A Happy Holidays Literary Calendar for December 7-14

Holidays got you down? Cheer up and head to local bookstores to take a trip into the present future with journalist Malcolm Gay or hear master storytellers Matthew Taylor and Jamie Horton tell tales.

Malcolm Gay, The Brain Electric: The Dramatic High-Tech Race to Merge Minds and Machines
Tattered Cover Colfax Avenue
7 p.m. Thursday, December 10
Free
The interface between neuroscience and computer technology is no longer the stuff of science fiction: As journalist Malcolm Gay describes in his book The Brain Electric, researchers and doctors are tapping the brain’s impulses to make technologically complex robotic fingers move and to control computers with thoughts, bringing new hope to paraplegics and new capabilities to soldiers in the field. The future is here now — at the Tattered Cover, Gay will discuss and sign copies of the book (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26), taking audience members behind the scenes of the new wave of medical technology.

Matthew Taylor: Goat Lips: Tales of a Lapsed Englishman
BookBar
7 to 9 p.m. Friday, December 11
Free
Local storyteller (and British émigré) Matthew Taylor, who teaches workshops on finding your inner yarn-spinner, has collected some of his best and most touching and hilarious soliloquies in Goat Lips: Tales of a Lapsed Englishman. Readers are gobbling it up, as are the critics: The book was named a 2015 Independent Publishers Book Awards Gold Medalist in humor, a 2015 National Indie Excellence Awards finalist and is an Amazon bestseller, thanks in part to a campaign that ended with a party — where Taylor, as promised to book-buyers, kissed a goat. Taylor will read some excerpts and offer professional storytelling tips at BookBar for an evening to remember; learn more about the author online.

Jamie Horton, Seventh Annual Holiday Reading
Tattered Cover Colfax Avenue
7 p.m. Monday, December 14
Free
The Tattered Cover celebrates the season with more storytelling — this time from actor and Stories on Stage star and former Denver Center Theatre Company favorite Jamie Horton — at the store’s annual holiday reading. Horton’s moved on to Dartmouth, where he teaches his craft, but during his stay in Denver (where he’ll also perform with SoS in Boulder and Denver on December 12 and 13), he’ll read some holiday classics over hot beverages and treats courtesy of Whole Foods Market. Don’t forget to being along a gently used children’s book for Tattered’s Reach Out and Read Colorado book drive.

What's on the next page in Denver's literary world? Visit Westword's Literary Event listings for this week.