Events Calendar
Cheltenham High School Vocal Arts Coffee House
Enjoy a variety of musical performances by members of Cheltenham High School’s fabulous music program!
DATE: Friday, December 4th
TIME: 7pm to 9pm
PLACE: Open Book Bookstore, 7900 High School Rd., Elkins Park, PA 19027
Come hear some talented Cheltenham High School Vocal Arts students perform and, while you do, support them as they fundraise for a school trip to travel to Puerto Rico, where they will meet and perform with local musicians.
Chat with the Chefs about their favorite cookbooks!
Join three local chefs and find out which cookbooks they use and rely on, and which ones they recommend for home chefs. In this season of both gift-giving and heavy-duty cooking, find out which cookbooks, new and old, are worth investing in.
DATE: Tuesday, December 1st
TIME: 6pm
MEET THE CHEFS
Owen Lee, Chef and Co-owner of Park Plates
Aliza Green, author and chef‐manager of Baba Olga’s Café & Supper Club
Andy Schloss, author and chef
Aliza Green is a chef and food industry consultant. She has written 13 cookbooks, including a James Beard Award 
winner and four for Quarry Books: MakingArtisan Pasta, Soupmaker’s Kitchen, Fishmonger’s Apprentice, and Butcher’s Apprentice.Making Artisan Pasta was named by Cooking Light as one of their Top 100 Cookbooks ofthe Last 25 years. She is also the chef‐manager of Baba Olga’s Cafe & Supper Club inPhiladelphia, which marries global flavor with locally sourced, sustainably harvestedingredients.
Andrew Schloss is a prolific teacher and author known by his readers and students for his inventive recipes and an ability to explain technical aspects of cooking in entertaining, understandable terms. He is the author of 23 cookbooks including: Mastering the Grill (winner of a World Gourmand Award and a New York Times best-seller) and The Science of Good Food (winner of an IACP Cookbook Award, a James Beard finalist, nominated by Le Cordon Bleu Food Media Awards as Best Food Book in the World), both co-authored with David Joachim; Fifty Ways to Cook Most Everything (a main selection for Book of the Month Home Style Club); Homemade Sodas; One-Pot Cakes; Fire It Up, The Art of the Slow Cooker, Cooking Slow and Homemade Liqueurs & Infused Spirits.
Owen Lee is co-owner of Park Plates Restaurant in Elkins Park, PA. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, with 30 years’ experience in the food business. A native of Philadelphia, Owen found his passion for cooking at a young age.
Through his Cuban ancestry and fluency in Spanish, as well as his travels through the United States, Thailand, Mexico and the Caribbean, Owen developed a keen interest in ethnic cuisines. After graduating from cooking school, he returned to Philadelphia and worked as a chef for various restaurants and catering operations. In addition, he worked as a traveling chef for The Rolling Stones, Neil Diamond, and Olympic gold medalists Brian Boitano and Katarina Witt.
In 1992, Owen opened a catering business called “Uncommon Catering” in Philadelphia, arranging both corporate and social events. In 2000 Owen opened Cibucán, a Latin American style tapas restaurant in Philadelphia.
Starting in 2004, Owen teamed up with filmmaker Mitchell Smith to produce a TV program about Latin American food, music and culture called, “One For The Road.” The program aired in 2010 as a 6 part series on WHYY, the PBS TV affiliate in Philadelphia.
He has been interviewed on “A Chef’s Table,” a nationally syndicated radio program on NPR, and has made numerous appearances on TV. Owen has taught cooking classes through Temple University’s continuing education program and has worked as a food stylist and a menu consultant. He is also a singer/ songwriter, guitarist, and drummer, performing regularly around the Philadelphia area.
Fiction Writing Class with Hilary Plum
Open Book is thrilled to announce a new fiction writing class taught by local novelist, editor and writing teacher Hilary Plum.
This eight-week workshop will offer inspiration, guidance, and community to help you progress as a writer of fiction. In these eight weeks, we’ll undertake a rigorous exploration of all things fiction, while providing the support and structure that writers at all stages require.
Each participant should come with a work in progress, whether a short story, a draft of a novel (partial or full), or some pages you don’t know yet how to define: projects of all lengths and genres are welcome, though we ask that you have at least 20 pages already written.
