We are excited to welcome New York Times' best-selling cookbook author and food blogger Deb Perelman to talk about her long-awaited and latest cookbook Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics for Your Forever Files. Deb will be in conversation with Coccia Institute Director Mark Rotella.

The author of two (now three!) best-selling cookbooks and one of the most successful food bloggers with a homegrown brand of more than a million Instagram followers, Deb is a self-taught cook who rigorously tests her recipes and shares them with warmth and wit.

Venue: University Hall Conference Center, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave, Montclair 07043. Campus Map for MLF May 6 2023

Tickets to hear Deb Perelman in person cost $40 for one/$65 for two, and include one copy of the book Smitten Kitchen Keepers (value $35). Deb will be signing books after the event.

What happens when athletes are pushed to the brink? When Won Lee, the first Asian American in the NBA, stuns the world in a seven-game winning streak, the global media audience dubs it “The Wonder”—much to Won’s chagrin. Matthew Salesses’ The Sense of Wonder is "a smart, very meta take" (Kirkus Reviews) on the ways Asian Americans navigate the thorny worlds of sports and entertainment when everything is stacked against them. In Jade Song’s Chlorine, Ren is a competitive swimmer whose obsession with water and chlorine and being pushed too hard to succeed turns her into a monster of her own making. Tracy O'Neill, author of The Hopeful, in which a figure skating prodigy races against nature's clock to get into the Olympics, leads the discussion. This event is co-presented by AAPI Montclair.

Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary. 

Mermaid and Pirate cannot understand each other. They speak different languages and come from different worlds. But they’re quick to lend a hand, or a tail, when the sky grows stormy and waters get rough, and a friendship is born. Hear author Tracey Baptiste tell her story of a shared adventure where kindness and generosity speak louder than words. Recommended for ages 3-7.

Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent.

Join Rabbi Marc Katz in discussion with two authors whose books grapple with the legacy of the Holocaust. Unearthed: A Lost Actress, A Forbidden Book and A Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust recounts Meryl Frank’s journey to seek the truth about a beloved and revolutionary cousin and to answer the question of how the next generation should honor the memory of the Holocaust. Michael Frank spent One Hundred Saturdays meeting with 99 year-old Stella Levi to bring to life the vibrant world of Jewish Rhodes, the deportation to Auschwitz that extinguished 90 percent of her community, and the resilience and wisdom of the woman who lived to tell the tale. This event is co-presented with Temple Ner Tamid.

Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary.

Join New York Times’ bestselling author Mary Beth Keane (Ask Again, Yes) as she shares her new novel The Half Moon. Taking place over the course of one tumultuous week, Keane’s skilled storytelling and generous spirit are on full display as she carefully explores a marriage in crisis, what it takes to make a life with another person, and the true meaning of family. In conversation with Matthew Thomas (We are not Ourselves)

Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium. 

Cleyvis Natera (Neruda on the Park) introduces us to exciting and powerful new fiction from three Puerto Rican authors. In What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, Claire Jimenez’s debut, a Puerto Rican family on Staten Island discovers their long‑missing sister is potentially alive and cast on a reality TV show. Melissa Coss Aquino’s Carmen and Grace follows two cousins lured into the underground drug trade at a young age and the inextricable ties that bind them. The stories in When Trying to Return Home, Jennifer Maritza McCauley’s debut collection, span a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond, offering an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms. This event is co-presented with Latinos of Montclair.

Venue: Montclair Public Library Tent. 

Explore love in whatever form, wherever it is found, with three very different versions of a queer love story with poet, writer, and scholar Naomi Extra. Alice Winn’s international bestseller In Memoriam is a tragic love story set at an English boarding school and the battlefields of World War I. In Pomegranate, Helen Elaine Lee tells the story of Ranita, a queer Black woman who works to pull her life together after being released from prison. Ranita is regaining her freedom, but she’s leaving behind her lover Maxine. In Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir in Archives, Amelia Possanza stitches together personal memoir, painstaking research, and fictional imaginings to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. This event is co-presented with Out Montclair.

Venue: First Congregational Church, The Sanctuary. 

An unexpected family photograph leads award-winning journalist, Dionne Ford, to uncover the stories of her enslaved female ancestors, reclaim their power and begin to heal. Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance and Intergenerational Healing is “a cathartic reading experience” (Kirkus Review) and “one of the most anticipated feminist books of 2023” (Ms Magazine). Ford is in conversation with author Benilde Little. This event is co-presented with Montclair Public Library's Open Book, Open Mind program.

Venue: Montclair Public Library Auditorium