​Summer Shorts is back. Every other Thursday at 6 PM, we gather to read a short story together: silently, all at once, with nowhere else to be. The story is unveiled when you arrive. No preparation required. Just show up, settle in, and let the rest of your week fall away.

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Tonight we sit with Haruki Murakami, who was born in Kyoto and raised in Kobe by two parents who taught Japanese literature. He got hooked on jazz as a teenager, married against his parents' wishes, took out a loan, and opened a bar in Tokyo called Peter Cat, named after his pet. He and his wife ran it for seven years: she talked to the customers, he washed dishes and read novels in his spare time. In 1978, at a baseball game, watching a batter connect on a double, he had the sudden, unexplained feeling that he could write a novel. He went home that night and started. He wrote after closing the bar, and he said later that the rhythm of bar work (the mixing, the sweeping, the late nights) went straight into his prose. He has since become one of the most widely read novelists alive.

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We'll read one of Murakami's stories together and see where the conversation goes. Happy hour pricing at the cafe. No RSVP required, but it always helps us plan.

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