Dorothy Lazard at LitQuake
Dorothy Lazard’s celebrated 2023 memoir What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World traced the beloved Oakland librarian’s coming of age through books. Now she’s back to tell more of her story, relating her experiences over two decades at the Oakland Public Library. Along the way, she makes a powerful case for the essential role of the public library as a pillar of democratic ideals, and she crafts a tribute to the library workers who have devoted their careers to supporting intellectual freedom as well as to the countless Oaklanders whom she had the privilege of serving. Lazard will be joined in conversation by Pendarvis Harshaw, community engagement reporter at KQED. Doors at 1:30pm.
Dorothy Lazard at the Queens Public Library
In "Behind the Desk at the Main," librarian Dorothy Lazard shares an intimate look at life inside the Oakland Public Library, where she served her hometown community and preserved its public history. With humor and candor, she explores the joys and pressures of library work — from connecting people with knowledge to navigating economic crises, book bans, and political upheaval — and celebrates libraries as vital spaces of memory, curiosity, and community.
Be part of the conversation—join us and the author on Microsoft Teams: https://queenslib.org/4y5gWZN This webinar is being recorded, and portions of the recording may be shared on Queens Public Library’s social media channels and other digital platforms. If you do not wish to appear in the recording or shared content, please turn off your camera for the duration of the session.
Dorothy Lazard at North Berkeley Public Library
You are invited to join us for an author talk with local author, public historian, truth teller, and retired librarian Dorothy Lazard! Books will be available to purchase on-site through Pegasus Books.
In her new book Behind The Desk At The Main: A Librarian's Memoir, celebrated Oakland librarian and public historian Dorothy Lazard offers an insider's look at the modern American library. Through personal stories and decades of experience, Lazard demystifies the work of librarians and reveals how libraries serve as vital hubs- and defenders- for knowledge, connection, and civic life.
Over the course of Lazard's 20 year tenure at Oakland Public Library's flagship branch- known as "the Main"- she built a career helping residents connect with the city's past and present, eventually becoming the keeper of Oakland's local history archives while serving people from every walk of life and gaining a unique vantage point on the concerns and heath of her city.
The book also highlights the growing challenges libraries face today. As one of the last truly democratic and free municipal services, the public library has become a battleground in cultural and political debates. Efforts to restrict access to books- particularly works by and about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community- have placed librarians on the frontlines of the fight for intellectual freedom.
As economic crises, political polarization, and social divides place strain on public institutions, Lazard argues that libraries remain among the most powerful symbols of democratic ideals- spaces dedicated to curiosity, imagination, memory, and shared civic life. Both a celebration of librarianship and a call to defend public institutions, Behind The Desk At The Main offers readers an intimate portrait of the people who keep libraries running- and how these cherished institutions become the lifeblood of the communities they serve.
Heyday Presents: Dorothy Lazard and Liam O'Donoghue
Join Heyday for another installment of Heyday Presents, an ongoing conversation series presented in collaboration with Clio's Books.
Over the course of her 20-year-tenure at the Oakland Public Library’s flagship branch—known as “the Main”—Dorothy Lazard built a career helping residents connect with the city’s past and present, eventually becoming the keeper of Oakland’s local history archives. In her new book, Behind the Desk at the Main, published by Heyday, Lazard offers an insider’s look at the modern American library. Through personal stories and decades of experience, Lazard demystifies the work of librarians and reveals how libraries serve as vital hubs—and defenders—for knowledge, connection, and civic life. She will be joined in conversation by East Bay Yesterday host and producer Liam O'Donoghue.
Dorothy Lazard was born in St. Louis and grew up in San Francisco and Oakland. A librarian for forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history. Lazard's first book, What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World, was the 2023 recipient of the Oscar Lewis Award in Western History from the Book Club of California. She lives in Oakland.
Liam O’Donoghue is the host and producer of the East Bay Yesterday podcast and co-creator of the Long Lost Oakland map. He also writes a monthly feature about the East Bay for SF Gate. His journalism has appeared in outlets such as KQED, Oaklandside, Berkeleyside, Mother Jones, Salon, and elsewhere. In 2018, he was honored by the East Bay Express as “the best journalist-turned-historian” and presented with a “Partners in Preservation Award” from Oakland Heritage Alliance. O’Donoghue’s quotes on Oakland-related issues have appeared in media outlets including New York Times and Washington Post.
