PAST PROGRAMS & EVENTS

Miss one of our programs? Use the drop down at right to view CPLF programs from past years,
or check out this collection of CPLF programs and events.

April 18, 2023

A Benefit for The Carmel Public Library Foundation
The Educated Edition

with Tara Westover, NYT Bestselling Author, and Alexis Madrigal, Co-host, KQED’s “Forum”

April 12, 2023

Community Night with the Library
Daughters of Smoke and Fire

The unforgettable, haunting story of a young woman’s perilous fight for freedom and justice for her brother, the first novel published in English by a female Kurdish writer, Ava Homa.

Join author Ava Homa and professor Nancy Middleton as they discuss Daughters of Smoke and Fire, an evocative portrait of the lives and stakes faced by 40 million stateless Kurds and a powerful story that brilliantly illuminates the meaning of identity and the complex bonds of family.

March 23, 2023

Community Night with the Library
Turning Stress to Strength

Discover how specific lifestyle and psychological habits can protect telomeres, slowing disease and improving life. Dr. Elissa Epel, co-author of New York Times best-selling book, The Telomere Effect, and her most recent book, The Stress Prescription is providing new research on stress, as one of the drivers of aging and how we can build our stress fitness and use it for positive transformation to our health and well-being.

March 15, 2023

Fireside Chat at the Library
The Ghost of Father Coughlin: Past or Present?

At the height of his popularity in the 1930’s Father Coughlin was one of the most influential personalities on American radio with some 30 million listeners. Join acclaimed author and photojournalist, Michael Katakis for a discussion about the power of words in dangerous times.

February 8, 2023

Community Night with the Library
Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson and the Great Sixties Environmental Awakening, with historian and acclaimed author Douglas Brinkley

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties, telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. This is the story of how the environmental revolution in America led to landmark legislation such as the Clean-Air Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act – all signed into law by President Richard Nixon.

March 15, 2023

Local History Lecture Series
THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL: through the words of Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a novelist, poet, short-story writer, and essayist. In 1883, while bedridden with tuberculosis, he wrote what would become one of the best known and most beloved collections of children’s poetry in the English language, A Child’s Garden of Verses. Block City is taken from that collection. Stevenson is also the author of such classics as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Join Stevenson devotee and classically trained actor, Keith Decker for THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL Visions of Monterey, Pacific Grove, Carmel Valley, and Carmel Mission as seen through the words of Robert Louis Stevenson.

December 3, 2022

11th Annual Fundraiser for The Carmel
Public Library Foundation

Hofsas House at San Carlos & 4th Ave., Carmel-by-the-Sea
10:30am or 1:30pm

Download the flyer for details.

You are invited to celebrate the holidays with the 11th Annual Fundraiser for The Carmel Public Library Foundation. Create a gingerbread house at home and display throughout the holidays, or attend in person. Children will receive one gingerbread making kit and an individually wrapped cookie for a $25 donation to the Carmel Public Library Foundation, as well as a special goodie bag. Download the flyer for details.

Reservations: Space is limited to 50 Gingerbread houses.

Click to register (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/11th-annual-gingerbread-fundraiser-tickets-387109624307)

Lugano’s Swiss Bistro & Hofsas House Hotel thank you for your donation to the Carmel Public Library Foundation.

November 9, 2022

Community Night with the Library
Tech’s Rising Star: Defining the Future of Healthcare

Award-winning entrepreneur Julia Hu’s trajectory proclaimed her an industry leader in Silicon’s Valley’s competitive culture before she was 30 years old. Join Ms. Hu, co-founder and chief executive officer of the digital health company Lark Health as she imparts her remarkable journey and struggles that led to the development of this innovative healthcare platform that today, serves millions.

October 26, 2022

Henry Meade Williams Local History Lecture Series
sponsored by the Frank & Eva Buck Foundation and Robert & Lacy Buck
Bohemian Soul – Film

In 1906 Carmel, California; a group of Bohemian artists created a revolutionary colony based on the ideals of truth, freedom and love. Their commitment to ‘Art as Life’ continues as a major influence to artists and thinkers around the world today. Discover the gifts of artists past and present on the Central Coast through this intimate film “Bohemian Soul.”

October 12, 2022

Community Night with the Library Program “My Mother Next Door” by Diane Danvers Simmons

In My Mother Next Door, author Diane Danvers Simmons shares the life lessons learned growing up in the revolutionary 1970s in London while her mother at the age of sixty charted her own unfathomable course to independence and freedom, leaving her marriage behind and moving into the house next door with several young male students to start a new life. Join Diane Danvers Simmons to explore this unique journey of forgiveness and liberation.

September 21, 2022

Community Night with the Library featuring “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future”

Join Jonathan Martin, senior political writer for The New York Times and co-author of the New York Times best-seller This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future, in conversation with Betsy Fischer Martin, an Emmy-winning journalist who was the longtime Executive Producer of Meet the Press with Tim Russert, and is currently a professor of politics and the Executive Director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. They will discuss the book’s authoritative account of the recent eighteen-month crisis in American democracy, and whether the long-established traditions and institutions of American politics can survive.