Join Bart’s Books for an evening with Stewart Lawrence Sinclair on Saturday, April 13 from 6-7! RAINY DAY VENUE CHANGE TO KIM MAXWELL STUDIO, 226 W OJAI AVE, NEXT TO JIM AND ROBS

From the author Juggling, Sinclair’s Space Rover is a brief book that brings a keen eye and a skillful voice to the rich cultural history of mechanical wanderers.

In 1971, the first lunar rover arrived on the moon. The design became an icon of American ingenuity and the adventurous spirit and vision many equated with the space race.

Fifty years later, that vision feels like a nostalgic fantasy, but the lunar rover's legacy paved the way for Mars rovers like Sojourner, Curiosity, and Perseverance. Other rovers have made accessible the world's deepest caves and most remote tundra, extending our exploratory range without risking lives. Still others have been utilized for search and rescue missions or in clean up operations after disasters such as Chernobyl.

For all these achievements, rovers embody not just our potential, but our limits. Examining rovers as they wander our terrestrial and celestial boundaries, we might better comprehend our place, and fate, in this universe.

As meandering and revelatory as its subject, Stewart Lawrence Sinclair's Space Rover takes us on a trip through space and time that's full of universal and personal discovery. Rovers are our mechanical avatars and assistants in hostile environments, but they are also, in their own way, our friends and family.”
—Fred Scharmen, Program Director and Associate Professor of Architecture, Morgan State University

Stewart Lawrence Sinclair is a writer and journalist based in New York. He has been published in Guernica Magazine, Literary Hub, 3:AM Magazine, The Millions, Avidly: A Channel of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New Orleans Review, among others. He is the author of Juggling (2023) and is originally from Ventura, California.

Join Bart’s Books for an evening with Kristine Tompkins in conversation with Mandy Jackson Beverly on Friday, April 5 from 6 - 7 pm!

Patagonia National Park: Chile dives deep into the conservation and rewilding initiatives of Kristine McDivitt Tompkins, former CEO of Patagonia, and Douglas Tompkins, the co-founder of The North Face and Esprit, as seen in the recent NatGeo documentary Wild Life.

Located in the Aysen region of southern Chile, Patagonia National Park is a 1,700-mile scenic route connecting 17 national parks and over 60 communities. The photographs and stories within the book are devoted to Patagonia National Park’s diverse landscapes, encompassing deciduous forests, glaciers, high alpine terrain, rivers, wetlands, and Patagonian steppes, as well as the park’s wild residents and the ongoing efforts to bring back healthy populations of fragile species, such as the highly endangered huemul deer, Darwin's rhea, puma and Andean condor.

“National Parks are the jewels of a country where all are welcome,” says Kris. “Where citizens and foreigners alike can walk the hills, meander along the rivers, and watch Patagonia grasslands slowly, patiently, regenerate forward toward the powerful, plentiful territories they once were.

Kristine McDivitt Tompkins is a former CEO of Patagonia and cofounder and president of Tompkins Conservation. She has been a key figure in the creation of Patagonia National Park in Chile and other conservation projects that have so far resulted in 15 million acres protected in new or expanded national parks in Chile and Argentina, in addition to 30 million acres of marine national parks in Argentina. She holds several global leadership positions in conservation, and formerly served as a Patron for Protected Areas for the UN Environment Programme. The organization she created in Chile with Douglas Tompkins is now an independent entity known as Rewilding Chile which continues the Tompkins legacy in the region.

Mandy Jackson-Beverly is the host and executive producer of The Bookshop Podcast, event manager for the Lunch With An Author Literary Series at El Encanto, Santa Barbara, and has taught publishing and creative writing workshops for the University of London, Cal Poly, Publishers & Writers (San Diego, Orange County), California Writers Club, Writers & Publishers Network, Ventura Writers Club, and served as a guest interviewer for BookFest, Los Angeles. Mandy writes creative non-fiction and fiction and avidly supports independent bookshops and authors worldwide. She is the author of The Creatives Series: A Secret Muse, The Devil and the Muse, The Immortal Muse, and The Legend of Astridr: Birth.

