Playhouse Village Association

Vroman's Bookstore: Fatimah Asghar discusses & signs Daughter of the Mountains: Poems of Heartbreak & Homecoming
2026-07-15 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
A tender, searching collection that breaks open notions of faith to ask how a daughter, alienated from kin, can find love and a home in the world, from the award-winning author of If They Come for Us and When We Were Sisters
“There is, in Daughter of the Mountains, an almost supernatural sense of connectedness, compassion. It’s a blueprint and a manifesto. I sit in stunned gratitude at its guidance.”–Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!
at the edge of an edge
is an edge. at that edge
is a cliff. beyond that cliff
is me.
Exiled from ancestral homelands, how can one find a place for themself in the world? In this stunning sophomore collection, the acclaimed poet Fatimah Asghar unweaves residual grief to reckon with their relationship to Allah, long-estranged but deeply loved kin, the landscape of their ancestors, and love itself.
In meditative poems, Daughter of the Mountains grapples with multiple facets of fulfillment, betrayal, love, loss, and longing, illustrating how place, lineage, and environment inform the practice of spirituality and vice versa. With wisps of humor, imagery that is as beautiful as it is startling, and powerfully disruptive formal invention, this is an intimately lyrical and explosive collection.

Vroman's Summer Reading Program: Stuffed Animal Sleepover
2026-07-16 11:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
Your stuffed animals are invited to an overnight sleepover in the Vroman’s Children’s Department! The plushies will get a chance to experience the fun of a bookstore after dark, climbing ladders, browsing books, and making new friends!
Drop your plushie off at the Kids Info Desk on Wednesday, July 15th, between the hours of 5-8 pm, and then come back on Thursday, July 16th, at 11 am to see all the mischief they’ve gotten up to throughout the night! We will have a slideshow and craft in the morning.

Vroman's Bookstore: Michael Elias discusses & signs Bender’s L.A.
2026-07-17 19:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
In the coke-dusted canyons and deal-making rooms of 1970s Los Angeles, Bender’s L.A. follows writer David Bender as he sets out to remake his life – romantically, professionally, and spiritually – after his wife walks out in Puerto Vallarta with a single sentence and a suitcase.
While the Vietnam War casts its shadow, Bender runs afoul of Nixon’s FBI, plays tennis with fugitive Abbie Hoffman, arms himself against a homicidal producer, and goes back in time to fall in love with a young Marilyn Monroe. Bender weaves through a world of players, radicals, writers and artists including a woman suspiciously like Eve Babitz.
Haunted by his New York past and guided by his Sun Tzu-quoting agent Neil Navitz, Bender begins to wonder whether success has cost him the things that mattered – or whether he ever truly possessed them.
With a comic edge, Elias offers a bitter-sweet meditation on love, memory, and the moral compromise of the Hollywood illusion machine and the misfits it often mangles along the way. In this tragicomedy of nostalgia and recovery, Bender prevails.

Vroman's Bookstore: Local Author Day Introducing Esma Ali, Paul J. Ramirez & Kimberly Lee
2026-07-19 16:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
Esma Ali presents Was Jesus A Narcissist?: A Muslim’s Defense of Jesus!
As a Christian, I found this book thought provoking. Well-researched. It has helped me understand the Muslim mindset. I appreciate Esma’s use of Psychology in her illustrations.
-Anne Nolty, PhD, Psychologist, Pasadena, CA.
As a Catholic, I have immensely enjoyed the reading!!! Esma Ali brings out perspectives that have never crossed my mind. The book has enhanced an understanding of my own faith as well as Islam. Although I disagree with some of her statements, I recommend this book. A good educational source for everyone!
-Adolfo Sanchez, Accountant
As a Bible Study Pastor, I have grasped the Muslim viewpoint on scripture. This book has enhanced my knowledge. Esma Ali has demonstrated a thorough understanding of the Bible.
-Jolene Cadenbach, Pastor, Arcadia Congregational Church
As a Muslim, I value this book. Esma Ali has illuminated me about the Bible. Her work has enabled me to converse intelligently with Jews and Christians.

Alicia Upano, discusses & signs Everything to the Sea
2026-07-20 19:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore
Part riveting love story, part coming-of-age tale, Everything to the Sea is a breathtaking debut novel spanning years and shores after a sudden tsunami devastates the island of Hawai’i and cuts short a young couple’s budding romance—a deeply moving testament to the catastrophes love can endure.
This is how the story goes: Jane will fall in love. And then all of this will vanish.
Home for one final summer, Jane is working and saving cash for her senior year of college before she leaves her island town behind forever. At first, she doesn’t remember Kenji, but he quickly becomes someone she can’t forget: square jaw, a dimple in his cheek. A Hilo boy. To Kenji, she’s Janie, nose perpetually buried in her old high school sketchbooks. Jane tells herself it’s only a fling—one perfect, carefree summer, on her way to achieving her dream of becoming an architect and moving to the continent.
Then a tsunami sweeps their families out to sea, and their all-consuming affair breaks with the weight of grief, pulling them in opposite directions. Kenji remains in Hawai’i, bound by duty to rebuild their hometown. Jane, shattered by the loss, follows her best friend to California. For seven years, an ocean lies between them, until Jane and Kenji meet on another coast . . .
In prose that sparkles like sun on the water, Upano’s debut novel tells the unforgettable story of two young people as they come of age, fall in love, forge new families, and try to find their way back together, again and again. Everything to the Sea is a moving portrait of our ability to overcome even the most devastating tragedies, when everything else is washed away.

Vroman's Bookstore: Dr. Niki Elliott discusses & signs Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive
2026-07-21 19:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
A transformative guide for anyone working with the child who is left out, left behind, or labeled “difficult.”
Heart-Centered Connections teaches the best practices to support kids who are misunderstood and marginalized–those who are neurodivergent, have a learning disability, or are trauma survivors. They have extraordinary potential waiting to be unleashed.
Heart-Centered Connections is based on decades of groundbreaking research with over 1,000 child-serving professionals–principals, teachers, foster care program directors, social workers, and parents. Dr. Elliott offers seven pillars that will help you create environments where kids can achieve their full potential. Children mirror adults’ emotions, which is why the first pillar is Self-Awareness. What is your state when you engage with the child? Other pillars include Interpersonal Awareness, Neuroinclusive Spaces, Activated Genius, Engaged Learning, Mindful Communication, and Heart-Centered Repair. You will learn how to:
– Increase your ability to handle stress so you remain composed when a child acts out
– Establish stronger bonds, even with kids who initially seem defiant
– Teach in a way that creates joy and confidence
– Design neuroinclusive environments in which youth of all abilities can flourish
– View the child from a new perspective, offering them choice and dignity
– Help the child settle their nervous system state so they can focus and learn
In this practical book, Dr. Elliott brings clear guidance and a hopeful message: when safety, compassion, and trust come first, real learning can begin. Heart-Centered Connections shows you how to create that foundation.

Vroman's Bookstore: Brooke Nevils discusses & signs Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe
2026-07-23 19:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
A powerful and personal examination of our most persistent and dangerous misunderstandings, myths and stereotypes about sexual harassment and assault
In 2017, Brooke Nevils made a confidential HR complaint about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media. Twenty-four hours later, the highest paid morning news anchor in history was fired, stunning millions of Americans in one of the MeToo era’s defining stories. Demanding answers–and the intimate details of the most personal and painful humiliation of her life–the press soon discovered her identity.
But hers was not the kind of black-and-white story the media knew how to tell. There’d been no explicit threats. She hadn’t screamed, fought, or gone to the police. Instead, she returned to her abuser again and again in a frantic attempt to “fix” an impossible situation that threatened her livelihood and the people closest to her. Yet as MeToo unfolded, Brooke learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception, and that nearly everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault–and how victims react to it–was wrong. She began a yearslong effort to confront and understand her own experience, not simply as a woman reckoning with her past, but as a journalist confronting the critical questions that MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered.
Through groundbreaking interviews with leading clinicians, forensic professionals, attorneys, and frontline researchers, Unspeakable Things challenges our understanding of consent, power, and the lingering, often misunderstood effects of trauma and shame. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame, power, and American media, Brooke’s story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues to devastate lives and enable abusers. This book is a powerful re-examination of everything we think we know, the start to a new conversation, and–for anyone who has ever felt ashamed, hopeless, alone, and afraid–a light in the dark.

Third@First: Piano Extravaganza
2026-10-18 16:00 - 17:00 | First United Methodist Church, 500 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
Acclaimed faculty pianists Bernadene Blaha (USC), Kevin Fitz-Gerald (USC), Sarkis Baltaian (Orange County School of the Arts), and First UMC’s own Junko Ueno Garrett (Occidental College) unite to play with eight hands on two pianos! Come hear music by Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Moscheles, Ravel, and Rossini.
