Bruce Jennings reading/signing 'The War on Califronia' - September 7th

 Time Tested Books 

is pleased to present

Bruce Jennings 

Reading & Discussing 

The War on California:  Defeating Oil, Oligarchs and the New Tyranny

Thursday, September 7th at 7 p.m.

 
One of the most important conflicts of the twenty-first century is fought daily within the California Legislature: the ultra-hazards of fossil fuels. As one of the world's largest economies, the outcome is crucial for the role of democracy and the future of the planet. For more than two decades as a senior adviser to the Legislature, Bruce Jennings has gained firsthand experience in this trench warfare between public and private interests.

The arc of these stories centers on a diverse group of advocates and whether they can overcome an entrenched corporate lobby to address the disasters of a changing climate before it is too late. Make no mistake-these accounts describe dark money, covertly fashioned laws, sudden betrayals, and surprising victories. Weaving together a history spanning decades, Jennings takes the reader on a political tour inaccessible to most readers.

   

 About the Author:  

Bruce H. Jennings is the author The War on California: Defeating Oil, Oligarchs and the New Tyranny, a narrative non-fiction based on his many years of service in the California Legislature. He is also a candidate to become a board member for one of the worldʻs largest public pension funds, the California Public Employeesʻ Retirement System (CalPERS). His episodic blogging can be found at Calpolitico (calpolitico.blogspot.com).

Bruce H. Jennings was born in Oakland, California. He graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley and received his doctorate in Political Science at the University of Hawai’i. Bruce is a former member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.

Bruce has taught at several institutions, including the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Montana, and the Evergreen State College. He has delivered lectures at the Universidad Autonoma de Chapingo (Mexico) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Bruce’s research includes several appointments as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley and as a Fulbright Scholar conducting research on the North American Free Trade Agreement in Mexico.

Bruce retired in 2009 as staff to the Senate Environmental Quality Committee after having served as one of the senior advisers to the California Legislature on environmental policy over the course of two decades. He began his career as a Senate Fellow in 1984 and has served as a senior consultant to the Senate Office of Research as well as the chief of staff to the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials.

This event is FREE and everyone is invited.  

Alice Anderson - "Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away" - August 31st

Time Tested Books
is pleased to present

Alice Anderson 

Reading & Signing
Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away
Thursday, August 31, 7:00pm

Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away is a deeply poignant memoir set in a post-Katrina Mississippi. Alice Anderson is returning to assess the damage to her beloved Mississippi coastline and the once-immaculate home that she’d carefully cultivated for her husband, Dr. Liam Rivers, and their three children. Liam is the town hospital’s highly respected Chief of Medicine, for whom Alice willingly left behind her writing life in New York and vestiges of her modeling career in Paris, to become a wife and full-time mother. In the wake of this natural disaster, the tenuous balance of her marriage is lost as Liam’s mental health spirals. When Liam violently attacks her at knifepoint, Alice is saved only by their three-year-old son. The author flees with her children, and what ensues is an epic battle—emotional, psychological, spiritual and legal—for redemption, preservation of self and the welfare of her children. It’s a battle that continues even as life goes on, finally coming full circle when the same son who saved her ten years later endures a violent encounter at his father’s hands. Even as she confronts the harsh realities of high-powered Southern lawyers and a corrupt legal system, Alice finds redemption in her blossoming children and the reclamation of her true self.


"Like blowtorching through silk, Alice Anderson’s alchemy is to turn the shattering pain of her life into poetry. Heartbreaking, terrifying, and shattering, Anderson’s powerful fight for her kids and her own safety becomes a story of breathtaking redemption and yes, beauty." --Caroline Leavitt, bestselling author of Cruel Beautiful World
 
“Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away is as stark as it is beautiful, a hard-won life so full of sorrow and joy that it runs down the great rain chain of heaven, singing like a choir of determined angels. It broke my heart wide open and out fell all this thunder and lightning and beautiful star stuff and rusty silver, torn silk, and the old diary we carry around in our bodies. Quite possibly the best memoir I've ever read.” --Jo-Ann Mapson, author of LA Times bestsellers Bad Girl Creek and The Wilder Sisters
 
"Alice Anderson's stunning memoir begins with cathedrals made of our scars. In this time of fear and doubt, of seemingly perpetual midnight, this book rises to sacredness in its heroic honesty, its warrior's heart, and its profound beauty." --Luis Alberto Urrea, author of the American Book Award-winning Nobody's Son, and The Devil's Highway, The Hummingbird's Daughter and Into the Beautiful North

Alice Anderson has spent decades advocating for domestic violence reduction and fights for women and children enduring high-conflict custody battles in the wake of family battering. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Agni and New Letters and is featured in anthologies such as American Poetry and On The Verge. Her second collection of poetry, The Watermark, contains three Pushcart Prize–nominated poems; her first, Human Nature, was published to critical acclaim. The recipient of The Plum Review Prize, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Prize, and The Great Lakes Colleges Best First Book Prize, she also received the Haven Foundation Grant from Stephen King.

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This event is FREE and everyone is invited

Poets Daniel Rounds & Traci Gourdine - August 24th

Time Tested Books

and Ad Lumen Press

are pleased to present

Poet Daniel Rounds's eros zero

with Traci Gourdine 

Reading / Signing / Q&A
Thursday, August 24, 7:00pm

Join us for an evening with poets Daniel Rounds and Traci Gourdine, celebrating Rounds's new poetry collection eros zero from Ad Lumen Press. Don't miss it!

Daniel Rounds's poetry has been featured in Aufgabe, 3rd Bed, Goodfoot, XConnect, Fish Drum Magazine, and American River Review. His first book of poetry, some distant lateral present, was released by Ad Lumen Press in 2014. He lives and works in Sacramento.

Traci Gourdine's poetry and stories have been

published in numerous literary magazines, and she has been anthologized within Shepard and Thomas’ Sudden Fiction Continued (Norton Publishing). Traci and Quincy Troupe were paired in a year-long exchange of letters for the anthology Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics, and Community (Saturnalia Books). She is co-editor of Night is Gone, Day is Still Coming (Candlewick Press), an anthology of writing by young Native writers, as well as We Beg to Differ, poems by Sacramento poets against the war. She has also co-edited the Tule Review with Luke Breit for the Sacramento Poetry Center. Traci Gourdine is a professor of English at American River College and chaired the Creative Writing department for the California State Summer School for the Arts from 1998 - 2013. She was Chair of the Sacramento Poet Laureate Committee for three laureate terms. For ten years she facilitated writing workshops within several California state prisons in the Arts in Corrections program for the William James Association. Her recent collection is Ringing in the Wild, published by Ad Lumen Press in 2015.

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This event is FREE and everyone is invited