At each weekly meeting, we will share and discuss several participants’ work, as well as occasional short additional readings. Our discussion will serve as a means to explore the issues of craft essential to narrative prose: conflict, characterization, dialogue, description, scene and exposition, syntax and style. We’ll ask participants to do a small amount of reading weekly, and please come prepared to try new experiments in writing.
If you are working on a nonfiction project and think you might benefit from this workshop, we’d also be happy to hear from you.
CLASS DETAILS AND LOGISTICS BELOW!
Hilary Plum is the author of the novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets (FC2, 2013). She has worked for a number of years as an editor of 
international literature, including as co-director of Clockroot Books; currently she co-edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press and is a book-review editor with the Kenyon Review. She has taught creative writing and composition in a number of universities and community settings. Recent fiction, nonfiction, and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, the Seneca Review, Consequence, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. www.hilaryplum.com
Class will meet on Wednesday evenings from 7 to 9pm on the following dates:
September 30
October: 7, 14, 21
November: 4, 11, 18
December 2
(Please note: this series is sequential except we will be skipping October 28th and skipping 11/25, which is the day before Thanksgiving.)
Cost: $240
Location: class meets at Open Book Bookstore, 7900 High School Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027
Dinner with a Book: Isabel Allende’s The Japanese Lover
Open Book is pleased to announce a new Dinner with a Book event on Thursday, November 12th. We will dine at The Rose Tattoo Café and discuss the new book by Isabel Allende, The Japanese Lover. After dinner we will attend a reading by Ms. Allende at the nearby main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.
Dinner, discussion, and tickets to the library reading are included in the cost of the event.
Sign up soon: only ten slots are available!
DATE: Thursday, November 12th
TIME: 5:30pm to 9pm
Dinner at 5:30pm, The Rose Tattoo Café
Provide your own transportation to the restaurant. Street parking available.
Author Reading by Isabel Allende: 7: 30pm (Details HERE)
COST: $65
(Cost includes book discussion, three-course meal with tax and gratuity, and a reserved ticket to the library event.)
Copies of The Japanese Lover are available for sale from open book at a discount for event attendees. Choose the “Dinner/Reading + Book” option when you make your payment to reserve a copy of the book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco’s parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in San Francisco. There she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family’s Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family—like thousands of other Japanese Americans—are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.
The Japanese Lover explores questions of identity, abandonment, redemption, and the unknowable impact of fate on our lives. Written with the same attention to historical detail and keen understanding of her characters that Isabel Allende has been known for since her landmark first novel The House of the Spirits, The Japanese Lover is a profoundly moving tribute to the constancy of the human heart in a world of unceasing change.
ABOUT OPEN BOOK
Open Book is a long running program of book discussion classes and author events led by book publishing professional Lynn Rosen. Lynn is an editor and former literary agent, and has taught literature, writing, and publishing at several area universities. She is a published author and now the proprietor of the Open Book Bookstore in Elkins Park, PA.
Questions: 267-627-4888 or lynn@openbookphilly.com
Dinner with an Author
Our popular “Dinner with a Book” is back, except this time with a twist—the author is coming too!
THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT!
The Star Side of Bird Hill
DATE: Thursday, October 1st, 2015
TIME: 7pm to 9pm
LOCATION: Cantina Feliz.
The Star Side of Bird Hill is a new book getting rave reviews. It tells the story of two young sisters growing up in Brooklyn. When their mother can no longer care for them, they are sent to Bird Hill in Barbados to live with their grandmother. There they must come of age as they learn about this island that holds their complicated family history. Naomi Jackson will join us for conversation and a delicious meal in the private dining room at Cantina Felix in Ft. Washington, PA.
COST: $45 or $67 including the book
Reservations required. (Sorry, we’re sold out. Check for for author dinners in the near future!)
Email lynn@openbookphilly.com with questions.
Naomi Jackson was born and raised in Brooklyn by West Indian parents. She studied fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Jackson traveled to South Africa on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. A graduate of Williams College, her work has appeared in literary journals and magazines in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of residencies and fellowships from the University of Pennsylvania’s Kelly Writers House, Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and the Camargo and Point Foundations.
Naomi Jackson
For more about the author and the book, read my interview with the author here.
Cost:
Dinner & Conversation: $45
Dinner & Conversation and a copy of the book: $67 (retails for $25.95)
Read Lynn’s “Get Lit” column in Philadelphia City Paper HERE.