About Heyday
Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher specializing in publications that explore California's natural history, art and culture, Indigenous perspectives, and social justice. This series is part of our Heyday Presents program. Heyday Presents features Heyday authors in conversation with notable luminaries and thought leaders. Heyday Members receive free VIP access to Heyday Presents program and a curation of our top new releases, among a host of other perks.
Heyday members and Clio's members receive free admission! If you are a Heyday member, check your email or contact us at members@heydaybooks.com.
Dorothy Lazard at the New Parkway
Join celebrated Oakland librarian, public historian, and author Dorothy Lazard for a special evening celebrating the release of Behind the Desk at the Main: A Librarian's Memoir. Lazard will be joined by journalist and author Alexis Madrigal for a wide-ranging conversation about the enduring role of public libraries, the people who sustain them, and why these civic institutions matter more than ever.
Hosted at The New Parkway Theater in Oakland, with books provided by Nomadic Books in partnership with the Bay Area Book Festival, this event offers a rare opportunity to hear from one of Oakland's most beloved librarians as she reflects on two decades behind the scenes at Oakland's Main Library.
Drawing from stories in her new memoir, Lazard illuminates the often-unseen work of librarians—from helping patrons uncover family histories and navigate archives to fostering lifelong learning, cultural connection, and democratic access to information. She also explores the growing challenges facing libraries today, including censorship efforts, funding pressures, and the evolving role of public institutions in an increasingly polarized society.
Together, Lazard and Madrigal will discuss libraries as places of memory, possibility, and civic life, and consider what it means to protect these essential public spaces for future generations.
Following the conversation, Dorothy Lazard will sign copies of Behind the Desk at the Main, available for purchase from Nomadic Books.
Whether you're a devoted library lover, a history enthusiast, or simply curious about the hidden life of one of our most treasured public institutions, this promises to be an engaging and timely evening.
Dorothy Lazard is a writer, public historian, and former librarian. She is celebrated for her library career at the Oakland Main Library (especially at the Oakland History Center) and for her 2023 memoir, What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World, that tells the story of her youth in the Bay Area of the 1960s and ’70s, connecting her early intellectual pursuits to the career that made her a community pillar.
Alexis Madrigal is a journalist in Oakland, California. He co-hosts KQED's current affairs show, Forum, and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Alexis spent many hours in the Oakland History Center while researching his book The Pacific Circuit : A Globalized Account of the Battle for the Soul of an American City, which explores how a logistical revolution that began in Oakland has reshaped American cities. He is also the proprietor of Local Economy, a community space in Oakland's Rockridge neighborhood.
Dorothy Lazard at Books Inc.
Join celebrated librarian and public historian Dorothy Lazard at Books Inc. Alameda to celebrate her memoir, Behind the Desk at the Main!
Behind the Desk at the Main details the promise of public libraries in a fractured world.
Dorothy will be in conversation with Angela Dalton.
When Dorothy Lazard became a public librarian, she returned to the building that had shaped her life from childhood. At the flagship branch ("the Main") of the Oakland Public Library, she connected with her hometown to a degree that few people experience. Helping her fellow community members and ultimately becoming the keeper of Oakland's public history archives, she witnessed the joys and dilemmas that shape one of the most diverse cities in the US.
In Behind the Desk at the Main, Lazard takes readers through the day-to-day life of library work with love, wit, and candor. As the cracks in American society grow and our public institutions are strained to the breaking point, libraries remain the cherished containers of our ideals: They are places of curiosity, imagination, memory, and togetherness. Lazard reveals the pressures that library workers face—from economic crises to book bans and political upheaval—as they uphold these ideals in a fractured world.
Filled with humor and urgency, Behind the Desk at the Main is a testament to the power of books and community in a time of division.
Dorothy Lazard is a writer, public historian, and former librarian. She is celebrated for her library career at the Oakland Main Library and for her 2023 memoir, What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World, that tells the story of her youth in the Bay Area of the 1960s and ’70s, connecting her early intellectual pursuits to the career that made her a community pillar.
Angela Dalton is a children’s book author living in Oakland, California. Her picture books include To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights, Ruby’s Reunion Day Dinner, Show the World!, and her award-winning debut, If You Look Up to the Sky. Visit her online at angeladalton.com.
Please join us!
