Skylight Books Podcast Series

Better Than the Movie 30: WUTHERING HEIGHTS w/ Paige Gresty

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:01:00 -0700

Moor! Moor! Moor! The Better Than the Movie gang is hanging out where it's wily and windy, and they've brought along filmmaker and labor organizer Paige Gresty to talk about it. The subject is Emerald Fennell's "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" (complete with quotation marks) and its purported source novel, WUTHERING HEIGHTS (no quotation marks) by Emily Brontë. (Justin also watched the 1939 version with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, so there's an eensy weensy bit of talk about that movie too.) Is Fennell's film horny? Is it kinky? Is it subversive? Is it flashy? Is it any good? Well, I guess we'll find out.

Hosted by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Check out the "Better Than the Movie" audiobook playlist on Libro.fm - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-better-than-the-movie

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Simona Supekar, STOCK PHOTO (OBJECT LESSONS)

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:01:00 -0800

Keywords for this episode: Surprising, enlightening, entertaining, provocative, warm, inclusive, thoughtful, required listening. Simona Supekar talks with bookseller Justin Remer about her new book in the Object Lessons series, Stock Photo. Starting with her history as a former keyworder for a stock photography company, Supekar explores the way these largely ignored components of the websites we visit shape our ideas about beauty, race, cultural heritage, and gender. She discusses the way that photo-generating AI is being trained on datasets that she helped construct. She talks about the changes in the industry in the past half-century. And, of course, she talks about all those stock photo memes.

If you're in the Los Angeles area, please check out our in-store event for the Object Lessons books Stock Photo and Ballot on Thursday, March, 12, 2026.

Produced and hosted by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Stuart Moore, DOCTOR STRANGE: A DECADE OF DARK MAGIC (MARVEL AGE OF COMICS)

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:01:00 -0800

KOSMIC! Novelist, comics writer, and historian Stuart Moore joins the podcast to discuss his new book for the Marvel Age of Comics critical series from Bloomsbury and Marvel, Doctor Strange: A Decade of Dark Magic. As the title promises, Moore's book looks at the first ten years of the character - from its start as a supporting feature in Strange Tales from artist Steve Ditko and writer Stan Lee through multiple reimaginings and adjustments in the hands of writers and artists like Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, and Steve Englehart. In this discussion with bookseller Justin Remer, Moore talks about the dialogue Doctor Strange created with the '60s counterculture, the tumultuous publishing history of the title, and his own prior interactions with the late Ditko and Lee. If you stick around, there's some Toxic Avenger talk near the end as well.

Pick up a copy of the book at Skylight or order the audiobook version from Libro.fm.

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Eileen G'Sell, LIPSTICK (OBJECT LESSONS)

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 00:01:00 -0800

Adorn yourself. Cultural critic and poet Eileen G'Sell joins Skylight's Keila Cone-Uemura to about her new book in the Object Lessons series, Lipstick. They discuss perceptions of beauty in social contexts, in political contexts, and in pop culture. How is Chappell Roan's use of makeup a cultural subversion? What makes "Mar-a-Lago face" such an unsettling phenomenon? These questions and more are explored.

Pick up a copy of the book at Skylight or order the audiobook version from Libro.fm.

Hosted by Keila Cone-Uemura.
Produced by Keila Cone-Uemura and Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Chris Ryall, DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN - AN EXPLORATION (MARVEL AGE OF COMICS)

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:01:00 -0800

Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli's classic story arc of Daredevil comics from the mid-'80s, known as Born Again, is the subject of a new book from comics writer and editor Chris Ryall. Daredevil: Born Again - An Exploration is part of Bloomsbury and Marvel's new series of small critical books dedicated to classic comics runs, Marvel Age of Comics.

Comics writer and artist (and Skylight's own) Sina Grace talks to Chris Ryall about this legendary Daredevil run and about the process of writing a book about such a major piece of the Marvel Comics canon.

Pick up a copy of Chris Ryall's book from Skylight or order the audiobook version from Libro.fm.

Hosted by Sina Grace.
Produced by Sina Grace and Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 29: LORD OF ILLUSIONS / THE LAST ILLUSION w/ Garon Cockrell

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:01:00 -0800

It's the end of an era - or a trilogy - or something. Author and podcaster Garon Cockrell (Demonic and Other Tales) returns for his third guest appearance on BTTM to talk Clive Barker! This crew previously reviewed Nightbreed (BTTM episode 11) and Hellraiser (BTTM 22), so there's only one last feature film where Barker adapted himself: 1995's Lord of Illusions, based on the novella The Last Illusion (from the same collection that contains Nightbreed's source: Cabal).

It's an opportunity for another raucous, silly discussion that is just good, clean, macabre fun.

Check out the "Better Than the Movie" audiobook playlist on Libro.fm - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-better-than-the-movie

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Tyler Austin, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Matthew Blackwell, PLUNDERPHONICS (GENRE: A 33 1/3 SERIES)

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 00:01:00 -0800

As a music genre, plunderphonics is somewhat misunderstood. While the genre is based on samples, much like hip-hop, it isn't just music made from other music. It utilizes samples to push the boundaries of copyright -- what is fair use, what is public domain, who truly owns a piece of music?

Matthew Blackwell's new book for 33 1/3's GENRE series, Plunderphonics, traces the genre back to the quote-heavy compositions of early 20th Century composer Charles Ives and follows it up through the mash-up madness of Danger Mouse and Girl Talk. Along the way, Blackwell looks at the recordings and legal battles of diverse artists like Bay Area pranksters Negativland, comedy pioneers Buchanan and Goodman, hip-hop legends De La Soul, Biz Markie, and Beastie Boys, Aussie art-poppers The Avalanches, and avant-garde theorist (and coiner of the term Plunderphonics) John Oswald. Bookseller and writer Justin Remer talks with Blackwell about all these artists and more of the tidbits contained in his new book.

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Fan of audiobooks? Check out the "On the Skylight Pod" playlist on Libro.FM - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-podcast

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 28: THE RUNNING MAN

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:01:00 -0800

The BTTM guys are running their mouths about THE RUNNING MAN. Allan, Tyler, and Justin dig into the recent Edgar Wright-directed film and the same-named 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger star vehicle, which are both adapted -- to different degrees -- from the novel by Stephen King (under his Richard Bachman alias). It's a boisterous discussion among three guys whose reactions range from ambivalent to underwhelmed to disgusted. Maybe the trickiest adaptation to rate for the Better Than the Movie fellas since the HALLOWE'EN PARTY / A HAUNTING IN VENICE debacle of BTTM episode 7. Enjoy!

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Justin Remer, and Allan Traylor.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Check out the "Better Than the Movie" audiobook playlist on Libro.fm - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-better-than-the-movie

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Dusty Henry, 20TH CENTURY AMBIENT (GENRE: A 33 1/3 SERIES)

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:01:00 -0800

Ambient Music, as a genre, is one that is meant to be experienced consciously or unconsciously. It can be focused upon or ignored. It can feed your soul, brighten your day, or just counterpoint the din of the everyday. Dusty Henry, in his new book for 33 1/3's GENRE series, focuses upon 20TH CENTURY AMBIENT. The book looks at early and unexpected influences like Erik Satie and Blind Willie Johnson. It highlights leading artists of the form like Brian Eno, Harold Budd, Laraaji, Suzanne Ciani, and Hiroshi Yoshimura. It also touches upon artists like Wendy Carlos and Aphex Twin whose relationship to the genre is only part of their identity. Bookseller and writer Justin Remer talks with Henry about the book, which is one of his Holiday Catalog staff picks!

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie 27: VINELAND / ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER w/ Rene Franco

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:01:00 -0800

Ocean waves, ocean waves. One of the best-loved movies of the fall has been Paul Thomas Anderson's ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER. The Better Than the Movie crew is joined by Rene Franco, the head of Skylight's Rabbit Hole Reading Club, to discuss the flick and also the novel which provided some inspiration, Thomas Pynchon's kooky and kaleidoscopic Vineland.

Hosted by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab, with remote recording via Zencastr.

Check out the "Better Than the Movie" audiobook playlist on Libro.FM - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-better-than-the-movie

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie Halloween Special 2: GIVE YOURSELF GOOSEBUMPS!

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Mwahahaha! The Better Than the Movie crew have gathered again to celebrate R.L. Stine's GOOSEBUMPS horror series for young readers. Rather than just talk ABOUT the books, as they did on the last Halloween special, they talk THROUGH a book. Justin reads a GIVE YOURSELF GOOSEBUMPS title (a kind of CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE sub-series from the late 1990s) while everyone provides color commentary as the BTTM fellas navigate through various DEAD ENDS (mwahahaha) in search of a happy conclusion.

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Justin Remer, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at Tyler's house. (Sorry for all the handheld mic rustling.)

"Johnny Graves" commercial taken from HALLOWEEN DREAMS by Creep Tape. Thanks to Matt Meindl for permission to use it.
Selected incidental music by Duck the Piano Wire.
Opening music: "Rumination: If I Should Die (Slowed / Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Marie Lu, RED CITY

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:01:00 -0700

In Angel City, alchemy is everything. Red City is the new fantasy novel from Marie Lu (Legend, Stars and Smoke). Bookseller Keila Cone-Uemura talks to Lu about the difference between writing for an adult audience and for a YA audience. During this wide-ranging talk, they discuss the inspiration that Lu pulled from her own life and from the city of Los Angeles. They also touch on the unexpected influence of The Hidden Life of Trees upon the new novel, as well as some favorite video games and video game soundtracks.

Pick up a copy of Red City from Skylight books or order the audiobook version from Libro.fm.

Hosted by Keila Cone-Uemura.
Produced by Keila Cone-Uemura and Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie - Friend of the Fest 2025 Special: JOHNNY MNEMONIC

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 01:00:00 -0700

In advance of the screening of Johnny Mnemonic in Black & White that the BTTM crew is hosting for the American Cinematheque's Friend of the Fest 2025, Allan and Justin get together to discuss the film and the William Gibson short story that inspired it.

If you're going to be in Los Angeles on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, why not come to our movie screening at the Los Feliz 3 theater?
Tickets available now on the American Cinematheque website!

Hosted by Allan Traylor and Justin Remer. (Hope that Japan is fun, Tyler!)
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Alisha Mughal, IT CAN'T RAIN ALL THE TIME: THE CROW

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Abashed the devil stood, and felt how awful goodness is. The Crow (1994) is a one-of-a-kind film, borne out of tragedy and thought to be cursed. Critic and culture writer Alisha Mughal takes a look at the film, its graphic novel origins, its beautiful but doomed star Brandon Lee, and much more in her new book for the Pop Classics series, It Can't Rain All the Time: The Crow. Alisha joins Skylight's Justin Remer for a talk about her book, her hyperfixation on the movie, and the '90s grunge ethos.

For more of Alisha Mughal's recent writing, check out:
*"The Lonely Landscapes of Materialists and The Worst Person in the World" on RogerEbert.com
*"Let's Rock: The Dialectic of the the Sublime in Twin Peaks" on FilmDaze.net

For more information on the screening of Johnny Mnemonic hosted by the Skylight Books podcast crew on August 26, 2025, check out:
*The American Cinematheque's website for Friend of the Fest 2025

For Pop Classics titles on audiobook, check out Libro.FM please!

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 26: HOLES w/ Sophia Benoit

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Author and comedian Sophia Benoit (Well, This Is Exhausting) joins the Better Than the Movie crew to discuss a modern children's book classic, HOLES by Louis Sachar, and its 2003 live-action Disney adaptation, which was scripted by Sachar himself, directed by Andrew Davis (The Fugitive), and starred an insanely talented ensemble cast headed by Megalopolis co-stars Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voigt. Both the book and movie have held up extremely well in the ensuing years... but which is better?

Check out Sophia Benoit discussing her book with Tyler Austin on this episode from the Skylight Books archive: https://youtu.be/MxvdzJVo51c?si=Cc2Mq7j_o5YNU21Y

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Allan Traylor, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Pete Crighton, THE VINYL DIARIES

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Don't drink? Don't smoke? What do you do? THE VINYL DIARIES follows Pete Crighton's journey from a closeted goody two shoes to a blissfully self-possessed lover of queer community, queer joy, and queer sex, while keeping track of the key pop music that resonated along the way. For this episode, Pete Crighton (The B-52s' Cosmic Thing) discusses releasing a memoir as a first-time writer, processing a lifetime of trauma through art, and the role music has played in the whole process. Writer-bookseller Justin Remer asks about the bands and artists that meant a lot (Adam Ant, Fleetwood Mac, Yoko Ono) and those that... well... didn't (Madonna, HAIM). They also talk about how Pete wrote his forthcoming 33 1/3 book on The B-52s in 90 days.

Pick up a copy of the book from Skylight Books or order the audiobook version from Libro.fm.

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Veronica Litt, UGH! AS IF! CLUELESS

Thu, 12 Jun 2025 00:01:00 -0700

This is so unexpected, we didn't even have a speech prepared. Author Veronica Litt joins us to talk about her new book in ECW Press's Pop Classics series, Ugh! As If!, on Amy Heckerling's classic film comedy Clueless. This is the 30th Anniversary of Clueless's theatrical release, and the book is both a warm, conversational appreciation and clear-eyed dissection of what the movie gets wonderfully right and what is a bit cringe now.

Litt talks with bookseller Justin Remer about Clueless and all sorts of tangential topics including Jane Austen, girly art, human potato Channing Tatum, footnotes, audiobooks, and the Fast and Furious franchise.

Get the book from Skylight and order the audiobook from Libro.FM please!

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 25: THE DEAD w/ Conor Holt

Thu, 29 May 2025 00:01:00 -0700

The Old Man WAS Still Alive! Film writer and physical media enthusiast Conor Holt returns to Better Than the Movie to discuss a pair of classics: John Huston's film The Dead (1987), adapted from the short story by James Joyce, which first appeared in Dubliners (1914).

Spoiler alert: Everyone loved them both. But between the film and the story, which did they think was better?

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Justin Remer, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Check out the "Better Than the Movie" audiobook playlist on Libro.FM - https://libro.fm/playlists/skylight-better-than-the-movie

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Matthew Reed Baker, 1970s JAZZ FUSION (GENRE: A 33 1/3 SERIES)

Thu, 15 May 2025 00:01:00 -0700

From BITCHES BREW to "Feels So Good" and beyond, author Matthew Reed Baker delves into the funky, smooth, and transcendent records that resulted from the merging of jazz with R&B, pop, rock, and much much more in the 1970s. Miles Davis, Weather Report, Chuck Mangione, Herbie Hancock, Joni Mitchell, and Steely Dan are just some of the acts that are discussed in 1970s Jazz Fusion, a welcome new installment from 33 1/3's spin-off series on musical genres. Bookseller and writer Justin Remer hosts this discussion of both the book and the music.

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie 24: WOMAN IN THE DUNES w/ Emily VanKoughnett

Thu, 01 May 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Abe is Bae? The wonderful Emily VanKoughnett (Los Angeles Review of Books; LIT ANGELES) returns to Better Than the Movie with a classy pick: Kobo Abe's existential psychological thriller The Woman in the Dunes. The novel, from 1962, was made a few years later into an Oscar-nominated film adapted by Abe and directed by the inimitable Hiroshi Teshigahara. Both are considered top-tier classics... but which is better?

Hosted by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Sina Grace, WEST HOLLYWOOD MONSTER SQUAD

Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Award-winning graphic novelist and illustrator Sina Grace (Superman: The Harvests of Youth) joins host Tyler Austin to discuss his new book, West Hollywood Monster Squad. A ragtag crew must make their way across West Hollywood after some unexpected pink snow begins creating giant monsters in their midst. It's a sweet, funny "turbo gay" story for our time. Sina and Tyler discuss themes of the story, as well as the intricacies of the Pokémon video games, what it's like working at Skylight, and whatever else crosses their minds during this delightful hour-long chat.

Produced by Tyler Austin & Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.
Hosted by Tyler Austin.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
The "Justin's music is great" music: "Don't Depend on Me (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 23: THE NATURAL w/ Jonah Lipton

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Happy Opening Day! Baseball is back, and BTTM is back with another baseball-themed book adaptation. Bookseller and writer Jonah Lipton joins the crew to discuss Bernard Malamud's 1952 novel THE NATURAL, and its 1984 film adaptation starring Robert Redford. Famously the book is downbeat and cynical, reflecting postwar disillusionment, while the movie is upbeat and heroic, reflecting Reagan-era optimism. We know they're different but which one is better??

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Allan Traylor, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Marya E. Gates, CINEMA HER WAY

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:01:00 -0700

Film journalist and critic Marya E. Gates talks with Justin about her new book, Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors In Their Own Words. The book is a stylishly illustrated collection of interviews with 19 film directors, including Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Mary Lambert, and Katt Shea. Another great chat for our cinephile listeners!

Hosted and produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening Music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing Music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 22: HELLRAISER (1987) / THE HELLBOUND HEART w/ Garon Cockrell

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:01:00 -0800

Come to... Pod-dy? We're straining for puns over here, but we've got a fun remote-recorded episode today, featuring the return of author and podcaster Garon Cockrell (Demonic and Other Tales). It's a follow-up to last year's Nightbreed episode, in which Tyler voiced his dislike for body horror. For being such a good sport, we reward him with more Clive Barker: the 1987 film Hellraiser, directed by Barker and adapted from his own novella, The Hellbound Heart. There are discussions of the story's psychosexual dynamics and hazy mythology, plus a bit about the sequels and remakes.

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Tyler Austin, and Justin Remer.

Produced by Justin Remer. (sorry about the mixed-bag sound)
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental) by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Leah Kardos, KATE BUSH'S HOUNDS OF LOVE (33 1/3)

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:01:00 -0800

We're podcasting... Yeah yeah yay-yo! Justin speaks with Leah Kardos, the author of the new 33 1/3 book on Kate Bush's Hounds of Love. Together, they discuss the impact of the album and Kate Bush's undersung influence as a record producer. Leah also talks about the process of finding the structure and narrative for her book. There's music nerd stuff in there too, but it's GOOD, smart music nerd stuff. You'll like it.

Produced and hosted by Justin Remer.
Recorded remotely via Zencastr.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 21: TOTAL RECALL (1990) w/ Buzzy Cohen

Thu, 30 Jan 2025 00:01:00 -0800

An episode so good, it'll make you wish you had three ears. Buzzy Cohen (Baby Got Facts: Totally '90s Trivia) returns for another delightful episode, breaking down Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" and the 1990 film adaptation directed by Paul Verhoeven, with a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon & Ronald Shusett and Gary Goldman. Reality, virtual reality, false memories, real (?) memories, mutants, great practical special effects, rods of air, a young Sharon Stone, and enough Arnold Schwarzenegger one-liners to fill a burn book. Get your EARS to Mars. We'll see you at the party, Richter.

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Justin Remer, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 20: THE POLAR EXPRESS w/ Natalie Freeman & Allison Woodnutt

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 00:06:07 -0800

Like the proverbial Christmas miracle, the BTTM crew is back just in the (Saint) nick of time for a holiday-themed final episode of 2024. At the behest of Natalie Freeman and Allison Woodnutt (who you may remember from last year's A HAUNTING IN VENICE episode), Justin, Allan, and Tyler braved the cold to wave down THE POLAR EXPRESS, an illustrated children's book by Chris Van Allsburg (JUMANJI) and a film directed by Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE). Natalie and Allison were not available for in-studio recording but provided plenty of (possibly not 100% sober) voice notes for the fellas to talk to. This movie is bonkers, and everyone has thoughts.

Hosted by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 19: GHOST WORLD w/ Chris Andersen

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 00:01:00 -0800

It's America, dude, learn the rules! Chris Andersen (Your Favorite Bad Movie Podcast) joins the BTTM crew to discuss the 2001 adaptation of the Daniel Clowes graphic novel GHOST WORLD, directed by Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Bad Santa). They discuss how one can grow up relating to a disaffected teen girl played by Thora Birch and find themselves an alienated physical-media-obsessed adult, played by Steve Buscemi. Also: lots of comics talk.

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Justin Remer, and Allan Traylor.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Lili Anolik, "DIDION & BABITZ"

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:25:00 -0800

Ace interviewer Elodie Saint-Louis sits down with Lili Anolik to discuss Anolik's new book Didion & Babitz. Anolik talks about the complicated relationship between authors Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, their unique perspectives on the Feminist Movement, and how they were each consumed by and motivated each other. Anolik also tells the fascinating story of how she discovered the complexity of this relationship to begin with. If you're a fan of either author, this isn't an episode to miss!

Produced by Elodie Saint-Louis and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck! The Piano Wire

Better Than the Movie 18: THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH w/ Mark Rennie

Thu, 24 Oct 2024 00:01:00 -0700

What Price Vincent? Writer and improviser Mark Rennie (The Big Gay Movie Spreadsheet, Eat Pray Dunk) returns for a second appearance on BTTM, just in time for Spooky Season. Under discussion is the Edgar Allan Poe classic "The Masque of the Red Death," adapted to film by director Roger Corman and star Vincent Price in 1964.

Allan and Justin chat with Mark about horror in general, about Vincent Price in particular, and about a bunch of other digressive topics. Let's get Halloween-y!!

Hosted by Allan Traylor and Justin Remer. (Miss ya, Tyler.)
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 17: THE SWIMMER w/ Buzzy Cohen

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 00:01:00 -0700

THIS... IS... JEOP-BUZZY! Jeopardy! champion Buzzy Cohen (Baby Got Facts: Totally 90s Trivia) drops in to talk about John Cheever's small slice of suburban surrealism, "The Swimmer." Burt Lancaster headlines the 1968 film adaptation, scripted by Eleanor Perry (Diary of a Mad Housewife) and directed by Frank Perry (Mommie Dearest). This is Better Than the Movie's first short story discussion, so Buzzy and the BTTM crew also discuss other notable short story adaptations to film.

Hosted by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Danzy Senna, "COLORED TELEVISION"

Tue, 03 Sep 2024 13:28:26 -0700

Premier fiction interviewer Elodie Saint-Louis is back in conversation, this time with the amazing Danzy Senna, to talk about Senna's new novel Colored Television.

In this episode, Senna reads from her book, followed by an amazing talk about multicultural identity, Senna's relationship to humor, and who she would choose to soundtrack the novel.

Listen in and then stop by Skylight Books on Wednesday, September 4 to see Senna read in person!

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Produced by Elodie Saint-Louis and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

Better Than the Movie Special: TANK GIRL (Friend of the Fest Preview)

Fri, 16 Aug 2024 00:43:27 -0700

The Better Than the Movie boys are hosting a screening of TANK GIRL (1995) on August 24, 2024, as part of American Cinematheque's Friend of the Fest 2024 podcast film festival. So here is a free-floating (read: CHAOTIC) chat about this underground comic-turned-quirky Hollywood movie, including another of Allan's absurd trivia competitions. If you're in LA, pick up a ticket for more of this insanity: SKYLIGHT BOOKS PRESENTS TANK GIRL

Whether you're attending or not, this episode is an adrenaline jolt of snappy silliness about an absurd and crazy flick.

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Tyler Austin, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music and game show bed music taken from Duck the Piano Wire's ISOLATION QUARTET
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Matt Singer, OPPOSABLE THUMBS (Siskel & Ebert)

Thu, 27 Jun 2024 00:01:00 -0700

Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert are arguably the most influential American film critics of the 20th Century. Clips from their movie review TV show continue to circulate on social media and Youtube to the delight of new viewers and old fans alike. In his book OPPOSABLE THUMBS, film writer Matt Singer looks at the history of these film critics, the TV show opportunity that brought them together and brought them fame, and their lingering fingerprints on the media landscape. Skylight's Tyler Austin talks to him about the book, about Siskel and Ebert's relationship, and about the team's advocacy for cinema.

Hosted by Tyler Austin.
Produced by Tyler Austin, Mick Kowaleski, and Justin Remer.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 16: PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER w/ Elisa Garcia

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 00:01:00 -0700

We've got a classic on BTTM today that's all killer. DJ and bookseller Elisa Garcia selected PERFUME, the 1985 German novel by Patrick Süskind that was originally deemed unfilmable. But co-screenwriter and director Tom Tykwer (RUN LOLA RUN, BABYLON BERLIN) surely got the job done in 2006. Elisa joins Allan, Tyler, and Justin to discuss the best bits of the book, the genius of Ben Whishaw's lead performance, and... whatever Dustin Hoffman was doing. Smells like a great episode!

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Justin Remer, and Allan Traylor.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Geoff Shackelford, GOLF ARCHITECTURE FOR NORMAL PEOPLE

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:28:00 -0700

It's a golfing extravaganza as Geoff Shackelford joins Skylight's Tyler Austin to discuss his book Golf Architecture for Normal People! Together, they talk golf course design, the economic and ecological impacts of a golf course that people don't often think about, and how golf as a game is becoming more accessible to lower-class players.

It's a great episode about golf...for normal people!

Produced by Mick Kowaleski and Tyler Austin

Music by Duck, the Piano Wire

Better Than the Movie 15: PLANET OF THE APES

Thu, 23 May 2024 00:01:00 -0700

It's a madhouse! The BTTM fellas are on their own this month, talking PLANET OF THE APES. The main focus is the original feature film, directed by Oscar winner Franklin J. Schaffner and scripted by fellow Oscar winner Michael Wilson and TWILIGHT ZONE creator Rod Serling. The fellas compare this classic to the lesser known source novel by Pierre Boulle that inspired the whole franchise. But most things APES get touched upon in this episode too, from the new release in theaters, KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the failed Tim Burton reboot in 2001, and even the '70s cartoon show. Let Allan, Tyler, and Justin drive you bananas, won't you?

Hosted by Allan Traylor, Tyler Austin, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solmenity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Maggie Nelson, LIKE LOVE

Fri, 17 May 2024 09:56:49 -0700

Join us for a conversation with Skylight favorite Maggie Nelson, whose newest collection of essays, Like Love, has already made its way into our booksellers' hearts. One of those booksellers, Elodie Saint-Louis, sat down with Maggie to talk about Like Love, her thoughts on genre distinctions with writing, and much more!

Produced by Elodie Saint-Louis and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

BUY LIKE LOVE HERE: https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781644452813

Better Than the Movie 14: THE GREEN KNIGHT / SIR GAWAIN AND... w/ Conor Holt

Thu, 18 Apr 2024 00:01:00 -0700

Happy Dev Patel Season to all who celebrate! Mr. Patel's directing debut, MONKEY MAN, is in theaters now, but we decided to look back a few years at his great work in THE GREEN KNIGHT, adapted from the chivalric romance SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT by writer-director David Lowery (PETER PAN & WENDY). Filmmaker and VHS enthusiast Conor Holt joins Allan and Justin to talk King Arthur stories and much more!

Hosted by Allan Traylor and Justin Remer. (Feel better, Tyler!)
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solmenity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie 13: MONEYBALL w/ Michael Chin

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 00:01:00 -0700

Happy Opening Day! And coincidentally, Tyler has selected a baseball classic for his birthday pick: Michael Lewis's MONEYBALL: THE ART OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME and the Oscar-nominated film adaptation co-written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Bennett Miller. How did they turn those stats into a movie!?! Guest Michael Chin (Great Wave Goods) helps break down the differences between page and screen.

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Allan Traylor, and Justin Remer.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at Tyler's house on Tyler's couches.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie 12: THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY w/ Emily VanKoughnett

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 00:01:00 -0800

How's the peepin', Tommy? Netflix's RIPLEY series is still more than a month away from dropping, but guest Emily VanKoughnett (Los Angeles Review of Books; LIT ANGELES) joins the BTTM crew to discuss Patricia Highsmith's classic murder story from 1955, THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY, and the 1999 film adaptation from writer-director Anthony Minghella, starring Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow... and the incomparable Philip Seymour Hoffman. TOMMY! (There's a little chat about 1960's PURPLE NOON too, but everybody didn't watch that one.)

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Justin Remer, and Allan Traylor.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing Music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Tommy Orange, WANDERING STARS

Thu, 22 Feb 2024 10:30:00 -0800

It's a sneak peek special! Skylight's own Elodie sits down with the incredible Tommy Orange (There, There) to talk about his new novel Wandering Stars (Feb. 27)...listen in for a reading of an excerpt, Tommy's thoughts on Native American representation and why he's hopeful for the future.

To pre-order Wandering Stars: https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780593318256

Edited by Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Eric Wolfson, FIFTY YEARS OF THE CONCEPT ALBUM IN POPULAR MUSIC

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:01:00 -0800

From The Beatles to Beyoncé! Author Eric Wolfson discusses his new book on the shifting identity of the concept album in rock, pop, and hip-hop music with bookseller (and, yes, friend) Justin Remer. The book breaks down 25 albums across five eras, and Eric and Justin get into many of them here. A great chat for veteran music nerds and new fans alike.

Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

SKYLIT: Will Harris, SURELY YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 09:50:48 -0800

I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.

Resident film buff Tyler Austin sits down with Will Harris, pop culture journalist, to discuss the interviews that comprise Surely You Can't Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! Together, they discuss some of Will's favorite interviews and some truly great behind-the-scenes scoops from one of the greatest comedies of all time.

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Produced by Tyler Austin and Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck, the Piano Wire.

Better Than the Movie 11: NIGHTBREED / CABAL w/ Garon Cockrell

Thu, 25 Jan 2024 00:05:00 -0800

Happy New Year! BTTM is back for 2024 with a birthday pick from Allan: Clive Barker's NIGHTBREED, based on the horror novella CABAL by Barker himself! Tyler is the opposite of a gorehound, so he is really mad at Allan for making this pick. Our guest is the delightful -- and delighted -- Garon Cockrell (of the podcasts Never Not Funny and How to Survive with Danielle and Kristine).

Hosted by Tyler Austin, Justin Remer, and Allan Traylor.
Produced by Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire.
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band.

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 10: THE THIN MAN w/ Jen Johans

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 00:05:00 -0800

You go after him, and you'll find his shadow - or his song - and you'll have to go home. There'll never be another: THIN MAN! Jen Johans (Watch With Jen podcast) joins the Better Than the Movie crew for a holiday classic (of sorts). It's the William Powell and Myrna Loy comic mystery that launched a 6-film series, THE THIN MAN, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, with a script by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, based on the novel by the great Dashiell Hammett. This is Nick and Nora, and NO infinite playlist. Tyler, Allan, Justin, and Jen also discuss other offbeat yuletide tales that AREN'T freakin' DIE HARD.

Produced by Allan Traylor and Justin Remer.
Recorded at the LAPL Octavia Lab.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Rosecrans Baldwin, EVERYTHING NOW

Thu, 07 Dec 2023 11:29:26 -0800

Skylight royalty Rosecrans Baldwin joins Elodie to talk about his Los Angeles classic Everything Now. He talks about what makes L.A. a city-state, what makes it such a beautiful and conflicting place to be, and his three quintessential L.A. reads! (Spoilers below!)

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Produced by Elodie Saint-Louis and Mick Kowaleski

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Rosecrans's Three L.A. Reads:

SKYLIT: Kliph Nesteroff, OUTRAGEOUS: A HISTORY OF SHOWBIZ & THE CULTURE WARS

Thu, 30 Nov 2023 00:05:00 -0800

Get ready for a serious discussion of a funny book! Kliph Nesteroff's OUTRAGEOUS is the author's third investigation into the world of comedy, following THE COMEDIANS and WE HAD A LITTLE REAL ESTATE PROBLEM. While pundits may posit that you can't joke about anything anymore, Nesteroff's history shows that comic entertainment has been the frequent target of outrage for the better part of two centuries. In this discussion with Tyler Austin, Nesteroff digs into the political influences that have guided American cultural and political rhetoric, and he repeats a few gleefully random showbiz anecdotes.

Produced by Justin Remer

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Charles Bramesco, COLORS OF FILM: THE STORY OF CINEMA IN 50 PALETTES

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 00:05:00 -0800

Hello listeners! On this episode Tyler talks to film and television critic Charles Bramesco about his book, "Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes"

Produced by Tyler Austin & Alena Saunders

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 9: PRISCILLA / ELVIS AND ME w/ Collin Jonkman

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:03:00 -0800

A fairy tale romance or blatant child abuse? Today, the BTTM crew tackles another nonfiction film adaptation, Sofia Coppola's PRISCILLA, taken from the memoir ELVIS AND ME by Priscilla Beaulieu Presley and Sandra Harmon. Musician and educator Collin Jonkman helps assess the grandeur of Coppola's filmmaking, the quality of Presley's prose, and the toxicity of what could be described as a "May-February romance." Collin, Allan, Tyler, and Justin also discuss the pitfalls of music memoirs and biopics.

Produced by Justin Remer and Allan Traylor.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 8: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON w/ David Kimbel

Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:05:00 -0700

Time to investigate! It's the BTTM crew's first dissection of a nonfiction adaptation: the new Martin Scorsese film, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON, which is based on the book by David Grann. Fellow bookseller David Kimbel joins the core trio of Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Tyler Austin in their analysis of these two related retellings of the bloody Reign of Terror which targeted the wealthy Osage Indian population of Oklahoma in the 1920s. Other essential works of true crime and nonfiction storytelling are also discussed.

Produced by Justin Remer and Allan Traylor.

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie Halloween Special: GOOSEBUMPS

Thu, 19 Oct 2023 00:05:00 -0700

Trick or treat! Allan Traylor, Tyler Austin, and Justin Remer take a spooky stroll down memory lane, exploring the world of the kiddie horror book series GOOSEBUMPS by R.L. Stine. Allan is the (relative) expert of the group, so he assigns titles for Tyler and Justin to read. He also springs a GOOSEBUMPS title trivia game on the other two. All three fellas watch the 2015 film and... they have some notes.

This was recorded before the new Disney/Hulu series was released, but the BTTM crew talks about the classic '90s TV version, as well as other throwback shows like EERIE, INDIANA and ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK? Let's get spooOOOOooooky!

Produced by Justin Remer.

Opening music: "Rumination: If I Should Die (Slowed / Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: James Park, CHILI CRISP

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:09:43 -0700

Hello listeners! On this episode Tyler talks to James Park, food writer and author of the new cookbook "Chili Crisp: 50+ Recipes to Satisfy Your Spicy, Crunchy, Garlicky Cravings" about all things-- you guessed it-- chili crisp.

Produced by Tyler Austin & Alena Saunders

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 7: A HAUNTING IN VENICE / HALLOWE’EN PARTY w/ Natalie Freeman and Allison Smith

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 00:05:00 -0700

It's spooky season, and our LITTLE GREY CELLS are HAUNTED! Former Skylight booksellers Natalie Freeman and Allison Miriam Smith return to the store to join Allan, Tyler, and Justin for the Better Than the Movie crew's most rambunctious (and, let's admit it, CHAOTIC) episode yet.

This fulsome fivesome discuss Kenneth Branagh's third movie outing as detective Hercule Poirot, A HAUNTING IN VENICE, and its credited source material, HALLOWE'EN PARTY by Agatha Christie, which is a completely different story. It's a SPOILERS-HEAVY discussion, full of digressions and talking over each other. Lots of laughter and fun.

Produced by Justin Remer and Mick Kowaleski.

Opening music: "Rumination: If I Should Die (Slowed / Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 6: MISERY w/ Mark Rennie

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 00:05:00 -0700

She's his number one fan. The hilarious and well-read Mark Rennie (TWO OLD QUEENS podcast) joins a reduced BTTM crew to discuss MISERY, the Stephen King novel and the Oscar-winning film from screenwriter William Goldman and director Rob Reiner. (And cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld!!) With a new documentary about King adaptations out in theaters, KING ON SCREEN, the fellas also discuss some other King faves on page and screen.

Produced by Justin Remer and Mick Kowaleski.
Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Elliott Kalan, MANIAC OF NEW YORK

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 16:47:48 -0700

Hello listeners! In this episode, Tyler chats with Elliott Kalan, co-host of wildly successful bad movie podcast The Flop House, Emmy Award winning head writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and the creative force behind the comics MANIAC OF NEW YORK and MANIAC OF NEW YORK: THE BRONX IS BURNING.

Elliott discusses his earliest inspirations for Maniac Harry, a masked and immortal killer, whose murderous rampages become a semi-regular occurrence/nuisance to New Yorkers, his rules of satire and thoughts on storytelling as a vehicle for social messaging, plus why THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 is his favorite film and a glorious portrait of '70s New York. Lastly, Elliott gives some insight into the ongoing writer's strike and how to support those most impacted by it.

Links to MANIAC OF NEW YORK and MANIAC OF NEW YORK: THE BRONX IS BURNING

https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781949028713

https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9781956731040

Link to the Entertainment Community Relief Fund:

https://entertainmentcommunity.org/

Produced by Tyler Austin, Mick Kowaleski, & Alena Saunders

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire
Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

The Better Than the Movie guys will be at the American Cinematheque's FRIEND OF THE FEST! They'll be hosting a screening of Sally Potter's ORLANDO (1992) on Sunday, August 27th, at the Los Feliz 3. It's right next door to Skylight, come hang out and watch a movie with the BTTM gang!

Tickets found here: https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/the-skylight-books-podcast-presents-orlando-8-27-23/

SKYLIT: Warren Zanes, DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE

Thu, 27 Jul 2023 18:38:24 -0700

Calling all fans of The Boss! In this episode, Tyler Austin sits down with Warren Zanes, writer of Petty: The Biography, Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis (33 1/3), and, most recently, Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska.

Tyler and Warren talk about Bruce’s seminal album, the singular vision necessary to create its distinct sound, and the lead up to/aftermath of the release. Warren goes into detail about why most albums don’t deserve a full book, what it’s like spending the day at Springsteen’s house in New Jersey, and how Nebraska changed his life. So, hit that play button ‘cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to pod!

Produced by Tyler Austin and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 5: JAWS w/ Kristen Lopez

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:05:00 -0700

Just when you thought it was safe to download a podcast... The BTTM fellas are back to talk JAWS with film writer and podcaster Kristen Lopez (who discussed her book about 52 classic film adaptations BUT HAVE YOU READ THE BOOK? on a recent Skylit episode). Steven Spielberg's film has become an American classic, but what about Peter Benchley's original novel? It's got more sex, more mafia enforcers, and more small town economic hardship -- but is it better than the movie?

Produced by Justin Remer, Allan Traylor, and Mick Kowaleski

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Artem Mozgovoy, SPRING IN SIBERIA

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 15:07:31 -0700

Artem Mozgovoy discusses his debut novel, Spring in Siberia, with the managing editor of Red Hen Press, Dr. Kate Gale. The work has been praised by Publishers Weekly as a "superb debut", "touching and well written, genuinely compelling and convincing" by Sir Stephen Fry, and "a capacious work of vision, courage, and thoroughness" by Ocean Vuong.

Artem takes Kate through his childhood in central Siberia, his career starting as a cadet reporter at 16 and the editor-in-chief by 26, and, eventually, his shift into creative writing.

Produced by Tyler Austin and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Millie De Chirico & Quatoyiah Murray, TCM UNDERGROUND

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 13:35:04 -0700

Cinephiles, tune in! In this episode, Tyler Austin hosts Millie De Chirico and Quatoyiah Murray, co-writers of TCM Underground, a movie-lover's guide to 50 of the most campy, kitschy, shocking, and weirdly wonderful cult films you need to see.

Millie and Quatoyiah take the Ty-Guy through the cult classics of the Turner Classic Movie series, and discuss everything from writing with a partner to buying Salo DVDs from the Italian Dark Web.

Produced by Tyler Austin and Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire.

SKYLIT: Charles Ardai of Hard Case Crime

Thu, 29 Jun 2023 10:21:00 -0700

Listen here, gumshoes and femme fatales, we’re gonna give you the straight story on the QT and very hush hush. Skylight’s own torpedo, Tyler, tangles with Charles Ardai, mystery writer and founder of Hard Case Crime, a publishing imprint re-releasing classics of the pulp underworld and modern takes on the time-tested genre. Charles spills the beans about his journey into the publishing world, what it’s like to meet and work with your literary heroes, how he writes his own fiction, and when he knew the whole endeavor would not only survive but thrive. Over nearly two decades, the beautifully hand-painted covers of Hard Case Crime paperbacks have become synonymous with a mark of quality and a stamp of approval for readers around the world. This is the inside scoop on how it all came to be.

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Produced by Mick Kowaleski and Tyler Austin

Music by Duck, the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Alex Pappademas, QUANTUM CRIMINALS

Fri, 26 May 2023 08:52:00 -0700

Fire in the hole! Any major dude will tell you that this podcast is a hit. Were you thinking of skipping? Only a fool would say that! That's pretzel logic.

On this episode, we host king of the world Alex Pappademas as he discusses his new Steely Dan book QUANTUM CRIMINALS with the razor boy himself, Tyler Austin. Hop in your midnite cruiser, turn that heartbeat over again, and hang with Alex as he discusses doing the dirty work with illustrator Joan Lemay and everything and anything Steely! Then do it again, night by night.

If you like this episode, make sure you stop by Skylight Books on May 31st to see Alex live and in person!

Produced by Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck the Piano Wire.

Better Than the Movie, Ep.4: ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET

Thu, 18 May 2023 00:05:00 -0700

It's Three Men and a Little Lady! Allan, Justin, and Tyler tackle the long-delayed feature film adaptation of the iconic "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" by legendary children's author Judy Blume. The flick has got a great creative team, including director Kelly Fremon Craig ("The Edge of Seventeen") and Oscar-winning producer James L. Brooks ("Terms of Endearment"). The BTTM fellas talk coming-of-age stories, Rachel McAdams's Oscar chances, Benny Safdie's unexpected suavity, Kathy Bates's Jewish grandmother qualities, and much more. (BTW the movie Justin can't remember around the 10-minute mark is a French-Canadian film called "Slut in a Good Way." Check it out, it's fun!)

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Produced by Justin Remer and Mick Kowaleski

Opening music: "Optimism (Instrumental)" by Duck the Piano Wire

Closing music: "Rule of 3s (Solemnity Child)" by Elastic No-No Band

SKYLIT: Kristen Lopez, ”But Have You Read the Book?”

Thu, 11 May 2023 11:29:00 -0700

One-third of the Better Than the Movie gang, Tyler Austin, sits down with Kristen Lopez to talk about her book of 52 essential page-to-film adaptations. In But Have You Read the Book?, presented by Turner Classic Movies, Lopez explores just what makes these works classics of both the page and screen, and why each made for an exceptional adaptation—whether faithful to the book or exemplifying cinematic creative license.

Produced by Mick Kowaleski and Tyler Austin

Music by Duck the Piano Wire.

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 3: THE SISTERS BROTHERS w/ Alena Saunders

Thu, 20 Apr 2023 10:50:00 -0700

It's Guest O'Clock, pardners! Skylight's own Alena Saunders (of LIT ANGELES fame) drops in to the back room to talk about one of her favorite books, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, and its 2018 film adaptation directed by Jacques Audiard. The conversation gets heated in this one...Conflict between the BTTM Boys?? Say it ain't so!

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Produced by Mick Kowaleski and Justin Remer

Music by Duck the Piano Wire.

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 2: ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Thu, 23 Mar 2023 12:07:38 -0700

The boys are back! Justin, Allan, and Tyler return for the second episode of Better Than the Movie. This time, they're going over not one, but TWO adaptations of Erich Maria Remarque's war classic All Quiet on the Western Front: the 1930 Best Picture winner, directed by Lewis Milestone, and the 2022 German-language version directed by Edward Berger. What are the gang's takes on the war movie canon? Does either adaptation stack up to the original novel? What did you, the fans decide? The anticipation is killing me!

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Produced by Mick Kowaleski and Justin Remer

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Michael Schulman, ”OSCAR WARS” w/ Alex Ross

Thu, 09 Mar 2023 10:30:00 -0800

It's Oscar season! Join us for a deep dive into the Academy Awards as Michael Schulman discusses his new book, Oscar Wars, with fellow New Yorker writer Alex Ross. They discuss the Academy's dark history with union busting, its philosophical struggles in awarding spectacle vs. intimacy, and the lessons Michael learned while writing this book that he's excited to apply before this year's ceremony. This episode is well worth the listen before your Oscar party!

Produced by Mick Kowaleski

Order a signed copy of Oscar Wars here: https://www.skylightbooks.com/book/9780062859013

Better Than the Movie, Ep. 1: CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD/KNOCK AT THE CABIN

Thu, 16 Feb 2023 11:26:58 -0800

This episode contains spoilers of both Paul Tremblay's book The Cabin at the End of the World and its 2023 film adaptation, Knock at the Cabin. Proceed with caution!

Welcome to our first new Bookseller Special Series of 2023! Three of Skylight's biggest CinemaHeads, Justin, Tyler, and Allan, will get together once a month to discuss their favorite adaptations from page to screen. For the first episode, they're tackling Paul Tremblay's 2019 insta-classic horror novel Cabin at the End of the World, and M. Night Shyamalan's 2023 adaption, Knock at the Cabin.

In this episode, they talk about the substantial philosophical and narrative differences in the two projects, the difficulties of communicating interiority on film, and the faithful commitment of Rupert Grint's Boston accent.

Produced and edited by Mick Kowaleski

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Karen Han, ”Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema”

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 15:42:38 -0800

We welcome the incomparable Karen Han to the podcast to chat with Justin Remer about her new book Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema. She discusses how she examined the career of the South Korean writer/director and chats about coining "#BongHive" on Twitter. She's a delight and so is this ep! _______________________________________________

Produced and edited by Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Jessica Johns, ”Bad Cree”

Thu, 02 Feb 2023 11:07:00 -0800

It's our first episode in the New Year! Did you miss us? In our 2023 debut episode, Nat Freeman talks to Jessica Johns about her debut novel Bad Cree, hailed by Paul Tremblay as "a mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart." _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Mick Kowaleski.

Music by Duck the Piano Wire

SKYLIT: Where Monsters Lurk & Magic Hides

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 11:51:40 -0800

Join us for the final Skylight episode of 2022! In this MONSTER of a finale, Skylight's Nat Freeman talks to the editors and contributors to Where Monsters Lurk & Magic Hides, an anthology of Latine/x genre fiction from both new and established young adult authors. The stories in this anthology span the genre categories of romance, sci-fi & fantasy, and gothic horror. They take place in this world, other worlds, or maybe somewhere in between. Most importantly, the characters on these pages are not stereotypical Latine characters. Rather, they are fleshed-out characters, embarking on amazing adventures, who are unabashedly Latine. Joining Nat in readings and conversation is editor Lauren Davila and contributors K. Victoria Hernandez, Jarrard Raju, Ashley Jean Granillo, Taylor Ramage, and Kai Adia. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Dr. Clarence Lusane, ”TWENTY DOLLARS AND CHANGE” w/ Janell Hobson

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 08:19:49 -0800

In Twenty Dollars and Change, political scientist Clarence Lusane, author of the acclaimed The Black History of the White House, writes from a basic premise: Racist historical narratives and pervasive social inequities are inextricably linked--changing one can transform the other. Taking up the debate over the future of the twenty-dollar bill, Lusane uses the question of Harriet Tubman vs. Andrew Jackson as a lens through which to view the current state of our nation's ongoing reckoning with the legacies of slavery and foundational white supremacy. He places the struggle to confront unjust social conditions in direct connection with the push to transform our public symbols, making it plain that any choice of whose life deserves to be remembered and honored is a direct reflection of whose basic rights are deemed worthy of protection, and whose are not.

Join us for a conversation on reparations and legacy with Dr. Lusane and Janell Hobson, hosted by Skylight's Tyler Austin.

SKYLIT: adrienne maree brown, ”FABLES AND SPELLS”

Sat, 19 Nov 2022 08:55:16 -0800

Fables and Spells is a vibrant selection of visionary works, both previously published and brand new. Included here is adrienne maree brown's most beloved story, "The River," as well as the two sequel tales of her Water Trio. The remaining sixty-seven pieces explore moments of beauty, conflict, and transformation that also weave deep, radical lessons. With narrative "fables" of speculative fiction and "spells" that play with the lines between poetry, instruction, song, and chant, Fables and Spells demonstrates how good writing can engage the present while providing expansive visions of the possible worlds humans can build.

Join us for a wonderful conversation between Brown and Skylight's Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Emil DeAndreis, ”TELL US WHEN TO GO” w/ Joseph Bien Kahn

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 08:32:02 -0800

The post-recession Bay Area is a land fertile for world-changers and dreamers. This is the setting for Emil DeAndreis's Tell Us When To Go, a millennial coming-of-age story, part Silicon Valley satire and part urgent glimpse into the darker sides of privilege, troll culture, and class disparity. It asks the question, what comes of a friendship, or a city, with so much splitting it apart? Can it be saved?

Cole Gallegos is the ace of his college pitching staff, projected to make millions in the big leagues. But a ruthless case of "yips" leads him to break down and drop out of college.

Cole's teammate Isaac Moss is a wallflower who lacks direction and independence, so he follows Cole to San Francisco, where they rent a dingy apartment and attempt adult lives.

Desperate for a job, Cole is hired by Seaside High to work one-on-one with foster youth Dizzy Benson, who is one strike from getting expelled. The two do not vibe, to say the least. Days are turbulent with standoffs and threats. But their disconnect is not without humor, and with time their grudges against the world clumsily unite them.

Meanwhile Isaac is hired as a temp at a growing startup in Silicon Valley, where he enjoys breakrooms with hammocks, and teambuilding beer-tastings. Through this, he begins to gel with this fast paced and vibrant workforce that's begun to sweep through San Francisco. For once, he feels confident, even cool.

With such different days and perspectives, Cole and Isaac begin to diverge, much like the city itself. Told across one semester, Tell Us When To Go explores a city amid change, and the people and friendships that are liable to change with it.

Join us for a conversation between DeAndreis and Joseph Bien Kahn, moderated by Skylight's Tyler Austin. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Anna Moschovakis, ”PARTICIPATION” w/ Amina Cain

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 07:57:43 -0800

In the latest novel from Anna Moschovakis, two reading groups, unofficially called Love and Anti-Love, falter amidst political friction and signs of environmental collapse. Participation offers a prescient look at communication in a time of rupture: anonymous participants exchange fantasies and ruminations, and relationships develop and unravel. As the groups consider--or neglect--their syllabi, and connections between members deepen, a mentor disappears, a translator questions his role, a colleague known as "the capitalist" becomes a point of fixation, and "the news reports" filter through in fragments. With incisive prose and surprising structural shifts, Participation forms an alluring vision of community, and a love story like no other. Join us for a conversation between Moschovakis and Amina Cain, moderated by Skylight's Halley Parry. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Colette Sartor, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Cassandra Lane, & Carla Rachel Sameth

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 07:01:00 -0800

Join us for a tremendous conversation and group reading with LA-based writers and poets. Colette Sartor, Gerda Govine Ituarte, Cassandra Lane and Carla Rachel Sameth convene to read their works and discuss their admirations, fears, and perspectives on writing as women. Moderated by Skylight's Tyler Austin. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Danny Ramadan, ”THE FOGHORN ECHOES” w/ Lance Morgan

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 07:00:00 -0800

Hussam and Wassim are teenage boys living in Syria during America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. When a surprise discovery results in tragedy, their lives, and those of their families, are shattered. Wassim promises Hussam his protection, but ten years into the future, he has failed to keep his promise. Wassim is on the streets, seeking shelter from both the city and the civil war storming his country. Meanwhile Hussam, now on the other side of the world, remains haunted by his own ghosts, doing his utmost to drown them out with every vice imaginable.

Split between war-torn Damascus and Vancouver, The Foghorn Echoes is a tragic love story about coping with shared traumatic experience and devastating separation. As Hussam and Wassim come to terms with the past, they begin to realise the secret that haunts them is not the only secret that formed them. Join us for a conversation between author Danny Ramadan and Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Kyra Simone & Emmalea Russo

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 07:23:56 -0800

Kyra Simone, Palace of Rubble A collection of stories composed primarily of single words culled each day from the New York Times, among other news sources. Written under constraint in the tradition of Oulipo, these hybrid works of prose are reconstructions that no longer resemble the original texts, yet draw from the same reservoir of vocabulary, conveying new images and ideas, while preserving some distant ember of the universe from which they were first generated. Emmalea Russo, Confetti By turns cinematic, cosmic, alchemical, and geometric, Confetti uses language to alter the boundaries between film and daily life. Against a backdrop of screens, personal relationships extend into a play of light to create a meditation on disposability and permanence. Confetti soaks up dirt, shimmers, and gets thrown up into the air, landing on the ground in strange piles. Join Simone and Russo as they discuss their work with episode host Halley Perry. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Emerson Whitney, ”HEAVEN” w/ Claire Boyle

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 10:40:26 -0700

At Heaven's center, Emerson Whitney seeks to understand their relationship to their mother and grandmother, those first windows into womanhood and all its consequences. Whitney retraces a roving youth in deeply observant, psychedelic prose-all the while folding in the work of thinkers like Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, and C. Riley Snorton-to engage transness and the breathing, morphing nature of selfhood. Join Whitney for a conversation with Claire Boyle _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: ”IT CAME FROM THE CLOSET”

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 13:55:46 -0700

Horror movies hold a complicated space in the hearts of the queer community: historically misogynist, and often homo- and transphobic, the genre has also been inadvertently feminist and open to subversive readings. Common tropes--such as the circumspect and resilient "final girl," body possession, costumed villains, secret identities, and things that lurk in the closet--spark moments of eerie familiarity and affective connection. Still, viewers often remain tasked with reading themselves into beloved films, seeking out characters and set pieces that speak to, mirror, and parallel the unique ways queerness encounters the world. It Came from the Closet features twenty-five essays by writers speaking to this relationship, through connections both empowering and oppressive. Join us for a round-table conversation between editor Joe Vallese and contributors Carrow Narby, Grant Sutton, Laura Maw, Prince Shakur, Sachiko Ragosta, and Tucker Lieberman. It's the perfect queer spooky-conversation that ranges from each writer's initial foray into horror, who the most queer horror character is, and the minute differences between Basket Case and Brain Damage. This conversation is moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Ama Codjoe, ”BLUEST NUDE” w/ Aleshea Harris & Ashaki Jackson

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 12:33:31 -0700

Ama Codjoe's poems explore how the archetype of the artist complicates the typical expectations of women: be gazed upon, be silent, be selfless, reproduce. Dialoguing with and through art, Bluest Nude considers alternative ways of holding and constructing the self. From Lorna Simpson to Gwendolyn Brooks to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, contemporary and ancestral artists populate Bluest Nude in a choreography of Codjoe's making. Precise and halting, this finely wrought, riveting collection is marked by an acute rendering of highly charged emotional spaces. Purposefully shifting between the role of artist and subject, seer and seen, Codjoe's poems ask what the act of looking does to a person--public looking, private looking, and that most intimate, singular spectacle of looking at one's self. What does it mean to see while being seen? Join us for a conversation with Codjoe and Aleshea Harris & Ashaki Jackson. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Billy-Ray Belcourt, ”A MINOR CHORUS”

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 08:35:18 -0700

In the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel, informed by a series of poignant encounters: a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus, Billy-Ray Belcourt's debut novel, introduces a dazzling new literary voice whose vision and fearlessness shine much-needed light on the realities of Indigenous survival. The event is moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on October 13, 2022. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Andrea Chapela, ”THE VISIBLE UNSEEN” w/ Kelsi Vanada

Thu, 20 Oct 2022 11:27:01 -0700

In powerful, formally inventive essays, The Visible Unseen disrupts the purported cultural divide between arts and science. As both a chemist and an award-winning author, Andrea Chapela zeros in on the literary metaphors buried in the facts and figures of her scientific observations. Through questioning scientific conundrums that lie beyond the limits of human perception, she winds up putting herself under the microscope as well.
While considering the technical definition of glass as a liquid or a solid, Chapela stumbles upon a framework for understanding the in-between-ness of her own life. Turning her focus toward mirrors, she finds metaphors for our cultural obsessions with self-image in the physics and chemistry of reflection. And as she compiles a history of the scientific study of light, she comes to her final conclusion: that the purpose of description--be it scientific or literary--can never be to define reality, only to confirm our perception of it. Lyrical, introspective, and methodical, The Visible Unseen constructs a startling new perspective from which to examine ourselves and the ways we create meaning. Join us for a special bilingual reading and a conversation between Chapela and translator Kelsi Vanada. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Ruha Benjamin, ”VIRAL JUSTICE” w/ Lance Morgan

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 10:37:31 -0700

Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the importance of small, individual actions. Part memoir, part manifesto, Viral Justice is a sweeping and deeply personal exploration of how we can transform society through the choices we make every day. Join us for a conversation between Benjamin and Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: ”Death in the Mouth” Roundtable

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 13:14:00 -0700

Death in the Mouth is a collection of horror stories and art showcasing BIPOC and ethnically marginalized storytellers from around the world. You’ll read stories featuring grotesque manifestations of dread, the enveloping sludge of grief, and the insectoid itch of deep-seated fear. Embodiments of mania and displacements of faith. Harrowing ecstasy and debilitating hope. Transgressions of the body, the spirit, and the community. Unique and terrifying alien mythology from the future. Quiet, creeping absurdities. Weird urban legends from secondary worlds. In this anthology, Sloane Leong and Cassie Hart bring you an incredible range of stories and illustrations that celebrate the voices of those overlooked to show you the terrifying and exquisite scope of what horror can be.

Join us for this round-table conversation with contributors Leong, Hart, Beatrice Iker, K-Ming Chang, and Karin Lowachee.

The event is moderated by Halley, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Saturday, October 1. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Alexandra Lange, ”MEET ME BY THE FOUNTAIN”

Wed, 12 Oct 2022 10:39:00 -0700

Few places have been as nostalgized, or as maligned, as malls. Since their birth in the 1950s, they have loomed large as temples of commerce, the agora of the suburbs. In their prime, they proved a powerful draw for creative thinkers such as Joan Didion, Ray Bradbury, and George Romero, who understood the mall’s appeal as both critics and consumers. Yet today, amid the aftershocks of financial crises and a global pandemic, as well as the rise of online retail, the dystopian husk of an abandoned shopping center has become one of our era’s defining images. Conventional wisdom holds that the mall is dead. But what was the mall, really? And have rumors of its demise been greatly exaggerated?

In her acclaimed The Design of Childhood, Alexandra Lange uncovered the histories of toys, classrooms, and playgrounds. She now turns her sharp eye to another subject we only think we know. She chronicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent. In Lange’s perceptive account, the mall becomes newly strange and rich with contradiction: Malls are environments of both freedom and exclusion--of consumerism, but also of community. Meet Me by the Fountain is a highly entertaining and evocative promenade through the mall’s story of rise, fall, and ongoing reinvention, for readers of any generation. Join us for a conversation between Lange and Skylight's Tyler Austin. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Vanessa A. Bee, ”HOME BOUND” w/ Lydia Kiesling

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 09:45:00 -0700

In Home Bound, a singular and intimate memoir of identity and discovery, Vanessa A. Bee explores the way we define “home” and “belonging” — from her birth in Yaoundé, Cameroon, to her adoption by her aunt and her aunt’s white French husband, to experiencing housing insecurity in Europe and her eventual immigration to the US. After her parents’ divorce, Vanessa traveled with her mother to Lyon and later to London, eventually settling in Reno, Nevada, as a teenager, right around the financial crisis and the collapse of the housing market. At twenty, still a practicing evangelical Christian and newly married, Vanessa applied to and was accepted by Harvard Law School, where she was one of the youngest members of her class. There, she forged a new belief system, divorced her husband, left the church, and, inspired by her tumultuous childhood, pursued a career in economic justice upon graduation.

Vanessa’s adoptive, multiracial, multilingual, multinational, and transcontinental upbringing has caused her to grapple for years with foundational questions such as: What is home? Is it the country we’re born in, the body we possess, or the name we were given and that identifies us? Is it the house we remember most fondly, the social status assigned to us, or the ideology we forge? What defines us and makes us uniquely who we are?

Organized unconventionally around her own dictionary-style definitions of the word “home,” Vanessa tackles these timeless questions thematically and unpacks the many layers that contribute to and condition our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world. Join us for a conversation between Bee and fellow writer, Lydia Kiesling. This episode is hosted by Tyler. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Anne K. Yoder, ”THE ENHANCERS” w/ Amanda Goldblatt

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 11:51:26 -0700

The Enhancers is a polyvocal novel that follows three teenage friends coming of age in a technopharmaceutical society. Hannah is born and raised in a town whose industry revolves around Lumena Corp., maker of the supplement Valedictorian. When Hannah and her friends start taking Valedictorian, or V., a mandated mental augmentation, they start to witness its untoward effects--Celia is institutionalized after an accidental druginduced psychotic break, and not long after Hannah's mental stability begins to slip. When a factory fire halts production, it threatens to throw the entire town into withdrawal. The Enhancers questions who we are when defined by our ability to process information. With mental augmentation as a baseline: how do we know ourselves, and what does it take to break free from this alienation? Join us for a conversation between author Anne K. Yoder and fellow writer/editor for The Enhancers, Amanda Goldblatt. This episode is hosted by Justin Remer. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Live On Crowdcast: Writing Bisexuality w/ Antonia Angress & Jen Winston

Mon, 03 Oct 2022 14:53:27 -0700

It’s Bi Visibility Week, and what better way to celebrate than to join novelist Antonia Angress and memoirist Jen Winston for this very bisexual chat! Topics include writing queer characters in fiction vs. nonfiction, capturing nuance, and reading other works that get bisexuality right. Join us for this conversation with Angress and Winston, moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Monday, September 19. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

Skylit: Beto O’Rourke, ”WE’VE GOT TO TRY”

Wed, 28 Sep 2022 11:01:00 -0700

In We’ve Got To Try, Beto O’Rourke shines a spotlight on the heroic life and work of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon and the west Texas town where he made his stand. The son of an enslaved man, Nixon grew up in the Confederate stronghold of Marshall, Texas before moving to El Paso, becoming a civil rights leader, and helping to win one of the most significant civil and voting rights victories in American history: the defeat of the all-white primary. His fight for the ballot spanned 20 years and twice took him to the U.S. Supreme Court. Join us as O'Rourke discusses Dr. Nixon and the current fight for democracy with Skylight's Lance Morgan, with a cameo appearance by longtime Skylighter and Beto's former bandmate Arlo Klahr, whose music soundtracks this podcast! _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Traci Thomas, ”THE STACKS”

Mon, 26 Sep 2022 10:30:00 -0700

It's a cross-pod extravaganza! Today we welcome Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks, to the Skylight Books Podcast Series. Traci and Skylight's own Lance Morgan talk about everything from Beyoncé to the art of book podcasting. You don't want to miss it! _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Andrew Sean Greer, ”LESS IS LOST”

Wed, 21 Sep 2022 10:56:00 -0700

For Arthur Less, life is going surprisingly well: he is a moderately accomplished novelist in a steady relationship with his partner, Freddy Pelu. But nothing lasts: the death of an old lover and a sudden financial crisis has Less running away from his problems yet again as he accepts a series of literary gigs that send him on a zigzagging adventure across the US.

Less roves across the “Mild Mild West,” through the South and to his mid-Atlantic birthplace, with an ever-changing posse of writerly characters and his trusty duo – a human-like black pug, Dolly, and a rusty camper van nicknamed Rosina. He grows a handlebar mustache, ditches his signature gray suit, and disguises himself in the bolero-and-cowboy-hat costume of a true “Unitedstatesian”... with varying levels of success, as he continues to be mistaken for either a Dutchman, the wrong writer, or, worst of all, a “bad gay.”

We cannot, however, escape ourselves—even across deserts, bayous, and coastlines. From his estranged father and strained relationship with Freddy, to the reckoning he experiences in confronting his privilege, Arthur Less must eventually face his personal demons. With all of the irrepressible wit and musicality that made Less a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning, must-read breakout book, Less Is Lost is a profound and joyous novel about the enigma of life in America, the riddle of love, and the stories we tell along the way. Join us for a wonderful conversation between award-winning author Andrew Sean Greer and Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Skylit: Amy Fusselman, ”THE MEAN$” w/ Sarah Afkami

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 09:03:15 -0700

Shelly Means, a wealthy stay-at-home mom and disgraced former PTA president, is poised to get the one thing in life she really wants: a beach house in the Hamptons. Who would have guessed that Shelly, the product of frugal Midwesterners, or her husband George, an unrepentant thrift shopper, would ever be living among such swells? But Shelly believes it’s possible. It might be a very small house, and it might be in the least-fancy part of the Hamptons. But Shelly has a vision board, an architect, and a plan.

But what should be a simple real estate transaction quickly goes awry as Shelly’s new neighbors disapprove of her proposed shipping container house at the same time that George’s lucrative work as a VoiceOver artist dries up. But Shelly is dogged. She knows how to go into beast mode. But will it ever be enough to realize her beach house dreams?

Join us for a wonderful conversation between The Mean$ author Amy Fusselman and Sarah Afkami. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Skylit: Sandra Cisneros, ”WOMAN WITHOUT SHAME” w/ Elisa Garcia

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 08:46:17 -0700

It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart. Join us for a wonderful conversation about womanhood, writing, and defying patriarchal expectations between Cisneros and Skylight's own Elisa Garcia. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Meghan Gilliss, ”LUNGFISH” w/ Kendall Storey

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:58:55 -0700

Tuck is slow to understand the circumstances that have driven her family to an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine, the former home of her deceased grandmother where she once spent her childhood summers. Squatting there now, she must care for her spirited young daughter and scrape together enough money to leave before winter arrives—or before they are found out.

Relying on the island for sustenance and answers—bladderwrack, rosehips, tenacious little green crabs; smells held by the damp walls of the house, field guides and religious texts, a failed invention left behind by her missing father—Tuck lives moment-by-moment through the absurdity, beauty, paranoia, and hunger that shoots through her life, as her husband struggles to detox.

Exquisitely written and formally daring, Lungfish tells the story of a woman grappling through the lies she has been told—and those she has told herself—to arrive at the truth of who she is and where she must go. Meghan Gilliss’s debut is a brilliant and heartbreaking novel about addiction, doubt, marriage, motherhood, and learning to see in the dark. Join us for a conversation between Gilliss and Kendall Storey. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Ramzi Fawaz, ”QUEER FORMS” w/ Ryan Hatch

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 08:39:33 -0700

In Queer Forms, Ramzi Fawaz explores how the central values of 1970s movements for women's and gay liberation--including consciousness-raising, separatism, and coming out of the closet--were translated into a range of American popular culture forms. Throughout this period, feminist and gay activists fought social and political battles to expand, transform, or wholly explode definitions of so-called "normal" gender and sexuality. In doing so, they inspired artists, writers, and filmmakers to invent new ways of formally representing, or giving shape to, non-normative genders and sexualities. This included placing women, queers, and gender outlaws of all stripes into exhilarating new environments--from the streets of an increasingly gay San Francisco to a post-apocalyptic commune, from an Upper East Side New York City apartment to an all-female version of Earth--and finding new ways to formally render queer genders and sexualities by articulating them to figures, outlines, or icons that could be imagined in the mind's eye and interpreted by diverse publics. Join us for a conversation between Fawaz and Ryan Hatch. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Courtney DeNelle, ”IT’S NOT NOTHING”

Mon, 05 Sep 2022 09:29:00 -0700

Rosemary Candwell’s past has exploded into her present. Down-and-out and deteriorating, she drifts from anonymous beds and bars in Providence, to a homeless shelter hidden among the hedge-rowed avenues of Newport, and through the revolving door of service jobs and quick-fix psychiatric care, always grasping for hope, for a solution. She’s desperate to readjust back into a family and a world that has deemed her a crazy bitch living a choice they believe she could simply un-choose at any time. She endures flashbacks and panic attacks, migraines and nightmares. She can’t sleep or she sleeps for days; she lashes out at anyone and everyone, especially herself. She abuses over-the-counter cold medicine and guzzles down anything caffeinated just to feel less alone. What if her family is right? What if she is truly broken beyond repair? Drawn from the author’s experience of homelessness and trauma recovery, Courtney DeNelle's It’s Not Nothing is a collage of small moments, biting jokes, intrusive memories, and quiet epiphanies meant to reveal a greater truth: Resilience never looks the way we expect it to look. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Mimi Zhu, ”BE NOT AFRAID OF LOVE” w/ Jonny Sun

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 11:47:00 -0700

In their early twenties, Mimi Zhu was a survivor of intimate-partner abuse. This left them broken, in search of healing and ways to re-learn love. This work is a testament to the strength and adaptability all humans possess, a tribute to love. Be Not Afraid of Love explores the intersections of love and fear in self-esteem, friendship, family dynamics, and romantic relationships, and extends out to its effects on society and the greater political realm. In sharing their own intimate encounters with oppression, healing, joy, and community, Mimi invites readers to reflect deeply on their own experiences as well, with the intention of acting as a guide to undoing the hurt or uncertainty within them. In this heartrending and revolutionary book, Mimi reminds us, be not afraid of love. Join us for this conversation with Zhu and Jonny Sun, moderated by Halley Perry, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Wednesday, August 17. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Nona Willis Aronowitz, ”BAD SEX”

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 09:13:41 -0700

At thirty-two years old, everything in Nona Willis Aronowitz’s life, and in America, was in disarray. Her marriage was falling apart. Her nuclear family was slipping away. Her heart and libido were both in overdrive. Embroiled in an era of fear, reckoning, and reimagining, her assumptions of what “sexual liberation” meant were suddenly up for debate.

In the thick of personal and political turmoil, Nona turned to the words of history’s sexual revolutionaries—including her late mother, early radical pro-sex feminist Ellen Willis. At a time when sex has never been more accepted and feminism has never been more mainstream, Nona asked herself: What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy?

Nona’s attempt to find the answer places her search for authentic intimacy alongside her family history and other stories stretching back nearly two hundred years. Stories of ambivalent wives and unchill sluts, free lovers and radical lesbians, sensitive men and woke misogynists, women who risk everything for sex—who buy sex, reject sex, have bad sex and good sex. The result is a brave, bold, and vulnerable exploration of what sexual freedom can mean. Bad Sex is Nona’s own journey to sexual satisfaction and romantic happiness, which not only lays bare the triumphs and flaws of contemporary feminism but also shines a light on universal questions of desire. Join us for this conversation with Aronowitz, moderated by Halley Perry, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Wednesday, August 17. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Sophia Benoit, ”WELL, THIS IS EXHAUSTING”

Mon, 22 Aug 2022 05:05:00 -0700

Like so many women, Sophia Benoit spent her formative years struggling to do the “right” thing—to make others comfortable, to take minimal and calculated risks, to live up to society’s expectations—only to realize that there was so little payoff to this tiresome balancing act. Tired of trying so hard, Sophia finally let go of the crushing pressure to be perfect.

She navigates the highs and lows of the dating world (high: being a beta tester for Bumble; low: hastily shaving her legs before a hotel hookup and getting blood all over the sheets), and walks the line between being a “chill” girl and making sure her boyfriend’s nonchalance about altitude sickness doesn’t get him killed. She learns what it means to be a feminist, how to embrace her own voice, and when to listen to women who have been through more and have been doing the work longer.

With topics ranging from how to be the life of the party (even when you have crippling anxiety), to an ill-fated consultation with a dietician who deemed Sophia’s overindulgence in ketchup a serious health risk, to a masterful argument for why no one should judge you for having an encyclopedic knowledge of reality TV, Well, This Is Exhausting is not only “one of the funniest books you’ll read this year, but it’s also one of the most important.” Join us for a college bestie catch-up episode between Benoit and Skylight's Tyler Austin. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Brenda Lozano, ”WITCHES”

Wed, 17 Aug 2022 06:18:00 -0700

Paloma is dead. But before she was murdered, before she was even Paloma, she was a traditional healer named Gaspar. Before she was murdered, she taught her cousin Feliciana the secrets of the ceremonies known as veladas, and about the Language and the Book that unlock their secrets.

Sent to report on Paloma’s murder, Zoe meets Feliciana in the mountain village of San Felipe. There, the two women’s lives twist around each other in a danse macabre. Feliciana tells Zoe the story of her struggle to become an accepted healer in her community, and Zoe begins to understand the hidden history of her own experience as a woman, finding her way in a hostile environment shaped by and for men.

Weaving together two parallel narratives that mirror and refract one another, this extraordinary novel envisions the healer as storyteller and the writer as healer, and offers a generous and nuanced understanding of a world that can be at turns violent and exultant, cruel and full of hope. Join us for a lovely conversation between Witches author Brenda Lozano and Skylight's Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Bud Smith, ”TEENAGER”

Tue, 16 Aug 2022 06:23:00 -0700

Kody Rawlee Green is stuck in juvie. Tella “Teal Cartwheels” Carticelli is packing her bags for Rome--on the orders of her parents, who want her as far from Kody as possible. But teenage love is too strong a force for the obstacles of reality. And the highway beckons.

Leaving their abusive pasts behind them in Jersey, Kody and Teal set off on a cross-country road trip equal parts self-destruction and self-discovery, making their way, one stolen car at a time, toward bigger, wider, bluer skies. Along the road, of course, there’s time to stop at Graceland, classic diners, a fairgrounds that smells of “pony shit and kettle corn," and time for run-ins with outsize personalities like the reincarnated Grand Canyon tour guide Dead Bob and the spurious Montana rancher Bill Gold. On their heels, all the while, is Teal’s brother, Neil Carticelli, who’s abandoned his post in the navy to rescue the sister he left behind. But does she really need saving?

These all too American tropes find new expression in Bud Smith’s own freewheeling prose—and in Rae Buleri’s original illustrations—filling Teenager with humor, poetry, and a joy that’s palpable in every unforgettable sentence. Join us for a conversation between Smith and Skylight's Mike Jeffrey as they discuss artistic comparisons and what it's like to write a novel between shifts on a construction site. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Ben Marra, David Birke, & Nicholas McCarthy, ”DISCIPLES”

Fri, 12 Aug 2022 05:27:00 -0700

Marin County, 1978. In this graphic novel, teens Clara and Wendy get high one night alone at home. Before the night ends, they've disappeared — until five months later, when Clara is found, disheveled, but alive, in Death Valley National Park.

From Clara's mysterious reappearance in Death Valley, Disciplescuts to the present day, where stories of "The California Cult" and its enigmatic — and never-caught — leader, Billy Joe, are as much a part of the popular culture as the Manson Family. Clara, the lone survivor of the cult, has adopted a new identity to protect her and her daughter, Wren. And she mostly does, until one night when the past and present horrifically collide.

Disciples is a seamless collaboration between cartoonist Ben Marra and filmmakers David Birke and Nicholas McCarthy. Birke and McCarthy's script celebrates and reinvents a cult film ethos. It combines the best of 1970s era eerie-thriller-terror movies in a fresh and revelatory way, similar to how Marra has continued/reinvented the work of Abel Ferrara and George Cosmatos in graphic novels like Night Business.

Join us for this conversation between the authors, moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Tuesday, May 31. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Megan Giddings, ”THE WOMEN COULD FLY”

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 07:15:00 -0700

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behavior raises suspicions and a woman—especially a Black woman—can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother’s disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30—or enroll in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she’s offered the opportunity to honor one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.

In this powerful and timely novel, Megan Giddings explores the limits women face—and the powers they have to transgress and transcend them.

Join us for a wonderful conversation between Giddings and Skylight's Nat Freeman about Giddings' new novel, The Women Could Fly.

_______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Kaitlyn Tiffany, ”EVERYTHING I NEED I GET FROM YOU”

Tue, 09 Aug 2022 06:20:00 -0700

In Everything I Need I Get from You, Kaitlyn Tiffany, a staff writer at The Atlantic and a superfan herself, guides us through the online world of fans, stans, and boybands. Along the way we meet girls who damage their lungs from screaming too loud, fans rallying together to manipulate chart numbers using complex digital subversion, and an underworld of inside jokes and shared memories surrounding band members' allergies, internet typos, and hairstyles. In the process, Tiffany makes a convincing, and often moving, argument that fangirls, in their ingenuity and collaboration, created the social internet we know today. “Before most people were using the internet for anything,” Tiffany writes, “fans were using it for everything.” Join us for a conversation between Tiffany and Skylight's Mike Jeffrey about the Tumblr-fication of conspiracy theories, morality wars in celebrity gossip, and Kaitlyn's journey through One Direction standom. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Taymour Soomro, ”OTHER NAMES FOR LOVE” w/ Jonathan Parks-Ramage

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 08:59:11 -0700

At age sixteen, Fahad hopes to spend the summer with his mother in London. His father, Rafik, has other plans: hauling his son to Abad, the family’s feudal estate in upcountry, Pakistan. Rafik wants to toughen up his sensitive boy, to teach him about power, duty, family—to make him a man. He enlists Ali, a local teenager, in this project, hoping his presence will prove instructive.

Instead, over the course of one hot, indolent season, attraction blooms between the two boys, and Fahad finds himself seduced by the wildness of the land and its inhabitants: the people, who revere and revile his father in turn; cousin Mousey, who lives alone with a man he calls his manager; and most of all, Ali, who threatens to unearth all that is hidden.

Decades later, Fahad is living abroad when he receives a call from his mother summoning him home. His return will force him to face the past. Taymour Soomro’s Other Names for Love is a tale of masculinity, inheritance, and desire set against the backdrop of a country’s troubled history, told with uncommon urgency and beauty. Join us for this conversation between Soomro and Jonathan Parks-Ramage, moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Wednesday, August 3. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Benjamin Rosenbaum, ”THE UNRAVELING” w/ Ted Chiang

Wed, 03 Aug 2022 12:29:40 -0700

In the far-off future, Fift is a Staid-gendered youth–working towards logic and thoughtfulness–just trying to figure out zir life in the bustling, but rigid social system of Fullbelly. And as if mastering zir three bodies and making zir twelve parents proud weren’t enough to handle, Fift’s growing relationship with Shria, an at-times emotional and passionate Vail-gendered bioengineer, is a controversy waiting to happen.

When Fift and Shria wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle that sparks off a multilayered Unraveling of society, Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . all while zir personal crises suddenly take on global significance. What’s a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching?

In his intricate and thoughtful debut novel, The Unraveling, Benjamin Rosenbaum brings warmth, heart, and humor to this story of growing up in the distant future, interrogates exactly who a utopia is for, and how social structures only change when everyone has a voice. Like Chana Porter’s The Seep and Monica Byrne’s The Actual Star, Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Unraveling is the latest in a line of science fiction that challenges gender, society, and culture, while showcasing an inclusive, expansive, and creative vision of what the future can be. Join us for this conversation between author Rosenbaum and Ted Chiang, moderated by Halley Perry, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Thursday, July 26. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: XC Atkins, ”DESPERADO DAYS” w/ Chris L. Terry

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 10:29:00 -0700

Ranging from Austin to New Orleans, Richmond to Philly, the interrelated stories of THE DESPERADO DAYS lay bare the gritty lives of working-class hustlers existing at the intersection of multiple worlds and social castes. We find Levy, Fenton, Eldridge, and other young people searching for purpose and truth among workaday lives and the instabilities of self-indulgence, love, violence, and race, fortifying themselves even as they watch others around them flame out and fade. Utterly original and pulsing with life, THE DESPERADO DAYS is an examination of perseverance, amity, and grace at the edges of American late capitalism. Join us for a conversation between author XC Atkins and Chris L. Terry. The conversation is moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Eloise Moran, ”THE LADY DI BOOK” w/ Catherine Collier

Fri, 29 Jul 2022 10:07:00 -0700

From the pink gingham pants and pastel-yellow overalls of a sacrificial lamb, to the sexy Versace revenge dresses, power suits, and bicycle shorts of a free woman, British fashion journalist Eloise Moran has studied thousands of pictures of Princess Diana. She soon discovered that behind each outfit lay a carefully crafted strategy: What Lady Di couldn’t express verbally, she expressed through her clothes.

Diana’s most show-stopping—and poignant—outfits are all here in The Lady Di Look Book, incisively decoded. Moran sees things no one has before: Why, for example, did Diana have a rotating collection of message sweatshirts? Was she mad for plaid, or did the tartan have a deeper meaning? What about her love of costume jewelry on top of the tiaras and oval sapphire engagement ring? With new interviews from some of the people who dressed Diana, Moran’s book is both a record of what Diana wore and why she wore it—and why we are still obsessed with Lady Di. Join us for a conversation between Moran and Catherine Collier. The conversation is moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Iman Hariri-Kia, ”A HUNDRED OTHER GIRLS” w/ Gabrielle Korn

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 10:38:00 -0700

Noora's life is a little off track. She's an aspiring writer and amateur blogger in New York—which is a nice way of saying that she tutors rich Upper East Side kids and is currently crashing on her sister's couch. But that's okay. Noora has Leila, who has always been her rock, and now she has another major influence to lean on: Vinyl magazine. The pages of Vinyl practically raised Noora, teaching her everything from how to properly insert a tampon to which political ideology she subscribes to.

So when she lands a highly coveted job as assistant to Loretta James, Vinyl's iconic editor-in-chief, Noora can't believe her luck. Her only dream is to write for Vinyl, and now with her foot firmly in the door and the Loretta James as her mentor, Noora is finally on the right path... or so she thinks.

Loretta is an unhinged nightmare, insecure and desperate to remain relevant in an evolving media landscape she doesn't understand. Noora's phone buzzes constantly with Loretta's bizarre demands, particularly with tasks Loretta hopes will undermine the success of Vinyl's wunderkind digital director Jade Aki. The reality of Noora's job is nothing like she expected, and a misguided crush on the hot IT guy only threatens to complicate things even more. But as Loretta and the old-school print team enter into a turf war with Jade and the woke-for-the-wrong-reasons digital team, Noora soon finds herself caught in the middle. And with her dream job on the line, she'll need to either choose a side or form her own.

Clever, incisive, and thoroughly fun, A Hundred Other Girls is an insider's take on the changing media industry, an ode to sisterhood, and a profound exploration of what it means to chase your dreams.

Author Iman Hariri-Kia is in conversation with Gabrielle Korn. The conversation is moderated by Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Alison B. Hart, ”THE WORK WIFE” w/ Julia Phillips

Mon, 25 Jul 2022 11:28:00 -0700

Zanne Klein never planned to be a personal assistant to Hollywood royalty Ted and Holly Stabler. But a decade in at thirty-eight, that's exactly how she spends her days, earning six figures to make sure the movie mogul and his family have everything they could ever dream of and more.

However, today is no ordinary day at the Stabler estate. Tonight, everyone who's anyone will be there for the Hollywood event of the season, and if the party's a success, that chief of staff job Zanne's been chasing may soon be hers. Which means she can buy a house, give her girlfriend the life she deserves, pay off her student loans.

Nothing's going to get in Zanne's way--not disgruntled staff, not a nosy reporter, not even a runaway hostess. But when Ted's former business partner, Phoebe Lee, unexpectedly shows up right before go time, Zanne suddenly has a catastrophe unfolding before her--one with explosive consequences. As the truth comes out and Zanne realizes how deeply entangled she's become in the Stablers' world, she must decide if the sacrifices she's made for the job are worth the moral price she has to pay.

Told over the course of a single day and from three fierce perspectives, The Work Wife is a richly observed novel about female ambition, complicity, privilege and what happens when the brightest of stars aren't allowed to shine. Join us for this conversation between author Alison B. Hart and Julia Phillips, moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Thursday, July 21. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Madhushree Ghosh, ”KHABAAR” w/ Guy Branum

Fri, 22 Jul 2022 11:31:00 -0700

Khabaar is a food memoir and personal narrative that braids the global journeys of South Asian food through immigration, migration, and indenture. Focusing on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, the book questions what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country? These questions are integral to the author’s own immigrant journey to America as a daughter of Indian refugees (from what’s now Bangladesh to India during the 1947 Partition of India); as a woman of color in science; as a woman who left an abusive marriage; and as a woman who keeps her parents’ memory alive through her Bengali food. Author Madhushree Ghosh is in conversation with Guy Branum. The conversation is moderated by Mike Jeffries. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Elizabeth Kilcoyne, ”WAKE THE BONES”

Tue, 19 Jul 2022 14:10:14 -0700

The sleepy little farm that Laurel Early grew up on has awakened. The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away.

After dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed.

Elizabeth Kilcoyne’s Wake the Bones is a dark, atmospheric debut about the complicated feelings that arise when the place you call home becomes hostile. Kilcoyne is in conversation with Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

CROWDCAST: Jamila Rowser & Robyn Smith, ”WASH DAY DIARIES”

Fri, 15 Jul 2022 07:49:41 -0700

Wash Day Diaries tells the story of four best friends—Kim, Tanisha, Davene, and Cookie—through five connected short story comics that follow these young women through the ups and downs of their daily lives in the Bronx.

The book takes its title from the wash day experience shared by Black women everywhere of setting aside all plans and responsibilities for a full day of washing, conditioning, and nourishing their hair. Each short story uses hair routines as a window into these four characters' everyday lives and how they care for each other.

Jamila Rowser and Robyn Smith originally kickstarted their critically acclaimed, award-winning slice of life mini comic, Wash Day, inspired by Rowser's own wash day ritual and their shared desire to see more comics featuring the daily lived experiences of young Black women. Wash Day Diaries includes an updated, full color version of this original comic—which follows Kim, a 26-year-old woman living in the Bronx—as the book's first chapter and expands into a graphic novel with short stories about these vibrant and relatable new characters. Moderated by Nat Freeman, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on Tuesday, July 12. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

Lit Angeles, Ep. 4: ”THE WHITE BOY SHUFFLE” w/ Steph Cha

Wed, 13 Jul 2022 14:32:41 -0700

In the season finale of LIT ANGELES, Emily and Alena tackle Paul Beatty's classic novel The White Boy Shuffle. They discuss Beatty's poetry background and the book's consistent dark comedy, then invite esteemed novelist Steph Cha for further discussion. Cha talks about the importance of LA in the 90s for people of color, how difficult it is for POC writers to pull off something as weird as White Boy Shuffle, and her own personal connection to the novel and Skylight Books itself. You're not going to want to miss this season-capper! _______________________________________________

Produced by Emily VanKoughnett, Alena Saunders & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Ashley Hutson, ”ONE’S COMPANY” w/ Sara Levine

Mon, 11 Jul 2022 12:40:00 -0700

Bonnie Lincoln just wants to be left alone. To come home from work, shut out the voice that reminds her of some devastating losses, and unwind in front of the nostalgic, golden glow of her favorite TV show, Three’s Company.

When Bonnie wins the lottery, a more grandiose vision—to completely shuck off her own troublesome identity—takes shape. She plans a drastic move to an isolated mountain retreat where she can re-create the iconic apartment set of Three’s Company and slip into the lives of its main characters: no-nonsense Janet Wood, pleasantly airheaded Chrissy Snow, and confident Jack Tripper. While her best friend, Krystal, tries to drag her back to her old life, Bonnie is determined to transcend pain, trauma, and the baggage of her past by immersing herself in the ultimate binge-watch.

Join us for this conversation between One's Company author Ashley Hutson and fellow writer Sara Levine, recorded live on our Crowdcast on June 16, 2022. Moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Imogen Binnie, ”NEVADA” w/ Michelle Tea & Brontez Purnell

Fri, 08 Jul 2022 13:11:58 -0700

Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She’s in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn’t inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she’s trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James’s savior—or his downfall.

One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist—and back in print featuring a new afterword by the author—Nevada is the great American road novel flipped on its head for a new generation. Join us for this conversation between Binnie and fellow writers Michelle Tea and Brontez Purnell, recorded live on our Crowdcast on June 15, 2022. Moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Paul Tremblay, ”THE PALLBEARERS CLUB”

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 15:29:37 -0700

What if the coolest girl you’ve ever met decided to be your friend?

Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.

Okay, that part was a little weird.

So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things – terrifying things – that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?

Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship.

Author Paul Tremblay is in conversation with Halley Perry. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Becky Chambers, ”A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY”

Tue, 05 Jul 2022 14:47:25 -0700

After touring the rural areas of Panga, Sibling Dex (a Tea Monk of some renown) and Mosscap (a robot sent on a quest to determine what humanity really needs) turn their attention to the villages and cities of the little moon they call home.

They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.

Becky Chambers's new Monk & Robot series continues to ask: in a world where people have what they want, does having more even matter? Chambers discusses her new entry in the series, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, with Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Ross Melnick, ”HOLLYWOOD’S EMBASSIES”

Fri, 01 Jul 2022 12:04:22 -0700

Beginning in the 1920s, audiences around the globe were seduced not only by Hollywood films but also by lavish movie theaters that were owned and operated by the major American film companies. These theaters aimed to provide a quintessentially "American" experience. Outfitted with American technology and accoutrements, they allowed local audiences to watch American films in an American-owned cinema in a distinctly American way.

In Hollywood's Embassies, a history that stretches from Buenos Aires and Tokyo to Johannesburg and Cairo, Ross Melnick considers these movie houses as cultural embassies. He examines how the exhibition of Hollywood films became a constant flow of political and consumerist messaging, selling American ideas, products, and power, especially during fractious eras. Melnick demonstrates that while Hollywood's marketing of luxury and consumption often struck a chord with local audiences, it was also frequently tone-deaf to new social, cultural, racial, and political movements. He argues that the story of Hollywood's global cinemas is not a simple narrative of cultural and industrial indoctrination and colonization. Instead, it is one of negotiation, booms and busts, successes and failures, adoptions and rejections, and a precursor to later conflicts over the spread of American consumer culture. A truly global account, Hollywood's Embassies shows how the entanglement of worldwide movie theaters with American empire offers a new way of understanding film history and the history of U.S. soft power. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIT ANGELES, Ep. 3: ”THE REVOLT OF THE COCKROACH PEOPLE” w/ Sesshu Foster & Arturo Romo

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 15:00:00 -0700

Emily and Alena take a break from the glitz of Hollywood to explore Oscar Zeta Acosta's Los Angeles in The Revolt of the Cockroach People. Acosta, a friend and contemporary of Hunter S. Thompson, takes us behind the front lines of the militant Chicano movement of the late sixties and early seventies, a movement he served both in the courtroom and on the barricades. Emily and Alena discuss the Chicano/Anglo conflict and have an illuminating conversation with Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernesto Romo, authors of Eladatl: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, about Acosta's mysterious disappearance and lasting legacy. _______________________________________________

Produced by Emily VanKoughnett, Alena Saunders & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Sina Grace, ”ROCKSTAR & SOFTBOY”

Sun, 26 Jun 2022 05:31:00 -0700

Sina Grace returns to writing and drawing for the first time in five years to deliver a frenzied story about two best friends and their antics in Hollyweird, CA. Rockstar plans the greatest house party ever as a means of lifting roommate Softboy's spirits, but things take a gnarly turn when the dreaded PARTY ANIMAL shows up to make a mess of things... and dredge up long held secrets between two BFFs who seemingly share everything Join us for this conversation with Grace on Rockstar & Softboy, hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Angeline Jackson, ”FUNNY GYAL”

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 12:30:00 -0700

When Angeline Jackson was a child, she wondered if there was something wrong with her for wanting to kiss the other girls. But as her sexuality blossomed in her teens, she knew she wouldn't "grow out of it" and that her attraction to girls wasn't against God. In fact, she discovered that same-sex relationships were depicted in the Bible, which she read devoutly, even if the tight-knit evangelical Christian community she grew up in believed any sexual relationship outside of marriage between a man and woman was a sin, and her society, Jamaica, criminalized homosexual sex.

Angeline's story begins with her traumatic experience of "corrective rape" when she is lured by an online predator, then traces her childhood through her sexual and spiritual awakening as a teen -- falling in love, breaking up, coming out, and then being forced into conversion therapy.

Sometimes dark, always threadbare and honest, Funny Gyal chronicles how Angeline's faith deepens as a teenager, despite her parents' conservative values and the strict Christian Jamaican society in which she lives, giving her the courage to challenge gender violence, rape culture, and oppression. Join us for this conversation, hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Lit Angeles, Ep. 2: ”L.A. WOMAN” w/ Molly Lambert

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:52:18 -0700

For the second episode of Lit Angeles, Emily and Alena dive deep into the the City of Angels painted by Eve Babitz in her 1982 classic L.A. Woman. They discuss what makes the novel so special from a stylistic standpoint. Later, they're joined by Molly Lambert, writer and host of the new podcast HeidiWorld, to talk how writing about L.A.'s party culture from a woman's perspective makes a huge difference, the cultural peculiarities of Los Angeles, and most importantly: what is an L.A. Woman??? _______________________________________________

Produced by Emily VanKoughnett, Alena Saunders & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Paul Tran, ”ALL THE FLOWERS KNEELING” w/ Hieu Minh Nguyen & Fatimah Asghar

Wed, 15 Jun 2022 13:23:50 -0700

Visceral and astonishing, Paul Tran's debut poetry collection All the Flowers Kneeling investigates intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. imperialism in order to radically alter our understanding of freedom, power, and control. In poems of desire, gender, bodies, legacies, and imagined futures, Tran’s poems elucidate the complex and harrowing processes of reckoning and recovery, enhanced by innovative poetic forms that mirror the nonlinear emotional and psychological experiences of trauma survivors. At once grand and intimate, commanding and deeply vulnerable, All the Flowers Kneeling revels in rediscovering and reconfiguring the self, and ultimately becomes an essential testament to the human capacity for resilience, endurance, and love. Join us for this conversation between Tran and fellow poets Hieu Minh Nguyen and Fatimah Asghar, recorded live on our Crowdcast on February 24, 2022. Moderated by Halley Parry. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Robbie Couch, ”BLAINE FOR THE WIN” w/ Margot Wood

Tue, 14 Jun 2022 10:57:47 -0700

In Blaine for the Win, high school junior Blaine Bowers has it all—the perfect boyfriend, a pretty sweet gig as a muralist for local Windy City businesses, a loving family, and awesome, talented friends. And he is absolutely, 100% positive that aforementioned perfect boyfriend—senior student council president and Mr. Popular of Wicker West High School, Joey—is going to invite Blaine to spend spring break with his family in beautiful, sunny Cabo San Lucas.

Except Joey breaks up with him instead. In public. On their one-year anniversary.

Because, according to Joey, Blaine is too goofy, too flighty, too…unserious. And if Joey wants to go far in life, he needs to start dating more serious guys. Guys like Zach Chesterton.

Determined to prove that Blaine can be what Joey wants, Blaine decides to enter the running to become his successor (and beat out Joey’s new boyfriend, Zach) as senior student council president.

But is he willing to sacrifice everything he loves about himself to do it? Join us for this conversation between Robbie Couch and Margot Wood, recorded live on our Crowdcast on April 13, 2022. Moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

THE HANDSELL: Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni’s Room

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 13:05:00 -0700

Join us for a conversation with Will Clark and Katharine Milon, co-managers of Philly AIDS Thrift at Giovanni's Room, the self-described "Oldest and Very Best LGBTQ and Feminist Bookstore in the Country." Hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

ARTS ANNEX SPOTLIGHT: Liam Campbell, ”ELSKA MAGAZINE”

Wed, 08 Jun 2022 11:02:00 -0700

In this special edition of our Arts Annex series, we speak to Elska Magazine's editor and chief photographer, Liam Campbell, about working with his subjects and what it means to run a magazine by and for gay men. Elska Magazine is a photography, culture and travel publication featuring images and stories from local men, giving a glimpse at the real lives of gay men. Hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Lit Angeles, Ep. 1: ”THE BIG SLEEP” w/ Jonathan Ames

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 13:43:00 -0700

Join us for a brand new series in the Skylight arsenal, Lit Angeles! In this soon-to-be-regular segment, our hosts Emily VanKoughnett and Alena Saunders take a deep dive into Angeleno's rich literary history, one book at a time, exploring select titles that they believe illustrate the City of Angels with depth and texture.

In the first episode, they tackle Raymond Chandler's proto-noir detective classic, The Big Sleep, in particular Chandler's timeless anti-authoritarian streak and his all-time protagonist, Phillip Marlowe. They're joined by esteemed author and screenwriter Jonathan Ames (A Man Named Doll, You Were Never Really Here), who talks about his connection to Chandler's work and the future of the noir tradition.

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Produced by Emily VanKoughnett, Alena Saunders & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: H. Melt, ”THERE ARE TRANS PEOPLE HERE” w/ Kemi Alabi

Fri, 03 Jun 2022 05:55:00 -0700

There are trans people here in the past, the present, and the future. H. Melt's writing centers the deep care, love, and joy within trans communities. This poetry collection describes moments of resistance in queer and trans history as catalysts for movements today. It honors trans ancestors and contemporary activists, artists, and writers fighting for trans liberation. There Are Trans People Here is a testament to the healing power of community and the beauty of trans people, history, and culture. Join us for this conversation between Melt and Against Heaven author Kemi Alabi, recorded live on our Crowdcast on April 8, 2022. Moderated by Yves Nuno. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Tommy Pico

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 06:22:00 -0700

Join us for an amazing conversation with poet, podcaster, and TV writer Tommy Pico, as he discusses his career and the delineating differences between his different creative pursuits. Hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Sequoia Maner, ”33 1/3 KENDRICK LAMAR’S TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY”

Tue, 31 May 2022 06:42:00 -0700

Breaking the global record for streams in a single day, nearly 10 million people around the world tuned in to hear Kendrick Lamar's sophomore album in the hours after its release. To Pimp a Butterfly was widely hailed as an instant classic, garnering laudatory album reviews, many awards, and even a canonized place in Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois archive. Why did this strangely compelling record stimulate the emotions and imaginations of listeners?
This book takes a deep dive into the sounds, images, and lyrics of To Pimp a Butterfly to suggest that Kendrick appeals to the psyche of a nation in crisis and embraces the development of a radical political conscience. Kendrick breathes fresh life into the Black musical protest tradition and cultivates a platform for loving resistance. Combining funk, jazz, and spoken word, To Pimp a Butterfly's expansive sonic and lyrical geography brings a high level of innovation to rap music. More importantly, Kendrick's introspective and philosophical songs compel us to believe in a future where, perhaps, we gon' be alright. Join us for this conversation with author Sequoia Maner, hosted by Lance Morgan.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: María Sánchez, ”LAND OF WOMEN” w/ Curtis Bauer

Fri, 27 May 2022 06:10:00 -0700

María Sánchez is obsessed with what she cannot see. As a field veterinarian following in the footsteps of generations before her, she travels the countryside of Spain bearing witness to a life eroding before her eyes--words, practices, and people slipping away because of depopulation, exploitation of natural resources, inadequate environmental policies, and development encroaching on farmland and villages. Sánchez, the first woman in her family to dedicate herself to what has traditionally been a male-dominated profession, rebuffs the bucolic narrative of rural life often written by--and for consumption by--people in cities, describing the multilayered social complexity of people who are proud, resilient, and often misunderstood.

Sánchez interweaves family stories of three generations with reflections on science and literature. She focuses especially on the often dismissed and undervalued generations of women who have forgone education and independence to work the land and tend to family. In doing so, she asks difficult questions about gender equity and labor. Part memoir and part rural feminist manifesto, Land of Women acknowledges the sacrifices of Sánchez's female ancestors who enabled her to become the woman she is.

Join us for this conversation between Sánchez and translator Curtis Bauer, recorded live on our Crowdcast on May 15, 2022. Moderated by Halley. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Angel Dominguez, ”DESGRACIADO” w/ Sesshu Foster

Wed, 25 May 2022 09:30:00 -0700

In Desgraciado, Angel Dominguez navigates language and memory to illuminate the ongoing traumas of misremembered and missing histories and their lasting impacts. Dominguez unravels a critical and tender language of lived experience in letters addressed to their ancestral oppressor, Diego de Landa, (a Spanish friar who attempted to destroy the written Maya language in Mani Yucat n, on July 12th 1562), to articulate an old rage, dreaming of a futurity beyond the wreckage and ruin of the colonial imaginary. This collection doesn't seek to heal the incurable wound of colonization so much as attempt to re-articulate a language towards recuperation. Join us for this conversation between Dominguez and Sesshu Foster, recorded live on our Crowdcast on March 28, 2022. Moderated by Nat Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Naheed Phiroze Patel, ”MIRROR MADE OF RAIN” w/ Vikram Chandra

Mon, 23 May 2022 09:45:00 -0700

Despite an embarrassing, alcoholic mother, Noomi Wadia is loathe to change her own hard-partying ways simply because it's what's expected in Kamalpur high society. As her peers begin to marry and her social obligations become more fraught, she finds herself under constant scrutiny at summer parties of the city's upper crust.

With her options in her hometown growing increasingly limited, Noomi leaves for Mumbai and quickly becomes a successful journalist. There she falls in love with Veer, who appreciates her for exactly who she is. When Noomi and Veer decide to marry, Noomi must observe a host of patriarchal wedding rituals at the behest of her new in-laws, whose cultural customs deviate from her own. Soon, Noomi realizes that her worst fears have come to pass--she is trapped in the same cycle of self-destructiveness as her mother, and she must battle her impulses or risk losing it all.

A riveting exploration of class and tradition in contemporary India, Noomi is as quick-witted as she is quick-tempered. At times funny and tragic, taking place over many years of Noomi's life, Naheed Phiroze Patel's exhilarating debut novel, Mirror Made of Rain, shows how society encourages us to see ourselves through the eyes of others. Patel is joined in conversation by fellow writer Vikram Chandra. Hosted by Mike Jeffries.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

SKYLIT: Suchin Pak & Michelle Sugihara, ”MY LIFE: GROWING UP ASIAN IN AMERICA”

Fri, 20 May 2022 09:10:00 -0700

Through a series of essays, poems, and comics, thirty creators give voice to moments that defined them and shed light on the immense diversity and complexity of the Asian American identity. Edited by CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) and with an introduction by renowned journalist SuChin Pak, My Life: Growing Up Asian in America is a celebration of community, a call to action, and a road map for a brighter future. Pak is in conversation with CAPE executive director Michelle Sugihara. Hosted by Mike Jeffries.
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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Sonora Reyes, ”THE LESBIANA’S GUIDE TO CATHOLIC SCHOOL”

Wed, 18 May 2022 15:00:00 -0700

Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she’s gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.

After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don’t fall in love. Granted, she’s never been great at any of those things, but that’s a problem for Future Yami.

The thing is, it’s hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn’t going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she’ll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?

Told in a captivating voice that is by turns hilarious, vulnerable, and searingly honest, The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School explores the joys and heartaches of living your full truth out loud.

Join us for a conversation with author Sonora Reyes as they discuss their new book with Skylight's Nat Freeman.

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Produced by Nat Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Julio Anta, ”HOME” w/ Pornsak Pichetshote

Mon, 16 May 2022 09:29:00 -0700

After being separated from his mother at the US border, a young Guatemalan immigrant must learn to harness emerging superhuman abilities while being hunted by the Federal Government. Join us for a conversation between Home writer Julio Anta and Pornsak Pichetshote, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on February 22, 2022. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Catriona Ward, ”SUNDIAL” w/ Caroline Kepnes

Fri, 13 May 2022 09:14:00 -0700

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind.

She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive…

The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future. Join us for a conversation between author Catriona Ward and Caroline Kepnes, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on March 18, 2022. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

ARTS ANNEX: Shala Miller, ”TENDER NOTED”

Wed, 11 May 2022 09:10:34 -0700

Join us for a conversation with artist Shala Miller, as she discusses her relationship with her father, her pursuit of her craft, and her new book, Tender Noted. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Jarred McGinnis, ”THE COWARD”

Tue, 10 May 2022 09:17:03 -0700

Join us for a conversation with author Jarred McGinnis as he discusses disabled representation in literature, the seperation between auto fiction and memoir, and his new novel, The Coward. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sara Gran, ”THE BOOK OF THE MOST PRECIOUS SUBSTANCE” w/ Liberty Hardy

Fri, 06 May 2022 09:45:00 -0700

After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written--if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it-if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world's wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we'll go to get what we need-and what we want. Join us for a conversation between author Sara Gran and Liberty Hardy, recorded live on our Crowdcast channel on February 25, 2022. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Kelly Barnhill, ”WHEN WOMEN WERE DRAGONS”

Wed, 04 May 2022 09:25:00 -0700

Join us for a conversation with Kelly Barnhill, as she discusses the lasting importance of Christine Blasey Ford, how she turned joy into destruction, and her new novel, When Women Were Dragons. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Kim Kelly

Tue, 03 May 2022 09:45:00 -0700

Fresh off of May Day 2022, join us for a conversation with organizer and journalist Kim Kelly, as she discusses the feasibility of labor reform in her lifetime, the origins of Independent Workers' Day, and her new book, Fight Like Hell. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Claire Kohda, ”WOMAN, EATING”

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 09:12:00 -0700

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans - the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for - perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality – but she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry - always hungry.

As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her - between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans - if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.

Woman, Eating author Claire Kohda discusses her debut novel with Skylight's Nat Freeman.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Adam Frost, ”THE DAMNED LOVELY”

Fri, 29 Apr 2022 13:08:45 -0700

"She wasn't pretty but she was ours..." Sandwiched between seedy businesses in the scorching east LA suburb of Glendale, The Damned Lovely dive bar is as scarred as its regulars: ex-cops, misfits and loners. And for Sam Goss, it's a refuge from the promising life he's walked away from, a place to write and a hole to hide in.

But when a beautiful and mysterious new patron to the bar turns up murdered, Sam can't stop himself from getting involved. Despite their fleeting interaction, or perhaps because of it, something about her ghost won't let go...
Armed with the playbook from the burned-out ex-cops, Sam challenges the police's theory on the killing, butting heads with hardened detectives and asking questions nobody wants to answer. As his obsession takes hold so does his sense of purpose-as if uncovering the truth about the killer might heal some part of his own broken life. But the chase sets him on a collision course with a crooked charity, violent fundamentalists, corrupt cops, brazen embezzlers and someone dangerously close to home-all who want to make sure the truth never comes out. Author Adam Frost discusses his new novel in this episode. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Fernanda Melchor, ”PARADAIS” w/ Sophie Hughes

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 09:46:00 -0700

Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an attractive married woman and mother—while Polo dreams about quitting his grueling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village. Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme.

Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society—with its racist, classist, hyperviolent tendencies—and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.

Author Fernanda Melchor discusses their new novel with translator Sophie Hughes.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Gregory D. Smithers, ”RECLAIMING TWO SPIRITS” w/ Raven E. Heavy Runner

Sat, 23 Apr 2022 09:00:00 -0700

Reclaiming Two-Spirits decolonizes the history of gender and sexuality in Native North America. It honors the generations of Indigenous people who had the foresight to take essential aspects of their cultural life and spiritual beliefs underground in order to save them.

Before 1492, hundreds of Indigenous communities across North America included people who identified as neither male nor female, but both. They went by aakíí’skassi, miati, okitcitakwe, or one of hundreds of other tribally specific identities. After European colonizers invaded Indian Country, centuries of violence and systematic persecution followed, imperiling the existence of people who today call themselves Two-Spirits, an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.

Drawing on written sources, archaeological evidence, art, and oral storytelling, Reclaiming Two-Spirits spans the centuries from Spanish invasion to the present, tracing massacres and inquisitions and revealing how the authors of colonialism’s written archives used language to both denigrate and erase Two-Spirit people from history. But as Gregory Smithers shows, the colonizers failed—and Indigenous resistance is core to this story. Reclaiming Two-Spirits amplifies their voices, reconnecting their history to Native nations in the 21st century. Join us for a conversation between Smithers and Raven E. Heavy Runner, who wrote the foreword for the book. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Summer Michaud-Skog, ”FAT GIRLS HIKING”

Wed, 20 Apr 2022 09:45:00 -0700

From the founder of the Fat Girls Hiking community comes an inclusive, inspiring call to the outdoors for people of all body types, sizes, and backgrounds. In a book brimming with heartfelt stories, practical advice, personal profiles of Fat Girls Hiking community members, and helpful trail reviews, Summer Michaud-Skog creates space for marginalized bodies with an insistent conviction that outdoor recreation should welcome everyone. Whether you’re an experienced or aspiring hiker, you’ll be empowered to hit the trails and find yourself in nature. Trails not scales! _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sanaa Seif + Sharif abdel Kouddous, ”YOU HAVE NOT YET BEEN DEFEATED”

Mon, 18 Apr 2022 09:42:00 -0700

Join us for a conversation between activist Sanaa Seif and journalist Sharif abdel Kouddous, as they discuss You Have Not Yet Been Defeated, a collection of works from Seif's brother, incarcerated political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah. In this discussion, Seif talks about the circumstances of her brother's imprisonment, her own arrest, the limited agency provided to prisoners of the state, and what she hopes will come of their writing. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Antone Dolezal & Lara Shipley, ”DEVIL’S PROMENADE”

Sat, 16 Apr 2022 08:08:00 -0700

Antone Dolezal and Lara Shipley return to their home region of the Ozarks in the American Midwest, where locals persist in their search for a legendary floating orb of light that can only be seen from the Devil’s Promenade. It’s a lushly wooded road in an area where wanderers flock to seek possible redemption, or just to escape the boredom and darkness of ordinary rural life. Subtle but revealing portraits are mixed with archives and reinterpretations of mythical, folkloric tales. It’s a nuanced, mysterious and tender representation by photographers returning to the place where they grew up, but also reveals the current, stark realities of a remote place in America. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Alexander Monea, ”THE DIGITAL CLOSET”

Wed, 13 Apr 2022 10:02:00 -0700

Join us for a conversation with Alexander Monea as he discusses his first book, The Digital Closet, along with ruminations on how queerness exists on the Internet, potential solutions to fixing the heteronormativity of our digital arenas, and the potential power of gay space communism. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Oliver Milman, ”THE INSECT CRISIS”

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 09:29:32 -0700

Join us for a conversation with author Oliver Milman, as he takes us inside the world of insects. In this episode, he highlights their importance to the world ecology and their alarmingly rapid decline as outlined in his new book, The Insect Crisis. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Adrian Shirk and Amanda Montell

Fri, 08 Apr 2022 10:26:32 -0700

Join us for a fun conversation between Adrian Shirk and Amanda Montell about the nature of cults and utopias, basing narratives in autobiographical perspective, and their respective books Heaven is a Place on Earth and Cultish. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Lisa Bird-Wilson, ”PROBABLY RUBY”

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 08:59:01 -0700

This is the story of a woman in search of herself, in every sense. When we first meet Ruby, a Métis woman in her thirties, her life is spinning out of control. She’s angling to sleep with her counselor while also rekindling an old relationship she knows will only bring more heartache. But as we soon learn, Ruby’s story is far more complex than even she can imagine.

Given up for adoption as an infant, Ruby is raised by a white couple who understand little of her Indigenous heritage. This is the great mystery that hovers over Ruby’s life—who her people are and how to reconcile what is missing. As the novel spans time and multiple points of view, we meet the people connected to Ruby: her birth parents and grandparents; her adoptive parents; the men and women Ruby has been romantically involved with; a beloved uncle; and Ruby’s children. Taken together, these characters form a kaleidoscope of stories, giving Ruby’s life dignity and meaning.

Probably Ruby is a dazzling novel about a bold, unapologetic woman taking control of her life and story, and marks the debut of a major new voice in Indigenous fiction. Author Lisa Bird-Wilson is also the director of the Gabriel Dumont Institute. The cover art for Probably Ruby is by Métis artist Christi Belcourt. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Daisy Pitkin, ”ON THE LINE”

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 09:47:00 -0700

Fresh off the heels of the first unionized Amazon warehouse, join us for a conversation about the tolls that fighting for fair labor can take. On the Line takes readers inside a bold five-year campaign to bring a union to the dangerous industrial laundry factories of Phoenix, Arizona. Workers here wash hospital, hotel, and restaurant linens and face harsh conditions: routine exposure to biohazardous waste, injuries from surgical tools left in hospital sheets, and burns from overheated machinery. Broken U.S. labor law makes it nearly impossible for them to fight back.

The drive to unionize is led by two women: author Daisy Pitkin, a young labor organizer, who addresses this exhilarating narrative to Alma Gomez García, a second-shift immigrant worker, who risks her livelihood to join the struggle and convinces her fellow workers to take a stand.

Forged in the flames of a grueling legal battle and the company’s vicious anti-union crusade, including the retaliatory firing of Alma, the relationships that grow between Daisy, Alma, and the rest of the factory workers show how a union, at its best, can reach beyond the workplace and form a solidarity so powerful that it can transcend friendship and transform communities. But when political strife divides the union, and her friendship with Alma along with it, Daisy must reflect on her own position of privilege and the complicated nature of union hierarchies and top-down organizing. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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THE HANDSELL: Lucy Yu, YU AND ME BOOKS

Fri, 01 Apr 2022 10:27:00 -0700

Join us for this special conversation with Lucy Yu, owner and founder of Yu and Me Books in Manhattan's Chinatown, as she discusses being the first female Asian-American bookstore owner in NYC and the rise in anti-Asian hate. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Paul Haddad, ”FREEWAYTOPIA” w/ Steve DeVorkin

Wed, 30 Mar 2022 14:45:51 -0700

From the Arroyo Seco Parkway, which began construction during the Great Depression, to the Century Freeway, completed in 1993, author Paul Haddad provides an entertaining and thought-provoking history of the 527 miles of roadways that comprise the Los Angeles freeway system.

Each of Los Angeles's twelve freeways receives its own chapter, and these are supplemented by "Off-Ramps"--sidebars that dish out pithy factoids about Botts' Dots, SigAlerts, and all matter of freeway lexicon, such as why Southern Californians are the only people in the country who place the word "the" in front of their interstates, as in "the 5," or "the 101."

Freewaytopia also explores those routes that never saw the light of day. Imagine superhighways burrowing through Laurel Canyon, tunneling under the Hollywood Sign, or spanning the waters of Santa Monica Bay. With a few more legislative strokes of the pen, you wouldn't have to imagine them--they'd already exist.

Haddad is joined in conversation by Steve DeVorkin.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Juneau Black, ”A SHADY HOLLOW MYSTERY”

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 15:20:45 -0700

Reporter Vera Vixen is a relative newcomer to Shady Hollow. The fox has a nose for news, so when she catches wind that the death might be a murder, she resolves to get to the bottom of the case, no matter where it leads. As she stirs up still waters, the fox exposes more than one mystery, and discovers that additional lives are in jeopardy.

Vera finds more to this town than she ever suspected. It seems someone in the Hollow will do anything to keep her from solving the murder, and soon it will take all of Vera’s cunning and quickness to crack the case. Join us for this conversation with Juneau Black, the pen name of authors Jocelyn Cole and Sharon Nagel, for this discussion on their Shady Hollow book series! _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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ARTS ANNEX: Rob Sevier

Fri, 25 Mar 2022 09:30:00 -0700

Join us for this Arts Annex Special, as Skylight's own Justin Remer talks to Rob Sevier about his journey into the art world, the moment he knows when he found something good, and Stay Cool, Madonna. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Kelly O’Connor McNees, ”THE MYTH OF SURRENDER”

Wed, 23 Mar 2022 09:12:41 -0700

In 1960, free-spirited Doreen is a recent high-school grad and waitress in a Chicago diner. She doesn't know Margie, sixteen and bookish, who lives a sheltered suburban life, but they soon meet when unplanned pregnancies send them to the Holy Family Home for the Wayward in rural Illinois. Assigned as roommates because their due dates line up, Margie and Doreen navigate Holy Family’s culture of secrecy and shame and become fast friends as the weight of their coming decision — to keep or surrender their babies — becomes clear.

Except, they soon realize, the decision has already been made for them. Holy Family, like many of the maternity homes where 1.5 million women “relinquished” their babies in what is now known as the Baby Scoop Era, is not interested in what the birth mothers want. In its zeal to make the babies “legitimate” in closed adoptions, Holy Family manipulates and bullies birth mothers, often coercing them to sign away their parental rights while still under the effects of anesthesia.

What happens next, as their babies are born and they leave Holy Family behind, will force each woman to confront the depths and limits of motherhood and friendship, and fight to reclaim control over their own lives.

Join us for a conversation with author Kelly O'Connor McNees as she discusses The Myth of Surrender, exploring a hidden chapter of American history that still reverberates across the lives of millions of women and their children. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Neema Avashia, ”ANOTHER APPALACHIA” w/ Sejal Shah

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 09:23:21 -0700

When Neema Avashia tells people where she’s from, their response is nearly always a disbelieving “There are Indian people in West Virginia?” A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today: how she loves, how she teaches, how she advocates, how she struggles.

Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia’s identity as a queer desi Appalachian woman, while encouraging readers to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole. With lyric and narrative explorations of foodways, religion, sports, standards of beauty, social media, gun culture, and more, Another Appalachia mixes nostalgia and humor, sadness and sweetness, personal reflection and universal questions.

Avashia shares a conversation with Sejal Shah in this episode.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

THE HANDSELL: Jess Williamson

Fri, 18 Mar 2022 12:06:58 -0700

Join us for a conversation with singer-songwriter Jess Williamson about her experience selling books, her transition to Los Angeles from Texas, and her upcoming tour with Jose Gonzalez! Listen to her music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/784kOgkd1H6jU4KgPMYHi9?si=S-OZBkvdTgKQfg10hM0cVw _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Marlon B. Ross, ”SISSY INSURGENCIES”

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 09:17:06 -0700

In Sissy Insurgencies, Marlon B. Ross focuses on the figure of the sissy in order to rethink how Americans have imagined, articulated, and negotiated manhood and boyhood from the 1880s to the present. Rather than collapsing sissiness into homosexuality, Ross shows how sissiness constitutes a historically fluid range of gender practices that are expressed as a physical manifestation, discursive epithet, social identity, and political phenomenon. He reconsiders several black leaders, intellectuals, musicians, and athletes within the context of sissiness, from Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and James Baldwin to Little Richard, Amiri Baraka, and Wilt Chamberlain. Whether examining Washington's practice of cleaning as an iteration of sissiness, Baldwin's self-fashioned sissy deportment, or sissiphobia in professional sports and black nationalism, Ross demonstrates that sissiness can be embraced and exploited to conform to American gender norms or disrupt racialized patriarchy. In this way, sissiness constitutes a central element in modern understandings of race and gender. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Sasha LaPointe, ”RED PAINT”

Mon, 14 Mar 2022 10:07:43 -0700

Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe has always longed for a sense of home. When she was a child, her family moved around frequently, often staying in barely habitable church attics and trailers, dangerous places for young Sasha.

With little more to guide her than a passion for the thriving punk scene of the Pacific Northwest and a desire to live up to the responsibility of being the namesake of her beloved great-grandmother—a linguist who helped preserve her Indigenous language of Lushootseed—Sasha throws herself headlong into the world, determined to build a better future for herself and her people.

Set against a backdrop of the breathtaking beauty of Coast Salish ancestral land and imbued with the universal spirit of punk, Red Paint is ultimately a story of the ways we learn to find our true selves while fighting for our right to claim a place of our own.

Examining what it means to be vulnerable in love and in art, Sasha offers up an unblinking reckoning with personal traumas amplified by the collective historical traumas of colonialism and genocide that continue to haunt native peoples. Red Paint is an intersectional autobiography of lineage, resilience, and, above all, the ability to heal. You can also check out Sasha's RED PAINT playlist, curated exclusively for the book. Listen here! _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Irene Solá & Mara Faye Lethem,

Sat, 12 Mar 2022 10:54:32 -0800

Near a village high in the Pyrenees, Domènec wanders across a ridge, fancying himself more a poet than a farmer, to “reel off his verses over on this side of the mountain.” He gathers black chanterelles and attends to a troubled cow. And then storm clouds swell, full of electrifying power. Reckless, gleeful, they release their bolts of lightning, one of which strikes Domènec. He dies. The ghosts of seventeenth-century witches gather around him, taking up the chanterelles he’d harvested before going on their merry ways. So begins When I Sing, Mountains Dance, which is as much about the mountains and the mushrooms as it is about the human dramas that unfold in their midst. Join us for this episode as author Irene Solá discusses her novel with translator Mara Faye Lethem. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Namrata Poddar, ”BORDER LESS”

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 05:18:00 -0800

Border Less is a novel that centers desert and coastal spaces, predominantly of Mumbai and Greater Los Angeles, with layovers in the Thar Desert and African islands of the Indian Ocean. Divided in two sections, “Roots” and “Routes,” the book traces the migratory journey of Dia Mittal, an airline call center agent in Mumbai who is searching for a better life. As her search takes her to the United States, Dia’s checkered relationship with the American Dream dialogues with the experiences and perspectives of a global South Asian community across the class spectrum—call center agents, travel agents, immigrant maids, fashion designers, blue- and white-collar workers in the hospitality industry, junior and senior artists in Bollywood, hustling single mothers, academics, tourists in the Third World, refugees displaced by military superpowers, Marwari merchants and trade caravans of the Silk Road, among others. What connects the novel’s web of brown border-crossing characters is their quest for belonging and a negotiation of power struggles, mediated by race, class, caste, gender, religion, nationality, age, or place. With the novel's fragmented form, staccato rhythm, repetition, and play with English language, author Namrata Poddar questions the “mainstream” Western novel and its assumptions of good storytelling. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jeff Yang, Philip Wang, Phil Yu: ”RISE”

Mon, 07 Mar 2022 10:49:19 -0800

When the Hart-Celler Act passed in 1965, opening up US immigration to non-Europeans, it ushered in a whole new era. But even to the first generation of Asian Americans born in the US after that milestone, it would have been impossible to imagine that sushi and boba would one day be beloved by all, that a Korean boy band named BTS would be the biggest musical act in the world, that one of the most acclaimed and popular movies of 2018 would be Crazy Rich Asians, or that we would have an Asian American Vice President. And that’s not even mentioning the creators, performers, entrepreneurs, execs and influencers who've been making all this happen, behind the scenes and on the screen; or the activists and representatives continuing to fight for equity, building coalitions and defiantly holding space for our voices and concerns. And still: Asian America is just getting started.

The timing could not be better for this intimate, eye-opening, and frequently hilarious guided tour through the pop-cultural touchstones and sociopolitical shifts of the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and beyond. In Rise, Jeff Yang, Phil Yu, and Philip Wang chronicle how we’ve arrived at today’s unprecedented diversity of Asian American cultural representation through engaging, interactive infographics (including a step-by-step guide to a night out in K-Town, an atlas that unearths historic Asian American landmarks, a handy “Appreciation or Appropriation?” flowchart, and visual celebrations of both our "founding fathers and mothers" and the nostalgia-inducing personalities of each decade), plus illustrations and graphic essays from major AAPI artists, exclusive roundtables with Asian American cultural icons, and more, anchored by extended insider narratives of each decade by the three co-authors. Rise is an informative, lively, and inclusive celebration of both shared experiences and singular moments, and all the different ways in which we have chosen to come together.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Missouri Williams, ”THE DOLORIAD”

Fri, 04 Mar 2022 12:03:05 -0800

In the wake of a mysterious environmental cataclysm that has wiped out the rest of humankind, the Matriarch, her brother, and the family descended from their incest cling to existence on the edges of a deserted city. The Matriarch, ruling with fear and force, dreams of starting humanity over again, though her children are not so certain. Together the family scavenges supplies and attempts to cultivate the poisoned earth. For entertainment, they watch old VHS tapes of a TV show in which a problem-solving medieval saint faces down a sequence of logical and ethical dilemmas. But one day the Matriarch dreams of another group of survivors and sends away one of her daughters, the legless Dolores, as a marriage offering. When Dolores returns the next day, her reappearance triggers the breakdown of the Matriarch’s fragile order, and the control she wields over their sprawling family begins to weaken.