Join Bart’s Books for an evening with author Tessa Hulls in conversation with Lucy Bellwood on Thursday, March 21 from 6 - 7 pm!

In her evocative, genre-defying graphic memoir, Tessa Hulls tells the story of three generations of women in her family: her Chinese grandmother, Sun Yi; her mother, Rose; and herself.

Extensively researched and gorgeously rendered, Feeding Ghosts is Hulls’s homecoming, a vivid journey into the beating heart of one family, set against the dark backdrop of Chinese history. By turns fascinating and heartbreaking, inventive and poignant, Feeding Ghosts exposes the fear and trauma that haunt generations, and the love that holds them together.

"Feeding Ghosts reminds us how much the personal is political . . . an audacious, awe-inspiring feat. For me, it was an essential read." —Ling Ma, author of Bliss Montage

Tessa Hulls is an artist, a writer, and an adventurer. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Atlas Obscura, and Adventure Journal, and her comics have been published in The Rumpus, City Arts, and Spark. She has received grants from the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, 4Culture, and the McMillen Foundation, and she is a recipient of the Washington Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Feeding Ghosts is her first book.

Lucy Bellwood is a professional Adventure Cartoonist based in Ojai, CA. Her documented expeditions include rafting trips through the Grand Canyon, cutting-edge oceanography in the Pacific, and an expedition aboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world. Her talks and essays explore the intersections of community, authenticity, and financial sustainability for creators. She is the author of Baggywrinkles: a Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea, an educational memoir about her time working aboard tall ships, and 100 Demon Dialogues, a helpful guide to living with imposter syndrome.

Gather in our darkening courtyard with poet-naturalist Charles Hood to hear about the exquisite and intricate inner workings of nature after nightfall, flora that unfurl under moonshine, and the creatures that go bump in the night.

“Hood is the love child of Rebecca Solnit and Edward Abbey, assuming such a child had been raised in an art colony by demented garden gnomes.” (Michael Guista)

“I’ve just reached a stage where the High Church rhetoric of Emerson and the pristine skies of Ansel Adams are not enough. What about nature for the rest of us? There are trees (lots of them) in downtown Los Angeles, parrots in Phoenix, coyotes in Chicago, peregrine falcons in Boston. Just yesterday I saw a condor over I-5 in Gorman, which is the freeway between Los Angeles and Bakersfield. Even in my pokey little tract house on a regular street in a working-class neighborhood, I have tallied 74 species of birds. I am not trying to repudiate the Romantic Sublime—I just want to expand the conversation. In photographic terms, I guess I am asking for less Ansel Adams and more Robert Adams.” Charles Hood in conversation with Kristine Morris

This event is free to attend, no need to RSVP. Come join us, buy a book, and grab a seat in our courtyard.
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Join local art and culture writer Stacie Stukin in conversation with Adam Blackman of the famed design duo Adam Blackman and David Cruz. Perfect for lovers of Architectural Digest, this talk will explore their design ethos that runs the gamut from operatic to telenovela. Full of color photographs of Blackman Cruz spaces and pieces that gravitate toward the rare, dramatic, and playful, this beautiful book is a piece of art in and of itself.

This event is free to attend, no need to RSVP. Come join us, buy a book, and grab a seat in our courtyard.
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Building upon a Pulitzer finalist Los Angeles Times explanatory piece on sea level rise, Rosanna Xia’s California Against the Sea explores our shifting relationship with the space between land and sea. “Few people are more qualified to explain and analyze this landscape.” (Science Magazine)

Xia’s courtyard conversation with Santa Barbara oceanography professor Dr. Stephanie Mendes is not to be missed by anyone who loves the wide horizon of our California coast.

Listen to Rosanna Xia on NPR’s Here and Now

“I’m constantly wrestling with how I want the reader to feel at the end of any story about climate change. The more I’ve tried to balance the “right” amount of hope versus despair, or an urgent sense of loss, I’ve come to realize that it’s not the feeling of hope that I should be indexing on. It’s responsibility. We have a responsibility to take better care of the air we breathe, the forests we rely on, and, of course, the ocean, this massive body of water that has quietly absorbed the brunt of our emissions. We have a duty to clean up these messes of our past, and to reconsider how we want to live in the future. And embracing this responsibility takes courage.

