Shilpa Agarwal

Reading and book signing for Haunting Bombay

Thursday, July 9 at 7:30 pm

  Haunting Bombay is a literary ghost story set in 1960's India that tells the tale of three generations of the wealthy Mittal family who have buried a tragic history and the ghosts of the past who rise up to haunt them. In her award-winning novel Agarwal weaves together mysticism, mystery, and haunting supernatural spirits in a luminous story of power and powerlessness, voice and silence in post-colonial India. Agarwal's "stunning debut" has been reviewed as a compelling snapshot of 1960's Bombay and a ghost story that evokes both the hauntings of Poe and the hot pulse of today's vampire narratives."

Shilpa Agarwal is a Los Angeles-based writer and academic. Born in Mumbai to a family uprooted by India's Independence movement and subsequent Partition in 1947, Shilpa's early writings explored how colonialism and the chaos of dislocation shaped human interaction. As an undergraduate at Duke University, Shilpa specialized in Asian and African literatures and Women's Studies. She pursued her interest in post-colonial literatures as a doctoral student at the University of California, Los Angeles. She taught at both UCLA and UCSB, including a course on South Asian diaspora, and spoke regularly on the politics and poetics of community.

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Paul Krassner

Reading and book signing for In Praise of Indecency

Tuesday, July 14 at 7:30 pm

  Paul Krassner's style of personal journalism constantly blurs the line between observer and participant. Nowhere is this more apparent than in In Praise of Indecency, a collection of essays and interviews culled from his columns at AVN Online. Whether being interviewed by Susie Bright, or imagining a conversation between Pee-Wee Herman and Pete Townshend about their busts by overzealous cops, or reminiscing about his friend Lenny Bruce, Krassner shines his keen satirical mind on the so-called taboos of todays society and breaks them down to show the hypocrisy of the worlds "culture warriors." With a biting wit and tongue firmly planted in cheek, Mr. Krassner reveals the absurdity of our oppressive social mores in this stark, funny, and ultimately thought-provoking collection.

Paul Krassner is the founder, editor and frequent contributor to the free-thought magazine The Realist. A key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s, he edited Lenny Bruce's autobiography How To Talk Dirty and Influence People. He currently writes columns for AVN Online and High Times Magazine and publishes the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster at paulkrassner.com. In 2004 he received an ACLU Upton Sinclair Award for dedication to freedom of expression. His books include Pot Stories for the Soul, Tales of Tongue Fu, One Hand Jerking, and Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut. He continues to perform and lecture at college campuses, theaters and art galleries across the country.

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