Debuts August 2026 — A State of Change
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
A magnificently illustrated classic of California natural history, now updated in a long-awaited reissue
Laura Cunningham’s canonical magnum opus A State of Change returns by popular demand in an updated new edition in a fully re-styled package.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — Originally published in 2010, A State of Change: California’s Forgotten Landscapes by Laura Cunningham is widely considered a classic text of California natural history. Returning to print in a fully restyled package in fall 2026, this updated edition includes expanded content, Cunningham’s original oil paintings and field sketches, and a contemporary design that offers readers a firsthand look at pre-colonial California and the immense biodiversity that once reigned.
Melding science, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, stunning landscapes and species portraiture, artist-naturalist Cunningham takes a multi-field perspective to reenvision the West as it once was, before centuries of settlement reshaped the land and its native wildlife. Compiled over decades, A State of Change (on sale October 13, 2026) draws from fieldwork spanning the state and beyond, Indigenous oral histories and interviews with tribal elders, scientific research in biology and paleontology, and years of artistic study. This deep time exploration of Old California throws into stark relief the engineered landscapes we know today and the diminution of biodiversity already millennia in the making
“This book is my life’s work trying to understand California in the past so that we can protect and help restore the natural and cultural landscapes of this precious state into the future,” says Cunningham, whose acclaimed original publication garnered a California Book Award, a Northern California Book Award, was declared a Best Book of the Year by East Bay Express, and a finalist for Foreword’s Book of the Year.
Cunningham’s original publication predicted the explosive development of megafires in California and reacquainted readers with species long since absent from the landscape—from the extinct flightless marine diving goose to the Golden State’s banner grizzly, last seen a century ago. The 2026 edition of A State of Change reflects watershed ecological developments since the book’s original publication. These include the comebacks of California wolves and condors, the resurgence of salmon populations under tribal stewardship, and the gradual reimplementation of Indigenous fire management. Cunningham also challenges popular ideas about regenerative agriculture and livestock grazing, pointing toward pathways to restore native grasslands that underpin the state’s ecosystems.
Learning about the plight of species in the past has kindled Cunningham’s lifelong passion for saving species for the future—and with this galvanizing and visually immersive text she aims to alight a kindred spark in the reader.
“This wonderful book is a vivid reminder of how things began, and also as a vision of the rich and beautiful world we can work toward in our shared future,” says author Kim Stanley Robinson, “One of Heyday’s best.”
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com
Keep up with Heyday on social:
Advance Praise for A State of Change
“Beautiful and enlightening . . . a California classic.” —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“This wonderful book is a vivid reminder of how things began, and also as a vision of the rich and beautiful world we can work toward in our shared future. One of Heyday’s best.” —KIM STANLEY ROBINSON, author of The Ministry for the Future and The High Sierra: A Love Story
“A gorgeous book with much broader implications than for one state, for one country: Cunningham reminds us how we define our landscapes—and how they define us.” —KERRI ARSENAULT, author of Mill Town
“This brings a lost world straight back to life—and one hopes it will help us work to restore it in the real world.” —BILL MCKIBBEN, author of Here Comes the Sun
“Thanks to Laura Cunningham’s brilliant interweaving of science and art, I can now imagine what California looked like before colonization. Her vision not only informs how we understand the past, but also what a better future could look like.” —LIAM O’DONOGHUE, host of East Bay Yesterday
“Hundreds of Cunningham’s detailed, realistic paintings fill this huge coffee-table delight, whose text traces the evolution of a diverse region, once home to half-striped ancient horses and Pleistocene-era cheetahs.” —EAST BAY EXPRESS
“Skillful, evocative, and often stunning.” —SFGATE
“This book is a time machine that takes me on a journey into a land that I thought I knew. As an artist, naturalist, and armchair time traveler, I appreciate this kind of depth and genius.” —JOHN MUIR LAWS, author of The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling
“I wouldn’t be the artist-author I am today without A State of Change. I consider Cunningham’s work to be an original inspiration for all that I do.” —OBI KAUFMANN, author of The California Field Atlas and California Inside Out
“Laura Cunningham’s imaginative tour de force provides a time machine where pre-settlement California can be savored in all her splendor and magnificence. A remarkable vision.” —GRAHAM CHISHOLM, Former Executive Director, Audubon California
“An indispensable guide for anyone seeking to understand the ecological story of the Golden State.” —JOSH JACKSON, author of The Enduring Wild
“A tantalizing, informative, inspiring glimpse into something we all try to imagine: California before all of this.” —ROBIN M. GROSSINGER, San Francisco Estuary Institute
“A natural history masterpiece.” —SANTA BARBARA INDEPENDENT
Art from A State of Change by Laura Cunningham (c)
Laura Cunningham is an artist-naturalist who studied paleontology and biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has worked field biology jobs for the California Department of Fish and Game, the United States Geological Survey, and various universities, gaining experience with such species as Owens Valley pupfish, salmon and steelhead trout, Yosemite toads, Panamint alligator lizards, and tule elk. Simultaneously, she taught herself the arts of sketching and oil painting and pursued studies of California’s historical ecology. She currently works in the conservation nonprofit field. Her studio is next to Death Valley National Park along the Amargosa River.
