Events
Gretchen Carlson with Heather McDonald
Gretchen Carlson
in conversation with Heather McDonald
discussing her book,
Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back
William Turner Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue,
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$45 Reserved Section Seat + Book
$30 Reserved Section Seat
$20 General Admission Seat
In Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back, Gretchen shares her own experiences, as well as powerful and moving stories from women in many different careers and fields who decided they too weren’t ready to shut up and sit down. Gretchen became a voice for the voiceless.
She wrote best sellers, You’ll Never Blue Ball in this Town Again and MY INAPPROPRIATE LIFE: Some Material Not Suitable for Small Children, Nuns, or Mature Adults. Her weekly column “What Heather McDonald noticed this week” has been featured in InTouch for the last three years.
In 2015 she debuted her Showtime special ‘I Don’t Mean To Brag,’ later shown on Netflix. For seven years Heather wrote, produced and appeared on Chelsea Lately as well as it’s spin off show, After Lately. Heather was a contributing writer on the Wayans’ Brothers films White Chicks and Dance Flink.
Alice Hoffman with Janelle Brown
8pm (Reception 6:30-7:30pm)
An Evening with Alice Hoffman
in conversation with Janelle Brown
The Rules of Magic
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$45 General Admission seat + a copy of The Rules of Magic
$55 Reserved Section Seat + a copy of The Rules of Magic
$70 Two Reserved Sections Seats + 1 copy of The Rules of Magic
$95 Reception (6;30-7:30pm), Reserved Seat + Book
$20 General Admission Seat (on sale Sep 18)
Alice Hoffman is the author of more than thirty works of fiction, including The Rules of Magic, The Marriage of Opposites, Practical Magic, The Red Garden, the Oprah’s Book Club selection Here on Earth, The Museum of Extraordinary Things, and The Dovekeepers. Visit her website.
“I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.”
“Even in times when it’s difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art – and books – always help.”
The Rules of Magic is Hoffman’s spellbinding prequel to Practical Magic. For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man. Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautiful Jet, who can read other people’s thoughts, and charismatic Vincent, who began looking for trouble he day he could walk.
From the start Susanna sets down rules for her children. But when her children visit their Aunt Isabelle in the small Massachusetts town where the Owens family has been blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong, they uncover family secrets and begin to understand the truth of who they are. Back in New York City each begins a risky journey as they try to escape the family curse.
Thrilling and exquisite, real and fantastical, The Rules of Magic is a story about the power of love reminding us that the only remedy for being human is to be true to yourself.
Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Watch Me Disappear, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, and This Is Where We Live. Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Self, Lenny, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. Previously, she worked as a senior writer at Salon, and began her career as a staff writer at Wired. She lives in Los Angeles.
Ed Asner and Ed. Weinberger
8pm (6:30-7:30pm Reception)
An Evening with
Ed Asner and Ed. Weinberger
in conversation with Terrence McNally
The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs
All Saints Church
132 North Euclid Avenue
Pasadena, CA 91101
PURCHASE TICKETS
$43 Reserved Section Seat + Book
$30 Reserved Section Seat
$20 General Admission (on sale Sep 1)
$95 Reception* + Reserved Section Seat + Book
* Reception is at All Saints, 6:30-7:30pm
Television legend Ed Asner is well-known for his role on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and subsequent spin-off, Lou Grant. He is the winner of seven acting Emmy Awards, and has been nominated a total of twenty times. Asner has also made a name for himself as a trade unionist and a political activist. During his two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he was an outspoken critic of President Ronald Reagan, for his Central American policy.
Ed. Weinberger has written for Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, and Johnny Carson (for five years on The Tonight Show). He wrote for and produced The Mary Tyler Moore Show, co-created Taxi, Dear John, and The Cosby Show. He has won three Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody, and nine Emmys. In 2000, he received The Writer’s Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award.
A self-proclaimed “dauntless Democrat” from the old days, Ed Asner figures that if the right-wing is wrong about voter fraud, Obama’s death panels, and climate change, they are probably just as wrong when they interpret the Constitution and use it to defend their actions.
