Author Radha Agrawal will read from her new book, "Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life," followed by a discussion and book signing.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase from The King's English Bookstore.
About the Author
Radha Agrawal, founder of Daybreaker — the morning, sober dance party that attracts thousands and occurs monthly in 22 cities worldwide — and touted as “1 of 8 women who will change the world” by MTV. Radha is also an angel investor with over a dozen exciting start-ups whose investors also include Beyoncé, Mark Cuban, Peter Thiel, and Troy Carter, the recipient of the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Award and has spoken about social entrepreneurship and community building to audiences around the world.
Belong: Find Your People, Create Community, and Live a More Connected Life has already been praised by the likes of Ben Rattray, Founder & CEO Change.org, Esther Perel, and Alexander Ljung, Founder & Chairman, SoundCloud, among others.
While Belong is not a Daybreaker book, it was born out of what Argawal observed as her Daybreaker project grew: the need among all of us to find a place of acceptance, repair our social fabric, and reconnect. Argawal herself had an epiphany at age 30, after too many nights spent drinking, surrounded by people more interested in their phones than in talking to the people next to them — an all-too-common occurrence. It’s the great paradox of the digital age that the internet connects us to millions of people, and yet we feel more isolated than ever — a phenomenon Agrawal calls “community confusion.”
Belong is her answer to this problem. A modern how-to manual for figuring out where and with whom we fit, it encourages readers to first go in — a process that includes discovering personal intention — and then go out so they can find their community and their people. We often speak of the importance of self-care, but tend to forget that an important part of self-care is making sure you are cared for and supported — and that you are caring for and supporting others. It’s community and the connection that it brings that gives us a sense of purpose. People need community whether they are aware of it or not — they just might need a little help finding it. This is why this book — and Agrawal’s message — is so important.
The Salt Lake City Public Library's Marmalade Branch is the anchor of a mixed-use project developed as a key part of the Redevelopment Agency (RDA) of Salt Lake City's master plan for the Marmalade/West Capitol Hill area of the city. The neighborhood serves as a gateway to Salt Lake City from the north, and the Marmalade Branch is both a hub for neighborhood gatherings and an important welcome for visitors, highlighting a focus on development in the area. On-street parking is available on 500 North and 300 West, and UTA routes offer service with stops immediately in front of the Library on 300 West.
The two-story Marmalade Branch, designed by Blalock & Partners Architectural Design Studio and completed in early 2016, provides 18,600 square feet of new construction to support a thriving and growing community. The first floor includes the Moka Cafe, featuring local coffee and chocolate; a Creative Lab with the latest maker technologies like 3D printing and music-making software as well as "old school" tech such as sewing machines and a turntable; a flexible Children's area; and the very popular Music and Movies collection. The second floor includes the Adult collection, study rooms for a range of group sizes, and a large, flexible multi-purpose room with tiered seating to allow for a wide variety of events. The multi-purpose room has already been very popular with the community, hosting community feedback sessions, film screenings, TEDx events, music recitals, and the highly-popular Coffee and Chocolate Society. The second floor also features a wrap-around terrace offering views of the Capitol Building to the east, Salt Lake City's picturesque skyline and landscape to the south and, to the north, views to a public plaza and open green space as part of a new mixed-use development.
The project utilizes an exterior shading device along the west-facing glass to minimize solar heat gain yet still promote a dynamic interaction with the street and passersby. Its compact footprint reduces land use and allows for a high-performance building envelope. The use of LED lights, lighting control systems, occupancy sensors, and daylight harvesting reduce the amount of electrical energy consumption while the flood of natural light creates an inviting interior environment for patrons and an efficient, balanced workplace for staff. In honor of these sustainability features, the Marmalade Branch was awarded the LEED Silver certification from the US Green Building Council (USGBC).