Debuts August 2026 — Behind the Desk at the Main
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Memoir Pulls Back the Curtain on America’s Libraries and the People Who Keep Them Running
Dorothy Lazard’s Behind the Desk at the Main explores the vital role libraries play in sustaining communities amid rising challenges
BERKELEY, CALIF. — In 2023, American libraries served more than 150 million registered users nationwide, drawing millions of visitors each day seeking books, cultural programming, and essential community resources. Yet even as libraries remain among the most trusted and widely used public institutions in the United States, they face mounting pressures—from political censorship to shrinking municipal support.
In her new book, Behind the Desk at the Main: A Librarian’s Memoir, releasing August 18, 2026, celebrated Oakland librarian and public historian Dorothy Lazard offers an insider’s look at the modern American library. Through personal stories and decades of experience, Lazard demystifies the work of librarians and reveals how libraries serve as vital hubs—and defenders—for knowledge, connection, and civic life.
“From the very start of my time at the Main Library, I realized that while most people will claim love for the library, few understand what goes on behind the scenes: the variety of services the library offers, what jobs librarians perform, and most importantly, how central a role the library plays in creating the public commons,” says Lazard.
Over the course of Lazard’s 20-year-tenure at the Oakland Public Library’s flagship branch—known as “the Main”—she built a career helping residents connect with the city’s past and present, eventually becoming the keeper of Oakland’s local history archives. Serving people from every walk of life, she gained a unique vantage point on the concerns and health of her city—helping patrons complete homework and dissertations, trace family histories, research neighborhoods, and explore cultures from around the world.
But the book also highlights the growing challenges libraries face today. As one of the last truly democratic and free municipal services, the public library has become a battleground in cultural and political debates. Efforts to restrict access to books—particularly works by and about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community—have placed librarians on the front lines of the fight for intellectual freedom.
As economic crises, political polarization, and social divides place strain on public institutions, Lazard argues that libraries remain among the most powerful symbols of democratic ideals—spaces dedicated to curiosity, imagination, memory, and shared civic life. Both a celebration of librarianship and a call to defend public institutions, Behind the Desk at the Main offers readers an intimate portrait of the people who keep libraries running—and how these cherished institutions become the lifeblood of the communities they serve.
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Director
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com
Keep up with Heyday on social:
Advance Praise for Behind the Desk at the Main
“A compelling case for the crucial importance of the public library. As a Black librarian in a profession that is overwhelmingly white, Lazard feels a special responsibility to support the needs of her community, and to serve as a model and mentor.” —Kirkus
“This wonderful book appeals to the heart as well as to the mind, challenging the dark times we live in. It shows how libraries as democratic spaces offer us an alternative way of perceiving the world, relating to the world, and changing the world.” —Azar Nafisi, author of Read Dangerously and Reading Lolita in Tehran
“A microhistory of a great organ of civic life, told from the inside. Dorothy Lazard’s anatomy of the library is like hearing someone standing in the heart of Oakland telling you how this city beats, totally unfazed by how fantastic and fabulous that pumping is. As she describes it, labels it, she helps you see the world anew, like all librarians do.” —John Freeman, author of California Rewritten
“Filled with insights gained from her years at the reference desk, Dorothy Lazard’s book is crucial reading for anyone who wants to understand modern libraries—and why they must be protected at all costs.” —Liam O’Donoghue, host of East Bay Yesterday
Dorothy Lazard was born in St. Louis and grew up in San Francisco and Oakland. A librarian for nearly forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history. Lazard was the 2023 recipient of the Oscar Lewis Award in Western History from the Book Club of California. Her first book, What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World: A Memoir, was published by Heyday in 2023; the book was shortlisted for a Northern California Book Award and a Foreword Indies Award. Lazard lives in Oakland.
