The community is invited to join Cal State Monterey Bay faculty members Deb Busman and Umi Vaughan on April 15 as they celebrate the publication of their most recent books with a reading on campus.

The reading will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. in the Alumni and Visitors Center.

Busman is a fiction/creative non-fiction writer, co-director of CSUMB’s Creative Writing and Social Action program and an associate professor in the Division of Humanities and Communication.

Her book, Like a Woman, was published this month by Dzanc Books. It is a coming-of-age story, revealing the lives of teenage girls on the streets of Los Angeles, trying to hold onto their sense of humanity against a backdrop of racism, poverty, sexism and violence.

Busman told the Santa Cruz Sentinel the project began as a memoir of her own growing up. “It’s easier to tell the truth using fiction, for me. I was more interested in capital-T Truths that I was in my own particular story,” she said. “And I wanted to explore some of the other characters in the story as well.

“As a fiction writer, you get to tell everybody’s story,” she told theSentinel.

Some of the book’s chapters have been published in anthologies of short fiction. Busman told the Sentinel that her students encouraged her to get the book published. “As a professor of creative writing, I started to feel a little hypocritical that I wasn’t even doing what it took to put my own book out into the world.”

Vaughan, associate professor in the Division of Humanitiesand Communications, will read from his book, Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba.

As an African American anthropologist, musician, dancer and photographer who lived in Cuba, Vaughan reveals a unique perspective on Cuban society during the 1990s, the peak decade of Timba.

He has conducted extensive anthropological research in Cuba about Afrocuban music and dance. He is co-author of Carlos Aldama’s Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum.

The reading is sponsored by the Division of Humanities and Communication; the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; Student Activities and Leadership Development; and the Office of Inclusive Excellence.

DETAILS

• WHAT: Renegade! Writers from the Edge with Deb Busman and Umi Vaughan

• WHEN: 6-8 p.m., April 15

• WHERE: CSUMB’s Alumni and Visitors Center

• Cost: Free

• Parking: Adjacent to the building with purchase of a permit from machine near the entrance to the lot

• Driving directions: Available at csumb.edu/maps

• Information/disability accommodations: dbusman@csumb.edu