memory Gardener, a cozy tale of the power of memory and the nourishing magic of garden; Portia Elan for her dazzling adventure across centuries and continents in search of the things that hold us together, Homebound; and finally Victoria Tatum for her Chinatown-meets-Grapes-of-Wrath novel More Than Any River. 

The Line Up 

Ellen Barker grew up in Missouri and had a front-row seat to the demographic shifts, the hope, and the turmoil of the civil rights era of the 1960s. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Urban Studies from Washington University in Saint Louis, where she developed a passion for how cities work, and don’t. She began her career as an urban planner in Saint Louis and then spent many years working for large consulting firms specializing in urban infrastructure, first as a tech writer-editor and later managing large data systems. She now lives in Northern California with her husband. Her prior novels include the East of Troost series.

Meg Donohue is the USA Today bestselling author of The Memory Gardener (Gallery Books / Simon & Schuster), You, Me, and the Sea, Every Wild Heart, Dog Crazy, All the Summer Girls, and How to Eat a Cupcake. Meg has an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Dartmouth College. Born and raised in Philadelphia, she now lives in San Francisco with her husband, three daughters, and dog. She is working on her next novel.

Portia Elan studied history at Stanford University and earned an MFA from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, before returning to California, where she has worked as a teacher and public librarian. A former Lambda Literary Fellow, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her wife and an abundance of cats. Homebound is her first novel.

Victoria Tatum received her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State and her MA in Education from UC Santa Cruz. Her first novel, The Virgin’s Children, was released by a Canadian publisher formerly known as Rain Publishing in 2006. She and her husband have two adult children and live in Santa Cruz, California.

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Host or Publisher Kepler's Literary Foundation