Diesel, A Bookstore in Oakland is excited to welcome local author Lucy Jane Bledsoe to discuss and sign her new novel, The Big Bang Symphony: A Novel of Antartica, on Thursday, May 6 at 7pm. Lucy Jane Bledsoe is a novelist and science writer. When she's not writing, she's sea kayaking in Alaska, backpacking in the Rockies, or backcountry skiing in the Sierras. When she's not kayaking, hiking, or skiing, she's reading. Bledsoe won the 2009 Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award. Her story "Girl with Boat" won the 2009 Arts & Letters Prize for Fiction, and her story "Enough" won the 2009 International Arts Movement Prize for Fiction.   -- Photo by Cheryl Mazak