I feel like courage, and not being afraid of change—and being brave enough to question whether we need to change—is at the heart of both our books. Can we reimagine and rebuild in a way that is in better relationship with our natural world?” from Wildfires and Vanishing Coastlines: Rosanna Xia and Lizzie Johnson on Turning Their Climate Reporting into Books

This event is free to attend, no need to RSVP. Come join us, buy a book, and grab a seat in our courtyard.
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Join James Beard Award winner and veteran party thrower Amy Thielen for a talk on her newest cookbook all about rethinking the way you entertain, making dinner parties less formal, more frequent, and as fun for the cook as for the guests.

After living for years in the rural countryside, Thielen has developed a steep aversion to the formality of entertaining. But don’t be mistaken, Amy throws a lot of parties—holiday parties, birthday feasts, longest-day-of-the-year barbecues, no-occasion dinner parties. According to Amy, “the best dinner parties are always a little off. They hit both high notes and low notes. They swing. The missteps make us human, and cause the understanding to flow around the table, unbroken, like good conversation.”

Winter feasts on freezing midwestern nights. Big sprawling summer bashes. In Amy’s corner of the world, northern Minnesota, in-house entertaining is more than a way of life—it’s pretty much the only option. “You can call cooking a compulsion or you can call it an art or you can call it a drag, but you can’t call it a waste of time. A meal with friends or family is nothing more, and nothing less, than a fleeting event that fills a momentary spiritual need. If you think about it that way, nearly every inconsequential occasion calls for [a party].” And when a dinner party is done right—aligning people and season and mood—the food will fade into the background. “The next day, it will resurface as an idyllic sense memory of flavors and textures that everyone will remember as better than they actually were. That’s just how it works,” notes Amy. “The real hostess gift is the fact that everything— absolutely everything—tastes better at someone else’s house.”

Preaching leniency, not-guilty pleasures, and the art of making it in advance, Thielen soothes the most common party anxieties one by one. Not afraid of meat (but obsessed with vegetables), these 125 loyal recipes are arranged in menu form—from intimate dinner parties to larger holiday feasts to parties that serve up to twenty. With a feast of gorgeous photography and plenty of down-in-the-pan cooking nerdery, Company encourages a return to the habit, and the joy, of cooking for family and friends.

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Meet us in the courtyard for our first open mic (in recent memory)... The rules are simple. Upon arrival, add your name to the list to read and our emcee will grant you five minutes on the mic.

California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick joins us for an evening of readings and reflections on the place of poetry in our lives.

“As a teacher, poet, and father, Lee writes movingly about his identity as a Californian and encourages others to reflect on what the state means to them,” said Governor Newsom. He is the 10th California Poet Laureate, and the first Asian American to serve in the role.

Herrick writes eloquently on the immigrant experience – bringing to life the smell of chapchae and the sound of mariachi trumpets, the farmers market at midnight, and the small talk of Armenian neighbors. Herrick’s work is a Whitmanesque celebration of the best spirit of our state, the vibrancy of the Central Valley, and ourselves.

Read and Listen to Lee Herrick’s poem My California.

“In my California, free sounds and free touch / Free questions, free answers / Free songs from parents and poets, those hopeful bodies of light.”

This is a free event. RSVP here to reserve a seat!

RSVP here for this one-of-a-kind cross-community evening featuring the work of our neighboring writers and performers from the The Townies, Inc. Get to know the artists behind the monthly new work space StoryWorks, hear from young writers, and celebrate Tim Cummings’ new book.

RSVP here for Addiction Surf Mag’s new issue launch party. Jeff Grimes, Evan apRoberts, and Melissa Castellano join us for an event celebrating homegrown surf culture and its ever-evolving relationship with art, rock ‘n’ roll, nature, and free expression. Come hear about the new issue and stay for the hang. Featuring a live vinyl set by Grady of Grady’s Record Refuge.