Told in extraordinary, intricate prose that moves with a life of its own, and at times striking with the power of physical force, Missouri Williams’s debut novel is a blazingly original document of depravity and salvation. Gothic and strange, moving and disquieting, and often hilarious, The Doloriad stares down, with narrowed eyes, humanity’s unbreakable commitment to life. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marlon James

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 12:29:30 -0800

Join us for this special interview with Marlon James, esteemed author of the upcoming Moon Witch, Spider King, as he discusses writing The Incredible Hulk fan fiction, the special rhythms of Jamaican patois, and Toni Morrison's influence on his writing. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Lauren Oyler, ”FAKE ACCOUNTS”

Tue, 01 Mar 2022 14:52:19 -0800

On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend's phone and makes a startling discovery: he's an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery, irony, and outrage, she's not exactly shocked by the revelation. Actually, she's relieved--he was always a little distant--and she plots to end their floundering relationship while on a trip to the Women's March in DC. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies.

Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York and increasingly alienated from her friends and colleagues, our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat meetups, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms. She begins to think she can't trust anyone--shouldn't the feeling be mutual?

Narrated with seductive confidence and subversive wit, Fake Accounts challenges the way current conversations about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and reality play out in the internet age.

Author Lauren Oyler joins Skylight's Mike Jeffrey to discuss her novel.

SKYLIT: Antoine Wilson, ”MOUTH TO MOUTH”

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 11:00:00 -0800

In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man.

Jeff reveals that after that traumatic, galvanizing morning on the beach, he was compelled to learn more about the man whose life he had saved, convinced that their fates were now entwined. But are we agents of our fate—or are we its pawns? Upon discovering that the man is renowned art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins to surreptitiously visit his Beverly Hills gallery. Although Francis does not seem to recognize him as the man who saved his life, he nevertheless casts his legendary eye on Jeff and sees something worthy. He takes the younger man under his wing, initiating him into his world, where knowledge, taste, and access are currency; a world where value is constantly shifting and calling into question what is real, and what matters. The paths of the two men come together and diverge in dizzying ways until the novel’s staggering ending.

Sly, suspenseful, and engrossing, Antoine Wilson's Mouth to Mouth masterfully blurs the line between opportunity and exploitation, self-respect and self-delusion, fact and fiction—exposing the myriad ways we deceive each other, and ourselves. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Maya Stovall, ”LIQUOR STORE THEATER”

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 10:00:00 -0800

For six years Maya Stovall staged Liquor Store Theatre, a conceptual art and anthropology video project---included in the Whitney Biennial in 2017---in which she danced near the liquor stores in her Detroit neighborhood as a way to start conversations with her neighbors. In this book of the same name, Stovall uses the project as a point of departure for understanding everyday life in Detroit and the possibilities for ethnographic research, art, and knowledge creation. Her conversations with her neighbors-which touch on everything from economics, aesthetics, and sex to the political and economic racism that undergirds Detroit's history-bring to light rarely acknowledged experiences of longtime Detroiters. In these exchanges, Stovall enacts an innovative form of ethnographic engagement that offers new modes of integrating the social sciences with the arts in ways that exceed what either approach can achieve alone. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: SJ Sindu, ”BLUE SKINNED GODS”

Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:19:00 -0800

In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pass them, Kalki begins to question his divinity.

Over the next decade, his family unravels, and every relationship he relied on—father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin—starts falling apart. Traveling from India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and spans continents and faiths, in an expansive and heartfelt look at the need for belief in our globally interconnected world. Join us in this episode as author SJ Sindu discusses her new novel with Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

ARTS ANNEX: Golden Collier

Fri, 18 Feb 2022 08:31:06 -0800

Join us for our first ever Arts Annex Spotlight, as Skylight's own Natalie Freeman sits down with Golden Collier to talk about their work in zines, the frustrations of Etsy, and their imprint, Diasporan Savant Press. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Safari Blake, ”LORD, EXPOSE ME”

Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:11:00 -0800

Join us for a (half-sung!) conversation with Safari Blake for her new book, Lord, Expose Me. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Jessica P. Pryde, ”BLACK LOVE MATTERS”

Tue, 15 Feb 2022 08:32:50 -0800

Romantic love has been one of the most essential elements of storytelling for centuries. But for Black people in the United States and across the diaspora, it hasn't often been easy to find Black romance joyfully showcased in entertainment media. In this collection, revered authors and sparkling newcomers, librarians and academicians, and avid readers and reviewers consider the mirrors and windows into Black love as it is depicted in the novels, television shows, and films that have shaped their own stories. Whether personal reflection or cultural commentary, these essays delve into Black love now and in the past, including topics from the history of Black romance to social justice and the Black community to the meaning of desire and desirability.

Exploring the multifaceted ways love is seen—and the ways it isn't—this diverse array of Black voices collectively shines a light on the power of crafting happy endings for Black lovers. Black Love Matters editor Jessica P. Pryde joins us this episode to talk about this romantic collection. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Scott Meslow, ”FROM HOLLYWOOD WITH LOVE”

Fri, 11 Feb 2022 05:30:00 -0800

No Hollywood genre has been more misunderstood—or more unfairly under-appreciated—than the romantic comedy. Funny, charming, and reliably crowd-pleasing, rom-coms were the essential backbone of the Hollywood landscape, launching the careers of many of Hollywood’s most talented actors and filmmakers, such as Julia Roberts and Matthew McConaughey, and providing many of the yet limited creative opportunities women had in Hollywood. But despite—or perhaps because of—all that, the rom-com has routinely been overlooked by the Academy Awards or snobbishly dismissed by critics. In From Hollywood with Love, culture writer and GQ contributor Scott Meslow seeks to right this wrong, celebrating and analyzing rom-coms with the appreciative, insightful critical lens they’ve always deserved. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Kai Harris, ”WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW”

Wed, 09 Feb 2022 08:42:36 -0800

An ode to Black girlhood and adolescence as seen through KB's eyes, What the Fireflies Knew follows KB after her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit. Soon thereafter, KB and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing, Michigan. Over the course of a single sweltering summer, KB attempts to navigate a world that has turned upside down.

A dazzling and moving novel about family, identity, and race, What the Fireflies Knew poignantly reveals that heartbreaking but necessary component of growing up--the realization that loved ones can be flawed and that the perfect family we all dream of looks different up close. Join us on this episode as author Kai Harris discusses her debut novel with Skylight's Natalie Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Sasha Fletcher, ”BE HERE TO LOVE ME AT THE END OF THE WORLD”

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 08:11:30 -0800

It’s Brooklyn. It’s winter. It’s so cold outside you could execute billionaires in the street about it. Sam lives with Eleanor and they are in love. He has three or four outstanding invoices that would each cover rent for a month. At some point, the President is going to make some absolutely wild announcements that will only end in doom.
In a surreal, funny, and heart-breaking version of reality, Sasha Fletcher’s highly anticipated first novel occupies that rare register that manages to speak to an increasingly incomprehensible world. Through scenes that poetically transform the mundane into the sublime and the absurd into the tragic, Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World is about the exquisite beauty of being in love in a world that is falling apart. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jami Attenberg, ”I CAME ALL THIS WAY TO MEET YOU” w/ Patricia Lockwood

Sat, 05 Feb 2022 05:11:00 -0800

As the daughter of a traveling salesman in the Midwest, Jami Attenberg was drawn to a life on the road. Frustrated by quotidian jobs and hungry for inspiration and fresh experiences, her wanderlust led her across the country and eventually on travels around the globe. Through it all she grapples with questions of mortality, otherworldliness, and what we leave behind.

It is during these adventures that she begins to reflect on the experiences of her youth—the trauma, the challenges, the risks she has taken. Driving across America on self-funded book tours, sometimes crashing on couches when she was broke, she keeps writing: in researching articles for magazines, jotting down ideas for novels, and refining her craft, she grows as an artist and increasingly learns to trust her gut and, ultimately, herself.

Exploring themes of friendship, independence, class, and drive, I Came All This Way to Meet You is an inspiring story of finding one’s way home—emotionally, artistically, and physically—and an examination of art and individuality that will resonate with anyone determined to listen to their own creative calling.

Attenberg is in conversation with Patricia Lockwood in this live episode recorded Monday, January 24, 2022. Check out the Skylight Books event page for more events!

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

THE HANDSELL: Harriet’s Bookshop w/ Jeannine Cook

Fri, 04 Feb 2022 05:30:00 -0800

Join Skylight's Lance Morgan for his conversation with Jeannine Cook of Harriet's Bookshop in Philadelphia! They discuss how the store's namesake influences the shop's ethos, the long wait for reparations, and much more. You don't want to miss it. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Akwaeke Emezi

Wed, 02 Feb 2022 07:59:12 -0800

Join us this episode as author Akwaeke Emezi talks to Skylight's own Natalie Freeman about their career and their upcoming book, Bitter: After a childhood in foster care, Bitter is thrilled to have been chosen to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting surrounded by other creative teens. But outside this haven, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the city of Lucille.

Bitter’s instinct is to stay safe within the walls of Eucalyptus . . . but her friends aren’t willing to settle for a world that’s so far away from what they deserve. Pulled between old friendships, her artistic passion, and a new romance, Bitter isn’t sure where she belongs—in the studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, she must also ask: at what cost? _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Cara Blue Adams, ”YOU NEVER GET IT BACK”

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 12:38:36 -0800

The linked stories in Cara Blue Adams’s precise and observant collection, You Never Get it Back, offer elegantly constructed glimpses of the life of Kate, a young woman from rural New England, moving between her childhood in the countryside of Vermont and her twenties and thirties in the northeast, southwest, and South in pursuit of a vocation, first as a research scientist and later as a writer. Place is a palpable presence: Boston in winter, Maine in summer, Virginia’s lush hillsides, the open New Mexico sky. Along the way, we meet Kate’s difficult bohemian mother and younger sister, her privileged college roommate, and the various men Kate dates as she struggles to define what she wants from the world on her own terms.

Wryly funny and shot through with surprising flashes of anger, these smart, dreamy, searching stories show us a young woman grappling with social class, gender, ambition, violence, and the distance between longing and having. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Tim James, ”ASTRONOMICAL”

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 09:03:04 -0800

Space is the biggest, oldest, hottest, coldest, strangest thing a human can study. It's no surprise then, that the weirdest facts in science (not to mention the weirdest scientists themselves) are found in astrophysics and cosmology.

If you're looking for instructions on how to set up your grandad's telescope this book probably isn't for you. In Astronomical, Tim James takes us on a tour of the known (and unknown) universe, focusing on the most-mind boggling stuff we've come across, as well as unpacking the latest theories about what's really going on out there. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Wajahat Ali, ”GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM”

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 09:07:29 -0800

Growing up living the suburban American dream, young Wajahat Ali devoured comic books (devoid of brown superheroes) and fielded well-intentioned advice from uncles and aunties. (“Become a doctor!”) He had turmeric stains under his fingernails, was accident-prone, suffered from OCD, and wore Husky pants, but he was as American as his neighbors, with roots all over the world. Then, while Ali was studying at University of California, Berkeley, 9/11 happened. Muslims replaced communists as America’s enemy #1, and he became an accidental spokesman and ambassador of all ordinary, unthreatening things Muslim-y.

Now a middle-aged dad, Ali has become one of the foremost and funniest public intellectuals in America. In Go Back to Where You Came From, he tackles the dangers of Islamophobia, white supremacy, and chocolate hummus, peppering personal stories with astute insights into national security, immigration, and pop culture. In this refreshingly bold, hopeful, and uproarious memoir, Ali offers indispensable lessons for cultivating a more compassionate, inclusive, and delicious America.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Duncan Birmingham, ”THE CULT IN MY GARAGE”

Mon, 24 Jan 2022 08:53:27 -0800

An office worker hopes a new drug will remedy her toxic personal life... A food blogger moonlights as a detective to give meaning to his gluttony... A rehabbed addict proselytizes with an increasingly bizarre methodology... Lovesick strangers try to heal through a dating app that promises a unique form of catharsis... A quarantined man starts having vivid dreams he's convinced aren't his own... At a party where everyone's "somebody" the crowd grows feverishly reverential of one guest's anonymity...

In the prescient world of Duncan Birmingham's The Cult in My Garage, the characters are desperate for meaning and hungry for connection. Time and again, their attempts at betterment snowball into disaster or backfire spectacularly. And yet they still find ways to dust themselves off and salvage meaning.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Melissa Anderson, ”INLAND EMPIRE” & Erika Balsom, ”TEN SKIES”

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 08:43:14 -0800

Join us for a conversation between two Fireflies Press film writers, as Melissa Anderson (Inland Empire) and Erika Balsom (Ten Skies) discuss their Decadent Editions on two great works of cinema from the '00s directed by David Lynch and James Benning respectively. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.
Hosted by Justin Remer.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Ellinor Richey, ”JUNKWRAITH”

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 08:06:24 -0800

What happens when our most precious belongings... no longer belong? When something we loved suddenly becomes junk, a powerful energy is unleashed. One night, ice-skating prodigy Florence Sato is overwhelmed by pressure and throws away her skates. This fateful moment accidentally summons a "Junkwraith," a terrifying ghost which seeks revenge for its abandonment by attacking the memories of its former owner. Before she forgets who she is, and to find out who she really wants to be, Florence must set off (with her trusty digital assistant Frank) on a long journey into the Wastelands to put to rest the monster she created. Join author Ellinor Richey as she discusses her work with Skylight's own Natalie Freeman. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Darieck Scott, ”KEEPING IT UNREAL” w/ Ramzi Fawaz

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 06:15:00 -0800

Keeping It Unreal: Comics and Black Queer Fantasy is an exploration of how fantasies of Black power and triumph fashion theoretical, political, and aesthetic challenges to-and respite from-white supremacy and anti-Blackness. It examines representations of Blackness in fantasy-infused genres: superhero comic books, erotic comics, fantasy and science-fiction genre literature, as well as contemporary literary "realist" fiction centering fantastic conceits.

Darieck Scott offers a rich meditation on the relationship between fantasy and reality, and between the imagination and being, as he weaves his personal recollections of his encounters with superhero comics with interpretive readings of figures like the Black Panther and Blade, as well as theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Bersani, Saidiya Hartman, and Gore Vidal. Keeping It Unrealrepresents an in-depth theoretical consideration of the intersections of superhero comics, Blackness, and queerness, and draws on a variety of fields of inquiry. Scott is in conversation with Ramzi Fawaz. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Tabitha Lasley, ”SEA STATE”

Mon, 17 Jan 2022 11:33:41 -0800

In her midthirties and newly free from a terrible relationship, Tabitha Lasley quit her job at a London magazine, packed her bags, and poured her savings into a six-month lease on an apartment in Aberdeen, Scotland. She decided to make good on a long-deferred idea for a book about oil rigs and the men who work on them. Why oil rigs? She wanted to see what men were like with no women around.

In Aberdeen, Tabitha became deeply entrenched in the world of roughnecks, a teeming subculture rich with brawls, hard labor, and competition. The longer she stayed, the more she found her presence had a destabilizing effect on the men—and her.

Sea State is on the one hand a portrait of an overlooked industry: “offshore” is a way of life for generations of primarily working-class men and also a potent metaphor for those parts of life we keep at bay—class, masculinity, the transactions of desire, and the awful slipperiness of a ladder that could, if we tried hard enough, lead us to security...on the other hand the story of a journalist whose professional distance from her subject becomes perilously thin.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: PEN Emerging Voices w/ Joanna Hong & Jenise Miller

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 09:04:30 -0800

Join us for this conversation with the PEN Emerging Voices' Joanna Hong and Jenise Miller, as they talk about their process, give us a taste of their writing, and discuss what it means to be an "emerging" writer. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Brooks Hefner, ”BLACK PULP”

Mon, 10 Jan 2022 09:17:49 -0800

In recent years, Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Marvel’s Black Panther, and HBO’s Watchmen have been lauded for the innovative ways they repurpose genre conventions to criticize white supremacy, celebrate Black resistance, and imagine a more racially just world—important progressive messages widely spread precisely because they are packaged in popular genres. But it turns out, such generic retooling for antiracist purposes is nothing new.

As Brooks E. Hefner’s Black Pulp shows, this tradition of antiracist genre revision begins even earlier than recent studies of Black superhero comics of the 1960s have revealed. Hefner traces it back to a phenomenon that began in the 1920s, to serialized (and sometimes syndicated) genre stories written by Black authors in Black newspapers with large circulations among middle- and working-class Black readers. From the pages of the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American, Hefner recovers a rich archive of African American genre fiction from the 1920s through the mid-1950s—spanning everything from romance, hero-adventure, and crime stories to westerns and science fiction. Reading these stories, Hefner explores how their authors deployed, critiqued, and reassembled genre formulas—and the pleasures they offer to readers—in the service of racial justice: to criticize Jim Crow segregation, racial capitalism, and the sexual exploitation of Black women; to imagine successful interracial romance and collective sociopolitical progress; and to cheer Black agency, even retributive violence in the face of white supremacy.

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Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

HANDSELL: Christine Bollow, ABA

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 08:37:39 -0800

Skylight's own Lance Morgan is joined on the first Handsell of the year by Christine Bollow, the Programs and Marketing Manager for Loyalty Bookstores and a Bookstagrammer @readingismagical. She serves on the ABA's Bookseller Advisory Committee and is a contributor for the Feminist Book Club Podcast. Christine's book recommendations have been featured in Buzzfeed Books and Elle.com and she was highlighted by Books Forward as one of 10 Bookstagrammers to Follow for Asian & Pacific American Heritage Month. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Mahogany L. Browne, ”VINYL MOON”

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:17:38 -0800

When Darius told Angel he loved her, she believed him. But five weeks after the incident, Angel finds herself in Brooklyn, far from her family, from him, and from the California life she has known.

Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can’t shake the feeling everyone knows what happened—and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G’s class. There, Angel’s classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from Black writers like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Zora Neale Hurston speak to her and begin to heal the wounds of her past.

Mahogany L. Browne's Vinyl Moon weaves together prose, poems, and vignettes to tell the story of Angel, a young woman whose past was shaped by domestic violence but whose love of language and music and the gift of community grant her the chance to find herself again. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: George Saunders w/ Alena Saunders

Tue, 04 Jan 2022 13:22:45 -0800

Join us for a heartwarming post-holiday introduction to the New Year, as Skylight's own Alena Saunders sits down with her father, esteemed writer George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo, Fox8), for an intimate conversation about his life and career. _______________________________________________

Produced by Natalie Freeman, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE FROM CROWDCAST: Miranda Tacchia, ”UNIMPRESSED” w/ Aminder Dhaliwal

Thu, 30 Dec 2021 06:47:43 -0800

Have you ever schemed with a friend? Stared at your phone screen well after you should have gone to sleep? Braced for heartbreak? Been told to smile more? Then Unimpressed will undoubtedly speak to you. In a book that bridges comics and memes, Miranda Tacchia uses her biting sense of humor and background in animation to create brilliant character portraits of women with only markers, Post-it notes, and tape. A master of expression, figure, and subtle (and other times not-so-subtle) comedy, Tacchia's protagonists are usually "unimpressed women" — who all share the fact that "they don't give a shit about you," as Tacchia puts it.

What makes Unimpressed so impressive and entertaining is how Tacchia taps into instantly relatable feelings and situations while simultaneously creating art that exudes confidence and vulnerability.

Tacchia is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Aminder Dhaliwal. The episode was recorded on October 8, 2021.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Karl Ove Knausgaard, ”THE MORNING STAR” w/ Brandon Taylor

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 05:37:00 -0800

It’s a normal night in August. Literature professor Arne and artist Tove are with their children at the resort in Sørlandet. Their friend, Egil, a driver by day, is staying in a cabin nearby. Kathrine, a priest, is on her way home from a seminar, the journalist Jostein is out on the town, and his wife Turid, who is an assistant nurse, has a night shift. Above them all, a huge star suddenly appears in the sky. No one, not even the astronomers, knows for sure what kind of phenomenon it is. Is there a star burning itself out? Why then has no one seen it before? Or is it a brand new star? Slowly the interest in the news subsides, and life goes on, but not quite as before, for unusual phenomena begin to occur on the fringes of human existence. Over these days in August, the characters the novel follows will each understand what is happening differently, and all face new struggles in their own lives.

The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, is a novel about what we do not understand, about great drama seen through the limited lens of little lives. But first and foremost, it is a novel about what happens when the dark forces in the world are set free.

Knausgaard is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Brandon Taylor. The episode was recorded on September 28, 2021.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Amanda Montell, ”CULTISH” w/ Owin Pierson

Thu, 23 Dec 2021 15:38:35 -0800

What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join—and more importantly, stay in—extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has . . .

Our culture tends to provide pretty flimsy answers to questions of cult influence, mostly having to do with vague talk of “brainwashing.” But the true answer has nothing to do with freaky mind-control wizardry or Kool-Aid. In Cultish, Montell argues that the key to manufacturing intense ideology, community, and us/them attitudes all comes down to language. In both positive ways and shadowy ones, cultish language is something we hear—and are influenced by—every single day.

