Summer Reading Program Kickoff Event: How to Read Now with Elaine Castillo

Join SBPL for a conversation with author Elaine Castillo to kick off summer reading.

Reading is about more than just books, it's about understanding the world and our place in it. Join us for a discussion with author Elaine Castillo, whose recent collection of essays How to Read Now “explores the politics and ethics of reading, and insists that we are capable of something better: a more engaged relationship not just with our fiction and our art, but with our buried and entangled histories.” Castillo challenges the prevailing wisdom that we should read to build empathy and that white narratives are universal while diverse perspectives are specific.

Elaine Castillo is the author of the widely acclaimed debut novel, America is Not the Heart ( Viking, 2018), named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Boston Globe, Kirkus Reviews, the New York Public Library, and many others. In August 2022, Viking published her first work of nonfiction, How to Read Now, on the politics and ethics of our reading culture. Her writing has appeared in Freeman’s, The Rumpus, Lit Hub, Taste Magazine, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. Her short film, A Mukkbang, was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Open Space. She is a VONA Foundation Fellow and was a three-time recipient of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose while at UC Berkeley. She has also been nominated for the Pat Kavanagh Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Gatewood Prize.