The Stay Home
and Read a Book Ball

Stay Home and Read to Support the Library's Cybernauts!

All proceeds raised through the 34th Annual Stay Home and Read a Book Ball will directly support the Los Angeles Public Library’s Cybernauts program.

Cybernauts are trained computer support staff that provide much needed on-demand technological assistance and small group trainings to Library users. Cybernauts work to advance digital equity in Los Angeles by helping individuals and communities develop the critical skills needed for full participation in society, democracy, and the economy.

Learn more about what Cybernauts do and why we need them at the Library!

Terry Tempest Williams

Read Terry Tempest Williams’ Annual Chair letter here. 

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing; The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; and When Women Were Birds, among other books. Her work is widely taught and anthologized around the world. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she is currently the Writer-in-Residence at the Harvard Divinity School and divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Castle Valley, Utah.

Annual Chair

“I stay at home and read a book practically every day, but I also relish going to the park or the beach to stretch out on a blanket and read. My favorite? Being deep in the woods with no one around and a book in hand. Second favorite? Being at home, sitting before the fire with a good book, a good dog, and music flowing through the hidden speakers. And, if I’m really lucky, hearing the sweet beat of rain tapping at the windows.”

T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published seventeen novels and twelve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for his third novel, World’s End, and the Prix Médicis étranger (France) in 1995 for The Tortilla Curtain. Most recently, he has been the recipient of the Mark Twain Voice in American Literature Award, the Henry David Thoreau Award, and the Jonathan Swift Prize for satire. He is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.

T.C. Boyle

“The only upside of two years of pandemic isolation is all the great books I’ve had an excuse to stay home and read. Also, books never, ever complain if you choose pajamas over black tie. You don’t even need to wear your zoom shirt. It’s better than any party!”

Rosa Brooks is a law professor at Georgetown University and founder of Georgetown’s Innovative Policing Program. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy. Her most recent book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2016, was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize, and named one of the five best books of the year by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Honorary Chair

“Because this is L.A., I can confidently speak in my native Valley Girl tongue and obnoxiously declare: ‘Staying at home and reading a book is so ‘on brand’ for us.’ Truth! So, let’s join the ball without having to dress up and let’s welcome each other into a book’s imagination.”

Natashia Deón is a practicing criminal attorney, a college professor, and has been nominated twice for the NAACP Image Awards. A Pamela Krasney Moral Courage Fellow, Deón is the author of The Perishing, and her critically acclaimed debut novel Grace, was named a Best Book by the New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships by PEN America, Prague Summer Program for Writers, Dickenson House in Belgium, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Rosa Brooks

“Books make the best dates. They dance, they sing, their conversation sparkles. They are experts in the field of romance, and yet they can be practical, too. They are poetic, philosophical, lusty, enlightening, and wild. Who better to stay home with, between the covers, for an evening or a lifetime?”

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of three novels, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and a documentary film, Halving the Bones. She is affiliated with the Everyday Zen Foundation and teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities.

Honorary Chair

Natashia Deón

Honorary Chair

Ruth Ozeki

Honorary Chair