“Look around you at the chaos of our daily lives. I thought we should get a clear shot at what founded us. Maybe if we’re truly aware of the mixed bag that founded us, then we wouldn’t be too surprised at finding ourselves in the bed we’re in.”
Watch: 2016 Free and Equal Elections presidential debate moderated by Ed Asner
In The Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution Against Right-Wing Hypocrites and Nutjobs, Asner leads the charge for liberals to reclaim the Constitution from the right-wingers who use it as their justification for doing whatever terrible thing they want to do, which is usually to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It’s about time someone gave them hell and explained that progressives can read, too.
Terrence McNally, a strategic communications consultant who helps organizations tell better stories, hosts a weekly interview show on the Progressive Voices Network on TuneIn and a monthly podcast with Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. All podcasts can be found here. For 17 years he hosted an interview show, Free Forum, on KPFK.
Diane Keaton
7pm
A Conversation with Diane Keaton
The House that Pinterest Built
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS
$65 Reserved Section Seat + a copy of the book
$95 Two Reserved Seats + one copy of the book
$25 General Admission Seat
* All books are pre-signed and available for pick up before the event, and signed copies will be available for sale at the event.
Diane Keaton is an Oscar-winning actress, director, and author. Her design aesthetic has been celebrated in several successful books that she produced, including California Romantica and House.
Leading the conversation will be David Takacs, the architect on the project and they will be joined by Stephen Shadley, the designer and Tim Perry, the Superintendent.
At once a style guide, an inspirational tome, and a how-to volume on creating one’s home, this book will serve as a go-to reference for all those seeking to spur their own creativity as they embark on the creation of home. When Diane Keaton decided that she wanted to build her own home from the ground up, she took the advice of her dear friend, film director Nancy Meyers, and took to the boards of Pinterest to find inspiration. There she discovered the practical and the fantastical, elements and styles long adored and ones that she never knew she was drawn to. Keaton’s dream house was officially under way and this book that resulted is a compelling account of her that house, from idea to realization in brick, stone, and wood.
“If you want to explore. If you love to see. If you’re looking to look; this book is an example of a home made from the gifts of other people’s addictive yearnings for the perfect home, with the perfect landscape and the perfect interior. It illustrates my choices of your choices. Who knows, you might find one of your pins here. You might smile. You might shake your head and say, ‘This isn’t what I had in mind.’ You might think: ‘Hey that’s my kitchen. She copied my kitchen.’ But the truth is, as much as I tried, I could never entirely recreate the light filled photograph of a kitchen that led the way to the journey that brought me here. No one can.” – Diane Keaton
The House that Pinterest Built defines what home and house mean to the celebrated movie star, who is known for her love affair with houses and design. Filled with ideas that reveal a personal yet engaging aesthetic, this volume includes compelling photos from Keaton’s past homes and those she admires, as well as a multitude of details from every corner of those spaces and objects that excite and inspire the house designer and dreamer—dramatic staircases and magical light fixtures, film stills and book covers, pottery and art—drawn from the visual treasure trove known as Pinterest and Keaton’s private collection, as she creates and designs her newest house.
Rich imagery is accompanied by Keaton’s ideas for selecting furniture, kitchen layout, and bedroom design; she talks about the importance of lighting in the bathroom and why the living room needs to be reimagined. Beyond the interior, she explores curb appeal and environmental sensitivity, always with an eye to making home the way it should be—a place of tranquility, a place where one is restored and where one returns to dream again and again. The book culminates in the dream realized, the house she has imagined, designed, and made, now shared with the world for the first time in all-new photography.
Russell Brand with Dr. Drew Pinsky
8pm
Russell Brand
in conversation with Dr. Drew Pinsky
Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS*
$50 General Admission Section Seat
$60 Reserved Section Seat
* All tickets include a pre-signed copy of Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions
Russell Brand is an English comedian, actor, radio host, activist, and author of several bestselling books, including the New York Times bestsellers My Booky Wook and Revolution. He has had a number of major film roles including parts in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek. He rose to fame as host of television’s Big Brother’s Big Mouth. He’s been in all the twelve-step fellowships going, started his own men’s group, is a therapy regular and a practiced yogi. Funded by his profits from Revolution, Russell opened a nonprofit coffee house in London run as a social enterprise by former drug addicts in abstinence-based recovery programs. He lives in London, England. Visit his website.
