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On Friday March 17, Deepak Unnikrishnan, winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for his novel Temporary People, will present the book at Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland in conversation with Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause the Japanese Say Goodbye.

Temporary People takes on the humanitarian crisis of the so-called "guest workers" of the Persian Gulf with visionary flair; a starred review in Kirkus hails it as "an enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation," and author Alexandra Kleeman calls it "a book of Ovidian metamorphoses for our precarious time."

Deepak Unnikrishnan is a writer from Abu Dhabi and a resident of the States, who has lived in Teaneck, New Jersey, Brooklyn, New York and Chicago, Illinois. He has studied and taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and presently teaches at New York University Abu Dhabi. Temporary People, his first book, was the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett was born and raised in California to a Japanese mother and American father, and graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her memoir, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, explores how the Japanese cope with grief and tragedy and is set against the backdrop of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Tōhoku, Japan and her family’s 350 year old Buddhist temple. The memoir was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick, an Indie Next Pick, a Finalist for the 2016 Pen Open Book Award, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2015 and a Finalist for the Indies Choice Best Book for Adult Nonfiction for 2016.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland CA 94618

When: Friday March 17, 2017, at 7:00 pm