Community Calendar

Location: St. Michael’s Community Garden, 6586 Picasso Rd, Goleta, CA 93117

RSVP in advance.

Join the UCSB Library and the Edible Campus Program for a peaceful afternoon of literature, nature, and reflection in the garden. In celebration of the 2025 UCSB Reads selection, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, we invite you to immerse yourself in the beauty of St. Michael’s Community Garden while enjoying a communal reading of select passages from the book.

Inspired by Gay’s practice of noticing and appreciating small joys, participants will have the opportunity to craft their own personal “delight” entries, reflecting on moments of gratitude, connection, and wonder. Whether you come to listen, write, or simply enjoy the garden’s tranquility, we welcome you to slow down and savor the delights of the present.

Please note, this event may be photographed or recorded.

Ross Gay, the author of the UCSB Reads 2025 book The Book of Delights: Essays will present a free, public talk in UCSB’s Campbell Hall, followed by Q&A and a book signing. This event is presented by UCSB Library in partnership with UCSB Arts & Lectures.

This event is free but advance registration through the Arts & Lectures portal is required. If you don't have an Arts & Lectures account, you will be asked to create one. This event will be photographed or recorded.

The Book of Delights is a collection of essays celebrating small, ordinary wonders. Written daily over one tumultuous year, Gay’s humorous, poetic and philosophical essays cover a wide range of topics. From a high five with a stranger to cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, Gay reveals how staking out a space for joy brings us closer together.

Ross Gay won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2015, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2016 and the PEN/Jean Stein Award in 2021. He is a faculty member in the English Department at Indiana University.

UCSB Reads is an award-winning program that brings the campus and Santa Barbara communities together to read a common book that explores compelling issues of our time. The program is sponsored by UCSB Library and the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and was started in 2007. Each year, a committee of faculty, staff, students, and community partners convene to select an intellectually stimulating, interdisciplinary book by a living author that appeals to a wide range of readers and can be incorporated into the UCSB curriculum.

For up-to-date details about UCSB Reads events, sponsors, and more, go to www.library.ucsb.edu/ucsbreads2025.

“The delights Gay extols here feel purposeful and imperative as well as contagious in their joy.” The New York Times Book Review

UCSB Reads’ 2025 selection, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, is a New York Times bestselling collection of essays celebrating small, ordinary wonders. Written daily over one tumultuous year, Gay’s humorous, poetic and philosophical essays cover a wide range of topics. From a high five with a stranger to cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, Gay reveals how staking out a space for joy brings us closer together. Gay won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry in 2015, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2016 and the PEN/Jean Stein Award in 2021.