Authors join us on August 11 at 3:00pm to mix and chat.. At 3:15, guests move from six author stations in 10-minute intervals, giving each author time to tell you about their latest book, answer questions, visit and get your books signed. The program wraps up at 4:45pm. Featured authors on 8/11 include:

Sarah Archer's debut novel, The Plus One, has been touted as unputdownable! You must meet Kelly, a 29-year-old brilliant robotics engineer who creates her own date for her sister's wedding!

Yangsze Choo is the best-selling author of The Ghost Bride (soon to be a Netflix Original series). Her second book The Night Tiger is a sweeping historical novel about a dance hall girl and an orphan boy, whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition of men who turn into tigers.

R.O Kwon wrote 2018 Indie Next #1 Pick and an Indies Introduce selection, The Incendiaries. When Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet in their first month at prestigious Edwards University, they have no idea where their friendship will lead.

Jill Orr will join us with three lively entries in her Riley Ellison Mystery series. Her mysteries are fun and heart warming and the perfect summer read.

Noelle Salazar's breathtaking debut takes us back to World War II where a group of ground breaking women set out to serve their country in the Women Airforce Service Pilots program, fictionalized in The Flight Girls.

Ruchika Tomar has created a unique and compelling reading experience with her debut novel A Prayer for Travelers, exploring the complicated legacy of the American West and the trauma of the female experience.

Ruchika Tomar and Xuan Juliana Wang (author of Home Remedies) discuss A Prayer for Travelers.

Ruchika Tomar was raised in Southern California. She holds a BA in English literature from the University of California, Irvine, and an MFA from Columbia University. A recent Wallace Stegner Fellow, she is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

Xuan Juliana Wang is the author of the debut short story collection, Home Remedies (Hogarth, May 2019). Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Narrative, The Cut, The Brooklyn Rail and The Pushcart Prizeand The Best American Nonrequired Reading anthologies. Juliana was a Wallace Stegner Fellow from Stanford University and earned her MFA from Columbia University. She has received fellowships and awards from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Cite des Arts International, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth George Foundation, and is the fiction editor at Fence. Juliana was born in Heilongjiang, China but after age seven, did most of her growing up in Los Angeles. She currently teaches at UCLA. 

Join Ruchika Tomar at Towne Center Books for a lunch and discussion of her debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers.

Ruchika Tomar presents A Prayer for Travelers
In conversation with Melissa Rivero.

Ruchika Tomar discusses her debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers.

Ruchika Tomar, author of A Prayer for Travelers, in conversation with Chia-Chia Lin.

Ruchika Tomar is a writer from the Inland Empire, California. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of California Irvine and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received fellowships from The Center for Fiction, The MacDowell Colony and Vermont Studio Center. A former Stegner Fellow, she is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University.

Chia-Chia Lin graduated with an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she received the Henfield Prize. Her short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, The Missouri Review, Zyzzyva, and other journals. Her first book is The Unpassing from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. She currently lives in Northern California.

Ruchika Tomar, author of A Prayer for Travelers in conversation with Jenn Alandy Trahan.

Ruchika Tomar is a writer from the Inland Empire, California. She holds a BA in English Literature from the University of California Irvine and an MFA from Columbia University. She has received fellowships from the Center for Fiction, The MacDowell Colony, and Stanford University.

Jenn Alandy Trahan was born in Houston, Texas and raised in Vallejo, California. The first in her family to go to college, she graduated from the University of California, Irvine with a BA in English and went on to earn her MA in English and MFA in Fiction from McNeese State University. Her work can be found in Permafrost, Blue Mesa Review, Harper's, and The Best American Short Stories 2019. Jenn is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford, where she was a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction.