This June, the Golden Braid Books Community Book Club is reading When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka. We have lots of copies in stock, so come on by and get yours today! Keep in touch with us throughout the month on our Instagram and Facebook pages, and then we’ll convene here at the Braid for our book club meeting to talk about the book, meet some new folks, and share some insights and mutual love of reading. About the Book:  From the bestselling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and The Swimmers, this commanding debut novel paints a portrait of the Japanese American incarceration camps that is both a haunting evocation of a family in wartime and a resonant lesson for our times. On a sunny day in Berkeley, California, in 1942, a woman sees a sign in a post office window, returns to her home, and matter-of-factly begins to pack her family's possessions. Like thousands of other Japanese Americans they have been reclassified, virtually overnight, as enemy aliens and are about to be uprooted from their home and sent to a dusty incarceration camp in the Utah desert. In this lean and devastatingly evocative first novel, Julie Otsuka tells their story from five flawlessly realized points of view and conveys the exact emotional texture of their experience: the thin-walled barracks and barbed-wire fences, the omnipresent fear and loneliness, the unheralded feats of heroism. When the Emperor Was Divine is a work of enormous power that makes a shameful episode of our history as immediate as today's headlines. https://www.goldenbraidslc.com/events/june-book-club-when-the-emperor-was-divine

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The Utah Arts Festival invites you to Library Square in downtown Salt Lake City on Friday, June 28th through Sunday, June 30th for the Great Utah Get-Together celebrating art of all kinds, music and dance performances, film, the spoken word, roaming street performers, and hands-on fun for kids of all ages. The Utah Arts Festival is at UAF.org

This is a fun free event put on by the Utah Parent Center for families who have children, youth, and adults with disabilities to come and enjoy time out in the community together. The highlights of this event is a self-advocate talent show followed by an all abilities dance party! There will also be roller skating/adaptive skating, games and giveaways, and community resources. For more information and to register please visit utahparentcenter.org/family-festival and follow us at @utahparentcenter on IG. Registration and admission are free. The first 500 registrants will also get free skate rental! Registration opens 5/3/2024.

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Ticket and event info: https://thestateroompresents.com/state-room-presents/lamont-landers Born and raised in Alabama, Lamont Landers grew up absorbing the soulful sounds of the South that surrounded him. At the age of 14, he taught himself how to play guitar, and, at the age of 19, began singing. He spent years quietly honing his talents behind his bedroom doors, listening to records by Stevie Wonder, Al Green, Sly & The Family Stone, and Ray Charles on repeat. At the age of 22, a candid video recorded by his sister of Lamont performing the Ray Charles’ classic “Hit the Road Jack” went viral on YouTube and garnered over 400,000 views overnight. In the summer of 2023, history repeated itself with similar enthusiastic fan response propelling five Lamont Landers TikTok videos to over 1,000,000 views each. A feature on the Bobby Bones nationally syndicated radio show and shoutouts from music tastemakers ranging from Snoop Dogg to Questlove soon followed. No longer a secret of North Alabama, Lamont will be touring throughout North America in 2024.