A lively author series featuring the most recent books addressing progressive issues in the church, the community, and the world.

FCCB Hosts Lively Author Series

First Congregational Church of Berkeley hosts an exciting author series in cooperation with Berkeley Arts & Letters. Melissa Mytinger, formerly of Cody’s Books, is the primary organizer for the series along with folks at several of the Bay Area’s independent bookstores.

Audio files of past events are available on this page.

Wednesday May 5, 2010

Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America

7:30 p.m. · Loper Chapel

In his 11th novel, Parrot and Olivier in America, Peter Carey reimagines Alexis de Tocqueville’s journey to and through Jacksonian America, and the result is extraordinary. Inspired by reading Democracy in America and finding Tocqueville worrying about the same things Carey himself worried about’particularly how you can have a real culture in a capitalist democratic society—Parrot and Olivier is part re-imagination of history, part love letter from Carey to his adopted country, and wholly a brilliant new novel from the man novelist Edmund White calls &ldqou;one of the best writers in English.”

Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943. His first work, The Fat Man in History— short story collection—was published in 1974. He went on to write twenty other published works, including War Crimes, Illywhacker, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Jack Maggs, My Life as a Fake, Wrong About Japan, and His Illegal Self. Carey received the Man Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda and True History of the Kelly Gang. Oscar and Lucinda was made into a major motion picture starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett in 1997. In 1990, Carey moved to New York where he completed The Tax Inspector and began teaching at NYU. He would go on to teach at Princeton, The New School and Barnard College. He joined Hunter College as the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing in 1993, where he continues to teach.

This is Peter Carey's only Bay Area appearance.

Download Audio files of past speakers!

Click on the name link to listen on your computer or right click (pc) or control click (Mac) to download the mp3 file to your computer.

John Dean

Conservatives Without Conscience

July 28, 2006

Philip Jenkins

The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South

September 21, 2006

Bart Ehrman

In the Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed

October 10, 2006

Monique El-Faizy

God and Country: How Evangelicals are Transforming America

October 19, 2006

Wangari Maathai

Nobel Prize Winner, author of Unbowed

October 30, 2006

Marcus Borg & Huston Smith Lecture

The Heart & and Soul of Christianity

Friday Night Lecture, November 10, 2006

Marcus Borg & Huston Smith Workshop

The Heart & and Soul of Christianity

Saturday Morning Workshop, November 11, 2006

Michael Eric Dyson

Debating Race

March 6, 2007

Paul Hawken

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming

May 29, 2007

David Batstone

Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—and How We Can Fight It

March 20, 2007

Parker Palmer

The Courage to Lead; The Courage to Teach

February 17, 2008

Chris Hedges

I Don’t Believe in Atheists

April 2, 2008