Meet The Author: Alesa Lightbourne

 at Porter Memorial Library

Wednesday, March 14, 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.

Alesa Lightbourne will visit the Porter Memorial Library on Wednesday, March 14 at 10:30 a.m. to speak to us about her book The Kurdish Bike. Alesa is a prize-winning author who has lived and worked in six countries. She grew up in Carmel and earned a degree in anthropology from UCSC and a masters’ degree in creative writing from the University of Washington.

After teaching for a time in Kurdish Iraq in 2010, Alesa wrote The Kurdish Bike; a novel based on her friendships with village women. She showcases the hardships, brutality and even honor killings that these women endure.

The book recently won the Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction from Independent Publishers Book Awards at Book Expo USA 2017, and has been compared to The Kite Runner by the San Francisco Book Review.

Alesa’s many adventures include living on a sailboat in the Caribbean, teaching at a slum school in Jamaica, serving as the dean of an international business college in Singapore, dining with Bedouins in Saudi Arabia, and writing for Fortune 500 companies.

Alesa lives in Santa Cruz, volunteers with literacy programs and loves to boogie board.

The Meet the Author programs are informal coffee hours around the fireplace where local authors discuss their works, answer questions form the audience and autograph copies of their books. The programs are free and open to the public. They are scheduled for the second Wednesday of January, February, March and April at 10:30 a.m.

Refreshments and coffee will be served with The Ugly Mug providing the coffee. The library is located at 3050 Porter Street, Soquel. Limited parking is available behind the library. Enter from Soquel Drive into the Bagelry parking lot and drive through to the left.

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For more information, call the library at 475-3326 during library hours: Monday-Friday 12-4 and Saturday 10 a.m.- 2 p.m., or visit the library website at: www.porterml.org

Upcoming Author: Steve Kettmann • April 11