TOMMY ORANGE AND KAVEH AKBAR

SANTA ROSA -

Copperfield’s Books is thrilled to welcome Pulitzer Prize finalist Tommy Orange and renowned poet Kaveh Akbar to Santa Rosa for an intimate conversation about Wandering Stars - Tommy’s masterful follow up to his iconic book There There.

The discussion will include a reading, conversation, audience Q and A and will be followed by a book signing with photo opportunities.

This is a ticketed, off-site event.

Each ticket includes entry for one, seating and a paperback copy of Wandering Stars.

Add on Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! (Ppbk) for a 15% discount on entire order.

Doors Open at 1:30 pm

Scholarships available - Dying to attend but ticket cost too steep? Tell us why you can’t miss this special afternoon by emailing events@copperbook.com

About Wandering Stars:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty." The New York Times Book Review) delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.

"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you.” —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez

Colorado, 1864. Star, a young survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre, is brought to the Fort Marion prison castle, where he is forced to learn English and practice Christianity by Richard Henry Pratt, an evangelical prison guard who will go on to found the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, an institution dedicated to the eradication of Native history, culture, and identity. A generation later, Star’s son, Charles, is sent to the school, where he is brutalized by the man who was once his father’s jailer. Under Pratt’s harsh treatment, Charles clings to moments he shares with a young fellow student, Opal Viola, as the two envision a future away from the institutional violence that follows their bloodlines.

In a novel that is by turns shattering and wondrous, Tommy Orange has conjured the ancestors of the family readers first fell in love with in There There—warriors, drunks, outlaws, addicts—asking what it means to be the children and grandchildren of massacre. Wandering Stars is a novel about epigenetic and generational trauma that has the force and vision of a modern epic, an exceptionally powerful new book from one of the most exciting writers at work today and soaring confirmation of Tommy Orange’s monumental gifts.

Authors:

Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.

Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the author of two poetry collections: Pilgrim Bell and Calling a Wolf a Wolf, in addition to a chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic. He is also the editor of The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine. He lives in Iowa City.

Date and Time: On Saturday March 15, 2025 at 14:00 - 15:30

Venue details: Finley Community Center, 2060 West College Avenue, Santa Rosa, California, 95401, United States