Recovery: Freedom from Our Addictions is the definitive guide to addiction from someone who has struggled with heroin, alcohol, sex, fame, food, and staring at their phone.
“This manual for self-realization comes not from a mountain but from the mud…My qualification is not that I am better than you but I am worse. I am an addict.” —Russell Brand
This is an age of addiction. America is plagued by crises involving drugs, alcohol, and opioids, and our society is consumed with addictions like work, stress, bad relationships, and digital media. We are facing an epidemic so all-encompassing that many of us don’t even realize we are in its grasp. Russell Brand is here to provide a recovery plan, and make sense of the ailing world. While he’s worked on this material as part of his comedy and previous bestsellers, he’s never before shared the tools that really took him out of it, that keep him clean and clear.
With a powerful mix of honesty, humor, and compassion, Brand tells his intimate yet universal story and shares the practical advice and wisdom he has been taught through his fourteen and a half years of recovery. He speaks to those suffering along the full spectrum of addiction – from serious, life-threatening misuse of substances, to the subtler habits we use to hold our lives together, like food, technology, or unhealthy relationships.
Dr. Drew Pinsky is a diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Addiction Medicine and is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He was for many years an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Pinsky is a New York Times bestselling author and co-author of the first academic study on celebrities and narcissism published in the Journal of Research in Personality. He is the author of 5 books, several medical journal articles and contributor to textbooks.
Known to his fans as Dr. Drew, Pinsky currently hosts “Midday Live” on KABC in Los Angeles. He is also host of multiple podcasts including: “The Adam & Drew Podcast,” “This Life,” and “Weekly Infusion.” Pinsky’s long career in television and radio started in 1983 with the seminal nationally syndicated call-in show “Loveline,” that later became a hit MTV show with co-host Adam Carolla.
Alice Waters with Jonathan Gold
8pm (Reception, 6:30-7:30pm)
Alice Waters
in conversation with Jonathan Gold
Coming to My Senses:
The Making of a Counterculture Cook
Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre
New Roads School
Herb Alpert Educational Village
3131 Olympic Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90404
PURCHASE TICKETS — SOLD OUT
Video from the event will be posted week of Oct 9.
$45 General Admission Seat + book
$55 Reserved Section Seat +book
$95 Reception (6:30-7:30pm)* + Reserved Seat + book
$20 General Admission Seat (on sale Sep. 4)
*includes selections prepared from recipes by Alice Waters
Alice Waters on Sex, Drugs and Sustainable Agriculture, (New York Times, Aug 22, 2017)
“I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food.”
Alice Waters is executive chef, founder, owner and of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkeley, California. She also founded the Edible Schoolyard Project. Waters has received the National Humanities Medal, the French Legion of Honor, the WSJ Magazine Humanitarian Innovator Award, and three James Beard Awards. Waters is the vice president of Slow Food International and the author of thirteen books.
“….every time you’re going to the grocery store, you’re voting with your dollars. Support your farmers’ market. Support local food. Really learn to cook.”
Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People: Alice Waters on the Edible Schoolyard
Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook is the long-awaited memoir from cultural icon and culinary standard-bearer Alice Waters. In it, she recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the founding of what is arguably America’s most influential restaurant. Moving from a repressive suburban upbringing to Berkeley in 1964 at the height of the Free Speech Movement and campus unrest, she was drawn into a bohemian circle of charismatic (mostly male) figures whose views on design, politics, film, and food would ultimately inform the unique culture on which Chez Panisse was founded.
Dotted with stories, recipes, photographs, and letters, Coming to My Senses is a quietly revealing look at one woman’s evolution from a rebellious yet impressionable follower to a respected activist, and how she established the iconic institution that redefined American cuisine for generations of chefs and food lovers alike.
Jonathan Gold is the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. He won the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2007 and was a finalist again in 2011. A Los Angeles native, he began writing the Counter Intelligence column for the L.A. Weekly in 1986, wrote about death metal and gangsta rap for Rolling Stone and Spin among other places, and is delighted that he has managed to forge a career out of the professional eating of tacos.