Bookworks Announces Fall Events Including Writers On Choice, Stargazers, and More

Bookworks continues author events virtually in August and September, and expects to do so throughout the fall.

"Most of the big publishers have already said, 'we're not sending anyone out on the road this fall,'" says Amanda Sutton, Bookworks Events and Marketing Director. "I think we can expect virtual author tours for the rest of the year."

Virtual events have been free through Bookworks and its publishing parters all spring and summer, with sales driven from its website. All virtual events take place on Zoom. To obtain links, RSVP to rsvp@bkwrks.com with the author's name in the subject line.

Virtual events are recorded where possible and posted to Bookworks' Facebook page and Youtube channels and on the website. Customers who want to pick up event books or online orders, including 2021 calendars now on sale, should await a call that the order is in and pick up Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday from 10-2 or Wednesday from 2-6 pm.

August events highlights include Independent Bookstore Day, rescheduled from its usual date the last Saturday of April, to August 29. Bookworks has three events that day to celebrate. At 1 pm, Emily Sego will share a recipe with us from her cookbook, New Mexican Food Made Easy. Then at 3 pm, feminist scholar and journalist Martha Burk will talk about her new voting guide for women, Your Voice, Your Vote. Wrapping up the day will be a group reading from Albuquerque In Print contributors with editors Lynn and Lynda Miller.

On August 30th at 3 pm, writers who have contributed to CHOICE: Writers on Abortion will read from the new anthology on abortion, including Shirley Geoek-lin Lim, Lisa Alvarado, Mary Morris, and SM Ramos with editor Annie Finch.

September events highlights include authors with new fiction and nonfiction for kids and adults. On the nonfiction front, ER doctor Frank Huyler reads from his new memoir, White Hot Light, on September 1. On September 17, former White House photographer David Lienemann based in New Mexico, talks about his new photo book, Biden.

Laura Paskus on climate change, last Stargazers

For kids, on September 2, Las Cruces author and Rick Riordan Presents sensation, Jen Cervantes, reads from her new novel, Shadow Crosser. On September 26, Kit Rosewater talks with kids about her new Derby Girls novel, Shelly Struggles to Shine.

The Wingbeats Poetry Workshop is the second Tuesday of the month, with the next meetings on August 11 and September 8. Interested participants should email David Meischen.

AUGUST & SEPTEMBER FEATURES

August 15, all day: Bookstore Romance Day. Celebrate romance writing on Bookstore Romance Day! Join dozens of virtual author events online all day via Bookstore Romance Day's Facebook page and find out more on their website.

August 18, 6 pm: Jan Eliasberg, Hannah's War, co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Center Book Fest. Eliasberg, an award-winning screen and television writer and director delivers a "mesmerizing" re-imagination of the final months of World War II and is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery. Set in Berlin in 1938 and New Mexico in 1945.

August 19, 6 pm: Lauren Camp, Took House, new poetry, in conversation with Margaret Randall. Took House is a disquieting book about intimate relationships and what is seen and hidden. In vulnerable poems of obsession, Camp places motivation deep in the background, following instead a chain reaction between pain and pleasure. Boundaries shift between reality and allegory. Blame, power and disorder hover, unsettling what we know of love.

August 23, 3 pm: Arnold Vigil, Santa Fe Different. From 2004 to 2009, the Albuquerque Journal North ran the "¡Órale! Santa Fe" column by Santa Fe native and veteran journalist Arnold Vigil. Santa Fe Different is a compilation of Vigil's favorite columns. Vigil's razor-sharp observances on life and culture in Santa Fe--including its politics and politicians--reveal both its strengths and downright weaknesses, which many will agree with (or not).

