J. DYLAN YATES reads from THE BELIEF IN ANGELS and PAMELA RIBON reads from NOTES TO BOYS

The Belief In Angels (She Writes Press)  Notes to Boys (Rare Bird Books)

Join us this evening as two wildy talented authors bring you coming of age tales quite unlike any you've read before.

Jules Finn and Samuel Trautman know that sorrow can sink deeply—so deeply it can drown the spirit. In The Belief in Angels, by J. Dylan Yates, these two wounded souls must decide: surrender to the grief that threatens to destroy them, or find the strength to swim for the surface.

Growing up in a volatile hippie household on a tiny island off the coast of Boston, Jules’s imaginative sense of humor is the weapon she wields as a defense against the chaos of her family’s household. But somewhere between gun-waving gambling debt collectors and LSD-laced breakfast cereal adventures, her younger brother Moses dies—and it’s a blow from which Jules may never fully recover.
Jules’s grandfather, Samuel, wants to help his grandchildren, but he’s wrapped up in a sad story of his own. Once called Szaja, Samuel is an orthodox Jew who lived through the murderous Ukranian pogroms of the 1920s, as well as the Majdanek Death Camp—but his survival came at an unspeakable price.

In their darkest moments, Jules and Samuel receive what could only be explained as divine intervention—serendipitous experiences that give them each the hope they so desperately need. Ultimately, however, they both must look inside themselves for the courage to come to the rescue of their own fractured lives.

Notes to Boys: And Other Things I Shouldn't Share in Public is a "mortifying memoir" from bestselling author and tv/film writer Pamela Ribon. Miserably trapped in a small town Texas with no invention of the internet in sight, Ribon spent countless hours of her high school years writing letters to her (often unrequited) crushes. The big question is: Why did she always keep a copy for herself? Wince along with Ribon as she tries to understand exactly how she ever thought she'd win a boy's heart by writing him a letter that began: "Share with me your soul," and ends with some remarkably awkward erotica. You'll come for the incredibly bad poetry, you'll stay for the incredibly bad poetry about racism.

Raised on a tiny, New England peninsula, J. Dylan Yates pursued her BA from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Yates worked with Boulder County's Voices for Children program as a CASA volunteer for 15 years and now volunteers with the Big Sister program. The Belief in Angels, Yates's debut novel, won the Alexis Masters Scholarship Award at the February 2012 San Francisco Writers Conference. She lives in San Diego with her partner and a talking cat.

Pamela Ribon is a bestselling author, television writer and performer. A pioneer in the blogging world, her first novel,Why Girls Are Weird, was loosely based on her extremely successful website pamie.com. The site has been nominated for a Bloggie in Lifetime Achievement, which makes her feel old. Ribon created the cult sensation and tabloid tidbit "Call Us Crazy: The Anne Heche Monologues", a satire of fame, fandom and Fresno. Her two-woman show, "Letters Never Sent" (created with four-time Emmy winner and "Jay Leno Show" favorite Liz Feldman) was showcased at the 2005 HBO US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. She has been writing in television for the past seven years, in both cable and network, including on the Emmy-award winning "Samantha Who?" starring Christina Applegate. Using her loyal Internet fan base, Ribon sponsors book drives for libraries in need. Over the years, pamie.com has sent thousands of books and materials to Oakland and San Diego, sponsored a Tsunami-ravaged village of schoolchildren, and helped restock the shelves of a post-Katrina Harrison County, Mississippi. Ribon's book drive can now be found at DeweyDonationSystem.org, which has sponsored libraries from the Negril School in Jamaica to the Children's Institute in Los Angeles.