BERKELEY — Marie Mutsuki Mockett will talk about Japanese fairy tales and read from her new book, "Picking Bones From Ash," on Monday, Nov. 30, at 7:30 p.m. at the Hillside Club, 2286 Cedar St. in Berkeley.

Fairy tales often reveal the bones of a culture's psychology and storytelling, laying bare our longings, dreams, and fears. In the West, we wait for princes, woo princesses and strive to break evil spells. In recent years, the Japanese imagination has intrigued a new generation of Westerners through the movies of Hayao Miyazaki and the thrilling yet unpredictable stories of Haruki Murakami.

In her examination of Japanese fairy tales, Mockett explores a world in which beautiful and talented women remain unattainable to mortal men, and evil is rarely conquered. Audiences will leave not only understanding a different aesthetic, but will also discover new avenues of storytelling technique.

Mockett's debut novel was published by Graywolf Press on Sept. 29. Inspired by the Japanese fairy tale "Kaguyahime" (The Bamboo Princess), "Picking Bones from Ash" explores the struggles women face in accepting their talents, and asks what happens when mothers and daughters dare to question the debt owed each other.

Fusing imagination and suspense, Mockett builds a lavish world in which characters journey from Buddhist temples to the gilded chateaux of France to the black market of international antiques in California, as they struggle to understand each other across cultures and generations.

The Los Angeles Times said the book is "firmly anchored in a sensuous reality" and "puts the taste of breakfast in a small mountain village of Japan in the mouth of the reader."

Mockett was born in Carmel to a Japanese mother and American father, who saw to it that she learned her mother's native tongue. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in East Asian studies. Her work often focuses on the intersection between spirituality and materialism in Japan and the U.S.

Her fiction, essays and poetry have been published in Agni, Epoch, South Dakota Review, New Delta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The Portland Review, LIT, The Texas Review, Phoebe, and other journals. In 2009, she attended the Bread Loaf Conference in Ripton, Vt., as a Bernard O'Keefe Scholar in Nonfiction.

Her essay "Letter From a Japanese Crematorium" was cited as distinguished in "2008 Best American Essays" and published in "Creative Nonfiction 3."

Mockett resides in New York with her Scottish husband and three precocious cats. Visit her website at www.mariemockett.com.

Admission to the event is $5. For more information, call (510) 644-2967.