August 26, 6 pm: Patrick Frank, Sharing Code. This book tells the story of Art1, a computer program developed in 1968 at the University of New Mexico by electrical engineer Richard Williams with the encouragement of art department chair and renowned kinetic artist Charles Mattox, who wanted to make UNM a center of high-tech creativity. UNM art faculty member Frederick Hammersley took a strong interest in Art1 and in two years made more than 150 works using it. The book features 50 illustrations by Hammersley, Charles Mattox, Katherine Nash, and James Hill and interviews with Williams and Hill.

August 28, 6 pm: UNM Great Outdoor Author Panel. UNM Press authors Tamara Massong, Ashley Biggers, Bob Julyan, Baker Morrow, and Mike Coltrin talk about their respective works and the nature and hiking opportunities in New Mexico.

August 29, all day: Independent Bookstore Day.

1 pm: Emily Sego, New Mexican Food Made Easy

3 pm: Martha Burk, Your Voice, Your Vote

5pm: Albuquerque In Print Magazine Launch

August 30, 3 pm: CHOICE Words: Writers on Abortion group reading. Contributors to Choice Words read from their works during this virtual event with editor Annie Finch. This collection magnifies the voices of people reclaiming the sole authorship of their abortion experiences. These essays, poems, and prose are a testament to the profound political power of defying shame. Readers include Shirley Geoek-lin Lim, Lisa Alvarado, Mary Morris, and SM Ramos.

September 1, 6 pm: Frank Huyler, White Hot Light. In the late 1990s, a young physician in Albuquerque, New Mexico, published a stunning memoir of his experiences in the highly charged world of the ER. Presented in a series of powerful, poetic vignettes, The Blood of Strangers became an instant classic. Now, over two decades later, Dr. Frank Huyler delivers another dispatch from the trenches--this time from the perspective of middle age. In portraits visceral, haunting, sometimes surreal, Huyler reveals the gritty reality of medicine practiced on the razor's edge between life and death.

September 2, 6 pm: J.C. Cervantes, Shadow Crosser. Best-selling author in the Rick Riordan Presents series, Cervantes delivers the epic finale to the Storm Runner trilogy--a tale of mystery, magic, and mayhem featuring gods from both Maya and Aztec mythology. Zane Obispo has been looking forward to his training at the Shaman Institute for Higher Order Magic, and not only because it means he'll be reunited with his best friend, Brooks. Anything would be better than how he has spent the last three months: searching for the remaining godborns with a nasty demon who can sniff them out (literally). But when Zane tracks down the last kid on his list, he's in for a surprise: the "one" is actually a pair of twins, and they're trying to prevent a mysterious object from falling into the wrong hands. In The Shadow Crosser, Zane and his friends embark on their most treacherous mission yet--a mission that, with one blunder, could change history as we know it, and worse, destroy the universe.

September 8, 6 pm: Wingbeats Poetry Workshop. Join Dos Gatos Press for their monthly Wingbeats Poetry Workshop, now on Zoom. RSVP to David Meischen at dem1948@gmail.com for the Zoom link. This month's exercise is "Emulating Walt Whitman," Harryette Mullen's prompt from Wingbeats I, presented by Dave Meischen.

September 10, 6 pm: Judith Pentz, Cleanse Your Body, Reveal Your Soul. Judith E. Pentz, MD, has practiced as an integrative psychiatrist for twenty-eight years in Albuquerque where she is an assistant professor and attending child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist at the University of New Mexico. Cleanse Your Body, Reveal Your Soul is written for people seeking to reconnect with the part of themselves that allows them to create a sustainable experience of wellness with details about healing oils, Ayurvedic daily rituals, yoga, definitions and quizzes.

September 14, 6 pm: Emily Levesque, The Last Stargazers. Award-winning astronomer Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers, people willing to adventure across high mountaintops and to some of the most remote corners of the planet, in the name of science. From the lonely quiet of midnight stargazing to tall tales of wild bears loose in the observatory, The Last Stargazers is a love letter to astronomy and an affirmation of the crucial role that humans can and must play in the future of scientific discovery. In this sweeping work of narrative science, Levesque shows how astronomers in this scrappy and evolving field are going beyond the machines to infuse creativity and passion into the stars and inspires us all to peer skyward in pursuit of the universe's secrets.

