Ticket available at the program ($27 credit card only) includes a copy of Acceptance.

A luminous, generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big Tech, examining society’s fixation with resilience—and its cost.

As a homeless teenager, Emi Nietfeld wrote her college essays in her rusty Toyota Corolla, convinced that the Ivy League was the only escape from her dysfunctional childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience narrative. She had to prove that she was an “overcomer,” made stronger by all that she had endured.

Emi will be in conversation with Mary Volmer. Mary is the author of two novels and the Founder of the Alta Mesa Center for the Arts in Orinda, CA.

Emi Nietfeld is a writer and software engineer. After graduating from Harvard College in 2015, she worked at Google and Facebook. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Rumpus, Vice, and other publications.

Ticket available at the program ($27 credit card only) includes a copy of Acceptance.
Books will be available at the program and at Orinda Books. Call the store to confirm (925) 254-7606.

DSS: Emi Nietfeld

Lafayette Library and Learning Center Foundation in partnership with Orinda Books presents