About the Event:
Join Mandy on Thursday, November 13, 2025, in Santa Barbara for a conversation with author Ivy Pochoda about her novel, These Women.
Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These Women, and Sing Her Down which won the LA Times Book Prize. Her novel, Ecstasy, was released on June 17, 2025. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the Edgar Award, among other awards. For many years, Ivy has led a creative writing workshop in Skid Row, Los Angeles, where she helped found Skid Row Zine. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.
*Please note this event requires a reservation and prepayment. Tickets are non-refundable.
*The Santa Barbara Literary Series starts at 12:30 and ends at 3 p.m.
*There is parking in the adjacent parking lots – parking is only permitted in the Santa Barbara Club if you are a member!
Join Mandy on Wednesday, April 22, at Magic Hour in Ojai for a luncheon with author Emily Franklin.
Mandy and Emily will be in conversation about Emily's new novel, Love & Other Monsters.
Emily Franklin is the bestselling author of twenty-five books including The Lioness of Boston, based on the life of trailblazer Isabella Stewart Gardner, now in its eleventh printing and recently featured as a clue on Jeopardy! Her fiction, poetry, essays, and photos have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Kenyon Review, Guernica, and The Journal of the American Medical Association, among many other places, as well as featured and read aloud on National Public Radio, longlisted for the London Sunday Times Short Story Award and named notable by the Association of Jewish Libraries. Her next novel Love & Other Monsters, historical fiction based on the forgotten — but important life of Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s stepsister who was integral in the creation of Frankenstein, will be published in April 2026. She lives outside of Boston with her spouse and four children.
Event tickets are $125 and include a copy of Love & Other Monsters, a three-course prix fixe lunch, a conversation with Emily Franklin and Mandy Jackson-Beverly, followed by a Q&A and book signing.