September 16, 6 pm: Dave Dewitt, Chile Peppers. In Chile Peppers: A Global History, Dave DeWitt, author of fifty books, a food historian, producer of the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show in Albuquerque, and world expert on chiles, travels from New Mexico across the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia chronicling the history, mystery, and mythology of chiles around the world and their abundant uses in seventy mouth-tingling recipes.

September 17, 6 pm: David Lienemann, Biden: The Obama Years and the Battle for the Soul of America. The visual chronicle of Joe Biden's eight years as vice president to Barack Obama. Lienemann, a photographer based in New Mexico is the former White House photographer for Biden, traces his vice presidency in unprecedented detail, shedding light on who Biden is as a political leader and patriot, and also as a father, husband, and friend in the eight years Lienemann spent documenting visits to 47 states and 64 countries, making nearly a million photographs of moments both grand and intimate.

September 20, 3 pm: Laura Paskus, At the Precipice: New Mexico's Changing Climate. At the Precipice explores the question many of us have asked ourselves: What kind of world are we leaving to our children? The realities of climate change consume the media and keep us up at night worrying about the future. But in New Mexico and the larger Southwest, climate change has been silently wreaking havoc: average temperatures in the Upper Rio Grande Basin are increasing at double the global average; super fires like Las Conchas have devastated mountains; and sections of the Rio Grande are drying up. Laura Paskus, widely published environmental journalist, has tracked the issues of climate change at both the state and federal levels. She shares the frightening truth, both in terms of what is happening in nature and what is not happening to counteract the mounting crisis. Paskus is the producer of New Mexico In Focus's series "Our Land: New Mexico's Environmental Past, Present, and Future."

September 23, 6 pm: Meredith Hall, Beneficience. New York Times bestselling author Meredith Hall's radiant debut novel is a study of love--both its gifts and its obligations--that will stay with readers long after the last page. With a rare tenderness and compassion, Beneficence illuminates the heart's enduring covenants and compromises.

September 26, 3 pm: Kit Rosewater, Shelly Struggles to Shine, new Derby Girls kids book. Now part of the official junior roller derby league, the Derby Daredevils are ready to compete in their first tournament. While the other girl's practice their derby specialties, Shelly isn't sure what she's best at. In hopes of taking home the tournament's Star Skater award, Shelly designs extra-special gear for the Daredevils. But not everything works as well as Shelly imagined, and she can't get the team on board. Without the gear, how will Shelly shine on the track? With high-energy illustrations from Sophie Escabasse and lots of roller derby action, Book #2 in the Derby Girls explores both individuality and what it means to be part of a team.

September 30, 6 pm: Mike Tapia, Gangs of the El Paso-Juarez Borderland: A History. Tapia looks extensively at the role of history and geography on criminal subculture formation in the binational urban setting of El Paso-Juárez, demonstrating the region's unique context for criminogenic processes. He provides a poignant case study of Homeland Security and the apparent lack of drug-war spillover in communities on the US-Mexico border.

LOOKING AHEAD TO OCTOBER

October 2, 6 pm: Helen MacDonald, Vesper Flights, A Word with Writers Literary Fundraiser. From the author of H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald reads from her new book, Vesper Flights, for Bookworks' A Word with Writers literary fundraiser for the Albuquerque Public Library Foundation. Each ticket includes a book and a donation to the library foundation. To obtain the Zoom event link for the event, buy a ticket at bkwrks.com/helen-macdonald. Each ticket is $35 with a signed hardcover and attendance for you and a date at our October 2 Zoom virtual event with Helen MacDonald. The Zoom link will be sent to the email you used on your order by noon on the day of the event. A hardcover copy of Vesper Flights and a customized signed book plate will be shipped to your home or available for curbside service.

In Vesper Flights Helen MacDonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.