Debuts May 2023 — What You Don't Know Will Make a Whole New World
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
New Memoir from Beloved Oakland Librarian Engages Race and Resilience in Coming-of-Age Tale
Public historian Dorothy Lazard shares her origin story and celebrates the catalyzing role of libraries in her upbringing in the Bay Area.
BERKELEY, CALIF. — What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World is Dorothy Lazard’s autobiographical coming-of-age story as a young Black girl navigating race and embracing the world-expanding power of the written word in the San Francisco Bay Area of the 1960s and 70s. Transplanted to the West Coast by way of segregated St. Louis, this engrossing memoir offers Lazard’s account, told through her adolescent and teenage eyes, of her dawning consciousness of the dynamics of racism in America and the worlds that opened to her through the sanctuary of public libraries.
“The library was a great, seductive classroom,” writes Lazard of her first heady encounters with the stacks, where she, like Malcolm X, vowed to become an autodidact. “It was during this honeymoon with the public library that I began to see how my life could be radically different from my mother and grandmother’s lives,” writes Lazard, “I could be my own something if I only learned enough.”
Lazard’s journey to become her own something takes us through some of the most tumultuous chapters of the Black liberation struggle—from the assassinaton of Martin Luther King Jr. to the flowering of the Black Arts Movement. Against this backdrop, Lazard points to her intellectual guideposts—James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield—who guide her quest toward self-determination.
Today the deeply beloved and now retired doyenne of the Oakland Public Library system, Lazard has built a career carrying the torch for the potent role of libraries as a haven for the ever-curious, the underserved, and the often marginalized. This memoir is her origin story, charting her journey from a Missouri orphanage to her adopted hometown of Oakland, revealing along the way how her early love of learning opened her young eyes to herself, her society, and ultimately her future as a change-maker and memory-keeper.
Media Contact:
Kalie Caetano
Marketing & Publicity Manager
For review copies, feature interest, and interview and image requests, get in touch: publicity@heydaybooks.com
Keep up with Heyday on social:
Dorothy Lazard was born in St. Louis and grew up in San Francisco and Oakland. A librarian for nearly forty years, she joined the staff of the Oakland Public Library (OPL) in 2000. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL’s Oakland History Center, where she encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to explore local history. Beloved by her Bay Area community, she has been an indispensable resource for journalists, library patrons, and all the ever-curious that have crossed the threshold of OPL, and has featured in conversations on the history of Oakland and her own work in Oaklandside, KQED, and NBC Bay Area among others. She lives in Oakland. Photo by Gene Dominique.
A Q&A with What You Don’t Know Will Make A Whole New World author Dorothy Lazard
Your book tells the story of your childhood and coming-of-age, in particular the formative intellectual experiences that led to your distinguished career as a librarian and historian. How would you like this book to inspire younger readers?
I wrote this memoir with young people in mind, especially those who may not find themselves in environments that foster learning. I hope the book will encourage them to find places and people who can cultivate their curiosities. I also hope the book conveys the joy I found in reading (and later writing) because it not only fed me creatively, but freed me in ways that nothing else had during my childhood. It empowered me with academic achievement, dreams, practical skills, connection, and empathy. I learned that I had a place in the world. Knowing that can sustain anyone.
You have a lot of admirers, especially in the Bay Area (#DorothyLazardFanClub). What do you hope Bay Area readers will find interesting about this book? And what resonance does your story have for readers nationwide?
I hope local readers see how much I came to love San Francisco and Oakland, by exploring both places. I’d like them to see how inspiring a place Oakland was. So much of the Oakland of my childhood is gone now. By writing this memoir I wanted to resurrect lost and unheralded parts of the city and to celebrate aspects of it that fostered my development.
I expect my coming-of-age story will resonate nationwide because it tells a migration story, a Black Power story, a multi-generational family story, and a story that celebrates the enduring quest for education and freedom.
Is there any one principle that especially guides your own writing? And what books do you look to first as models when you write?
Honesty is a driving principle when I’m writing a story, giving it factual details and emotional truths. I ask myself: Have I described this event or explained this process as clearly as I can? What is my intention? Does this sentence need to be here, or am I just in love with how it sounds? Keeping these considerations in mind has not only made me a more skilled writer, but editor too. I’m a dedicated nonfiction reader, particularly of biographies, histories, and stories about cities. I admire writers like Isabel Wilkerson who take deep dives into their subjects.