Through juicy storytelling and cutting original research, Montell exposes the verbal elements that make a wide spectrum of communities “cultish,” revealing how they affect followers of groups as notorious as Heaven’s Gate, but also how they pervade our modern start-ups, Peloton leaderboards, and Instagram feeds. Incisive and darkly funny, this enrapturing take on the curious social science of power and belief will make you hear the fanatical language of “cultish” everywhere.

Montell is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Owin Pierson. The episode was recorded on June 23, 2021. You can watch the Zoom recording here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE FROM CROWDCAST: Yoon Choi, ”SKINSHIP” w/ Steph Cha

Mon, 20 Dec 2021 14:23:53 -0800

A long-married couple is forced to confront their friend's painful past when a church revival comes to a nearby town ... A woman in an arranged marriage struggles to connect with the son she hid from her husband for years ... A well-meaning sister unwittingly reunites an abuser with his victims.

Through an indelible array of lives, Yoon Choi explores where first and second generations either clash or find common ground, where meaning falls in the cracks between languages, where relationships bend under the weight of tenderness and disappointment, where displacement turns to heartbreak.

Skinship is suffused with a profound understanding of humanity and offers a searing look at who the people we love truly are.

Choi is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Steph Cha. The episode was recorded on September 1, 2021. You can watch the Zoom recording here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Richard Lange, ”ROVERS”w/ Jonathan Ames

Sun, 19 Dec 2021 23:43:12 -0800

Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims. They’re rovers, nearly indestructible nocturnal beings who must consume human blood in order to survive. For seventy years they’ve lurked on the fringes of society, roaming from town to town, dingy motel to dingy motel, stalking the transients, addicts, and prostitutes they feed on.

This hard-boiled supernatural hell ride kicks off when the brothers encounter a young woman who disrupts their grim routine, forcing Jesse to confront his past and plunging his present into deadly chaos as he finds himself scrambling to save her life. The story plays out through the eyes of the brothers, a grieving father searching for his son’s murderer, and a violent gang of rover bikers, coming to a shattering conclusion in Las Vegas on the eve of America’s Bicentennial.

Gripping, relentless, and ferocious, Rovers demonstrates once again why Richard Lange has been hailed as an “expert writer, his prose exact, his narrative tightly controlled” (Steph Cha, Los Angeles Times).

Lange is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Jonathan Ames. The episode was recorded on August 11, 2021. You can watch the Zoom recording here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jim Terry, ”COME HOME, INDIO” w/ Ezra Claytan Daniels

Thu, 16 Dec 2021 07:57:48 -0800

A Native American cartoonist explores the isolation and anxiety of being lost between two worlds but ultimate becoming comfortable in his own skin.

Come Home, Indio shares the Jim Terry’s journey of discovering his spiritual home as a Native American. From a childhood in suburbia, disconnected from his identity as an Indigenous person, through an urban adulthood marked by a struggle with alcoholism and the death of his parents, to his life-altering experience at Standing Rock, he begins to find a new sense of self as a Native and as an American.

Terry is joined in this Live Crowdcast episode by Ezra Clayton Daniels. The episode was recorded on July 14, 2021. You can watch the Zoom recording here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Rosecrans Baldwin, ”EVERYTHING NOW” w/ Charles Yu

Mon, 13 Dec 2021 15:30:02 -0800

Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin's Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself―vastly more than its many, many parts.

Baldwin’s concept of the city-state allows us, finally, to grasp a place―Los Angeles―whose idiosyncrasies both magnify those of America, and are so fully its own. Here, space and time don’t quite work the same as they do elsewhere, and contradictions are as stark as southern California’s natural environment. Perhaps no better place exists to watch the United States’s past, and its possible futures, play themselves out.

Welcome to Los Angeles, the Great American City-State.

Baldwin is in conversation with Charles You during this live Crowdcast event, which was recorded on June 15, 2021. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Kristen Arnett, ”WITH TEETH” w/ Esme Weijun Wang

Wed, 08 Dec 2021 08:10:43 -0800

If she’s being honest, Sammie Lucas is scared of her son. Working from home in the close quarters of their Florida house, she lives with one wary eye peeled on Samson, a sullen, unknowable boy who resists her every attempt to bond with him. Uncertain in her own feelings about motherhood, she tries her best—driving, cleaning, cooking, prodding him to finish projects for school—while growing increasingly resentful of Monika, her confident but absent wife. As Samson grows from feral toddler to surly teenager, Sammie’s life begins to deteriorate into a mess of unruly behavior, and her struggle to create a picture-perfect queer family unravels. When her son’s hostility finally spills over into physical aggression, Sammie must confront her role in the mess—and the possibility that it will never be clean again.

Blending the warmth and wit of Kristen Arnett’s breakout hit, Mostly Dead Things, with a candid take on queer family dynamics, With Teeth is a thought-provoking portrait of the delicate fabric of family—and the many ways it can be torn apart. Arnett is in conversation with Esme Weijun Wang during this live Crowdcast event, which was recorded on June 6, 2021. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Joan Nockels Wilson, ”THE BOOK OF TIMOTHY”

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 13:34:15 -0800

Set in Rome, Chicago, and Anchorage, and spanning thirty years from crime to confrontation, The Book of Timothy: The Devil, My Brother, and Me recounts in lyric movements a sister's journey, partly through trickery, but eventually through truth, to gain a long-absent admission from the priest who abused her brother. While on that journey, Nockels Wilson, a former prosecutor, confronts not only the priest, but her personal quest for vengeance. She further seeks an understanding of how the first Book of Timothy, the work of St. Paul, contributed to the silencing of women in her once loved Catholic Church. This Book of Timothy promises to take the reader on a quest for justice and down a path of unexpected coincidences that ends where it first began: out of a great love for a brother and in the power of first memory. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Mariam Rahmani, ”IN CASE OF EMERGENCY” w/ Justin Torres

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 17:32:14 -0800

Disillusioned, wealthy, and addicted to opium, Shadi wakes up one day to apocalyptic earthquakes and a dangerously low stash. Outside, Tehran is crumbling: yuppies flee in bumper-to-bumper traffic as skaters and pretty boys rise up to claim the city as theirs. Cross-dressed to evade hijab laws, Shadi flits between her dysfunctional family and depressed friends--all in search of her next fix.

Mahsa Mohebali's groundbreaking novel about Iranian counterculture is a satirical portrait of the disaster that is contemporary life. Weaving together gritty vernacular and cinematic prose, In Case of Emergency takes a darkly humorous, scathing look at the authoritarian state, global capitalism, and the gender binary.

Translator Mariam Rahmani discusses her work on the novel with Justin Torres.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Robin J. Hayes, ”LOVE FOR LIBERATION”

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 07:56:17 -0800

During the height of the Cold War, passionate idealists across the US and Africa came together to fight for Black self-determination and the antiracist remaking of society. Beginning with the 1957 Ghanaian independence celebration, the optimism and challenges of African independence leaders were publicized to African Americans through community-based newspapers and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Inspired by African independence--and frustrated with the slow pace of civil rights reforms in the US--a new generation of Black Power activists embarked on nonviolent direct action campaigns and built alternative institutions designed as spaces of freedom from racial subjugation.

In Love for Liberation, Robin Hayes reveals how Black Power and African independence activists created a diaspora underground, characterized by collaboration and reciprocal empowerment. Together, they redefined racial discrimination as an international human rights issue requiring education, sustained collective action, and global solidarity--laying the groundwork for future transnational racial justice movements, such as Black Lives Matter.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: SUMMERTIME: ODES TO LA w/ Carlos López Estrada

Tue, 30 Nov 2021 14:31:02 -0800

Summertime Odes to LA is an anthology of creative work, brought to you by the minds behind the feature film Summertime (2021). The book showcases an array of work that uncovers the often unseen corners of Los Angeles: poems from the movie, behind the scenes photographs, and deleted scenes. Along with new musings, such as essays, paintings, and collaborations with over 40 visual artists. An artful ode to the city we call home, SOTLA invites readers to dive into the stories of everyday people from a city with mythic grandeur. This anthology takes you on a journey through the valley of angels, illuminating the glamour, risk, heartache, and love that live in all of us—not just on Hollywood Blvd. SOTLA is your portal to & portrait of Los Angeles. Director Carlos López Estrada is joined by the following SOTLA contributors who give readings in this episode: Gordon Ip Paolina Acuna-Gonzalez Marcus James Hanna Harris Zachary Perlmuter Bene’t Benton Marquesha Barber _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Jon McGregor, ”LEAN FALL STAND” w/ Julia Phillips

Sat, 27 Nov 2021 11:19:51 -0800

Robert 'Doc' Wright, a veteran of Antarctic surveying, was there on the ice when the worst happened. He holds within him the complete story of that night—but depleted by the disaster, Wright is no longer able to communicate the truth. Instead, in the wake of the catastrophic expedition, he faces the most daunting adventure of his life: learning a whole new way to be in the world. Meanwhile Anna, his wife, must suddenly scramble to navigate the sharp and unexpected contours of life as a caregiver.

From the Booker Prize-longlisted, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award-winning Jon McGregor, this is a novel every bit as mesmerizing as its setting. Tenderly unraveling different notions of heroism through the rippling effects of one extraordinary expedition on an ordinary family, Lean Fall Stand explores the indomitable human impulse to turn our experiences into stories—even when the words may fail us.

In this episode, McGregor discusses his work with Julia Phillips.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: West Moss, ”FLESH & BLOOD” w/ David Ebenbach

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 10:34:54 -0800

“I drive and say to myself, if I am dying, if this is how I die, then this is how I die.” When N. West Moss finds herself bleeding uncontrollably in the middle of a writing class, she manages to drive herself to the nearest hospital. Doctors are baffled, but eventually a diagnosis—uterine hemangioma—is rendered and a hysterectomy is scheduled. In prose both lyrical and unsparing, Moss takes us along through illness, relapse, and recovery. And as her thoughts turn to her previous struggles with infertility, she reflects on kin and kinship and on what it means to leave a legacy.

Moss’s wise, droll voice and limitless curiosity lift this narrative beyond any narrow focus. Among her interests: yellow fever, good cocktails, the history of New Orleans, and, always, the natural world, including the praying mantis in her sunroom whom she names Claude. And we learn about the inspiring women in Moss’s family—her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother—as she sorts out her feelings that this line will end with her. But Moss discovers that there are ways besides having children to make a mark, and that grief is not a stopping place but a companion that travels along with us through everything, even happiness.

A remarkably honest memoir about heartache and healing, Flesh & Blood opens up a conversation with the millions of women who live with infertility and loss. West is in conversation with David Ebenbach during this episode. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Teresa K. Miller, ”BORDERLINE FORTUNE,” and Amanda Moore, ”REQUEENING”

Mon, 22 Nov 2021 16:01:01 -0800

Borderline Fortune is a meditation on intangible family inheritance—of unresolved intergenerational conflicts and traumas in particular—set against the backdrop of our planetary inheritance as humans. As species go extinct and glaciers melt, Teresa K. Miller asks what we owe one another and what it means to echo one’s ancestors’ grief and fear. Drawing on her family history, from her great-grandfather’s experience as a schoolteacher on an island in the Bering Strait to her father’s untimely death, as well as her pursuit of regenerative horticulture, Miller seeks through these beautifully crafted poems to awaken from the intergenerational trance and bear witness to our current moment with clarity and attention. Amanda Moore's debut collection of poetry, Requeening (Ecco, Oct. 26, 2021), was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZYZZYVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review and Hippocampus Magazine as well as on the University of Arizona Poetry Center's blog. Serving as poetry editor at Women's Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and Bull City Press, Moore is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Stephen Van Dyck, ”PEOPLE I‘VE MET FROM THE INTERNET”

Sun, 21 Nov 2021 18:25:56 -0800

Stephen van Dyck's PEOPLE I'VE MET FROM THE INTERNET is a queer reimagining of the coming-of-age narrative set at the dawn of the internet era. In 1997, AOL is first entering suburban homes just as thirteen-year-old Stephen is coming into his sexuality, constructing selves and cruising in the fantasyscape of the internet. Through strange, intimate, and sometimes perilous physical encounters with the hundreds of men he finds there, Stephen explores the pleasures and pains of growing up, contends with his mother's homophobia and early death, and ultimately searches for a way of being in the world. Spanning twelve years, the book takes the form of a very long annotated list, tracking Stephen's journey and the men he meets from adolescence in New Mexico to post-recession adulthood in Los Angeles, creating a multi-dimensional panorama of gay men's lives as he searches for glimpses of utopia in the available world. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Farah Ali, ”PEOPLE WANT TO LIVE” w/ Ahsan Butt

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 18:15:44 -0800

People Want to Live, Farah Ali’s debut collection, features stories of togetherness and reckless faith in the face of a world that’s built to break us.

Set in Pakistan, these award-winning stories follow people living on the brink of abandonment—in their personal relationships and their place in the world. A mother, coping with the sudden death of her son, uncovers long-buried secrets in his absence. An anguished girl grabs a chance for a life beyond the orphanage walls where she lives, and discovers the price of freedom. A young couple tries to keep their fraught relationship intact as a heat wave engulfs their city. A son returns to visit his aging parents while beset with memories of a troubled childhood. And two thieves find themselves in a situation more precarious by the minute, and more dangerous than their original mission. In this episode, Ali discusses her collection with Ahsan Butt. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Molly Peacock, ”FLOWER DIARY” w/ Donna Bailey Nurse

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:11:47 -0800

Molly Peacock uncovers the history of neglected painter Mary Hiester Reid, a trailblazing artist who refused to choose between marriage and a career. Born into a patrician American family in the middle of the nineteenth century, Mary Hiester Reid was determined to be a painter and left behind women's design schools to enter the art world of men. Peacock uses her poet's skill to create a structurally inventive portrait of this extraordinary woman whom modernism almost swept aside, weaving threads of her own marriage with Hiester Reid's, following the history of empathy and examining how women manage the demands of creativity and domesticity, coping with relationships, stoves, and steamships, too. How do you make room for art when you must go to the market to buy a chicken for dinner? Hiester Reid had her answers, as Peacock gloriously discovers in Flower Diary. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Jan Beatty, ”AMERICAN BASTARD” w/ Elena Karina Byrne

Mon, 15 Nov 2021 15:20:27 -0800

American Bastard is a lyrical inquiry into the experience of being a bastard in America. This memoir travels across literal continents--and continents of desire as Jan Beatty finds her birthfather, a Canadian hockey player who's won three Stanley Cups--and her birthmother, a working-class woman from Pittsburgh. This is not the whitewashed story, but the real story, where Beatty writes through complete erasure: loss of name and history, and a culture based on the currency of gratitude as expected payment from the adoptee. American Bastard sandblasts the exaltation of adoption in Western culture and the myth of the "chosen baby." This journey into the relationship of place and body compels and unhinges, with the link between identity and blood history as its driving force. Beatty rescripts the order of things: the horizontal world of the birth table where babies are switched, the complex yard of the body where names and blood shift and revolt, and the actual story into the relationship of place and the insurrection of the body erased. Issues of class and struggle run throughout this book, this narrative river between blood and continents, between work and desire. In this episode, Beatty is in conversation with Elena Karina Byrne. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Mina Seckin, ”FOUR HUMORS” w/ Hilary Leichter

Wed, 10 Nov 2021 15:58:07 -0800

Twenty-year-old Sibel thought she had concrete plans for the summer. She would care for her grandmother in Istanbul, visit her father’s grave, and study for the MCAT. Instead, she finds herself watching Turkish soap operas and self-diagnosing her own possible chronic illness with the four humors theory of ancient medicine.

Also on Sibel’s mind: her blond American boyfriend who accompanies her to Turkey; her energetic but distraught younger sister; and her devoted grandmother, who, Sibel comes to learn, carries a harrowing secret.

Delving into her family’s history, the narrative weaves through periods of political unrest in Turkey, from military coups to the Gezi Park protests. Told with pathos and humor, Sibel’s search for strange and unusual cures is disrupted as she begins to see how she might heal herself through the care of others, including her own family and its long-fractured relationships. In this episode of Skylit, author Mina Seckin discusses her novel Four Humors with Hilary Leichter. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Mansoor Adayfi, ”DON‘T FORGET US HERE” w/ Antonio Aiello

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 05:36:00 -0800

At the age of 18, Mansoor Adayfi left his home in Yemen for a cultural mission to Afghanistan. He never returned. Kidnapped by warlords and then sold to the US after 9/11, he was disappeared to Guantánamo Bay, where he spent the next 14 years as Detainee #441.
Don't Forget Us Here tells two coming-of-age stories in parallel: a makeshift island outpost becoming the world's most notorious prison and an innocent young man emerging from its darkness. Arriving as a stubborn teenager, Mansoor survived the camp's infamous interrogation program and became a feared and hardened resistance fighter leading prison riots and hunger strikes. With time though, he grew into the man nicknamed "Smiley Troublemaker": a student, writer, advocate, and historian. While at Guantánamo, he wrote a series of manuscripts he sent as letters to his attorneys, which he then transformed into this vital chronicle, in collaboration with award-winning writer Antonio Aiello. With unexpected warmth and empathy, Mansoor unwinds a narrative of fighting for hope and survival in unimaginable circumstances, illuminating the limitlessness of the human spirit. In this episode of Skylit, Adayfi is in conversation with Antonio Aiello. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Jake Jabbour, ”TRAINING TO BE MYSELF”

Fri, 05 Nov 2021 14:56:29 -0700

At thirty-three, comedian and educator Jake Jabbour found himself living alone after a breakup with his girlfriend and burying his grandpa. His most impactful relationships ended, stripping from him his identities as a roommate, boyfriend, and grandson. Hoping to discover who he was when he wasn't himself, Jake boarded an Amtrak train with his comedy partner to perform live improv across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, examining the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of his past that landed him alone in the most crowded cities in the country.

In the lineage of Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live and John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, Training to Be Myself chronicles Jabbour's cross-country travels with an eye trained towards relationships and culture, searching for clues and connections with others that might shine a light on his own identity. Along the way, Jake lays bare his thoughts on grief, nostalgia, family, failure, comedy, education, relationships, culture, and self-acceptance. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Erin Osmon, ”JOHN PRINE (33 1/3)” w/ Steven Hyden

Wed, 03 Nov 2021 14:45:31 -0700

He is known as the Mark Twain of American songwriting, a man who transformed the everyday happenings of regular people into plainly profound statements on war, industrialization, religion, and the human condition. Marking the 50th anniversary of the album's release, John Prine chronicles the legendary singer-songwriter's Middle American provenance, and his remarkable ascent from singing mailman to celebrated son of Chicago."Illegal Smile," "Hello in There," "Sam Stone," "Paradise," "Your Flag Decal Won't Get You Into Heaven Anymore," "Far from Me," "Donald and Lydia," and "Angel from Montgomery" are considered standards in the American Songbook, covered by legions of Prine's peers and admirers. Through original interviews, exhaustive research, and incisive commentary, author Erin Osmon paints an in-depth portrait of the people, places, and experiences that inspired Prine's landmark debut. Erin discusses her entry in the 33 1/3 series with music author/journalist Steven Hyden. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Melissa Lozada-Oliva, ”DREAMING OF YOU”

Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:47:46 -0700

Melissa Lozada-Oliva's Dreaming of You is an absurd yet heartfelt examination of celebrity worship.

A young Latinx poet grappling with loneliness and heartache decides one day to bring Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla back to life. The séance kicks off an uncanny trip narrated by a Greek chorus of gossiping spirits as she journeys through a dead celebrity prom, encounters her shadow self, and performs karaoke in hell.

In visceral poems embodying millennial angst, paragraph-long conversations overheard at her local coffeeshop, and unhinged Twitter rants, Lozada-Oliva reveals an eerie, sometimes gruesome, yet moving love story.

Playfully morbid and profoundly candid, an interrogation of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment, Dreaming of You grapples with the cost of being seen for your truest self. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Sebastian Moya, ”BLUETO”

Fri, 29 Oct 2021 11:22:08 -0700

Poet Sebastian Moya reads from and discusses his upcoming poetry collection BlueTo with Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Beth Gilstrap, ”DEADHEADING” w/ Steph Post

Wed, 27 Oct 2021 10:51:09 -0700

Irrevocably tied to the Carolinas, Deadheading and Other Stories tells tales of the woebegone, their obsessions with decay, and the haunting ache of the region itself—the land of the dwindling pines, the isolation inherent in the mountains and foothills, and the loneliness of boomtowns. Predominantly working-class women challenge the status quo by rejecting any lingering expectations or romantic notions of Southern femininity. Small businesses are failing. Factories are closing. Money is tight. The threat of violence lingers for women and girls. Through their collective grief, heartache, and unsettling circumstances, many of these characters become feral and hell-bent on survival. Beth Gilstrap’s prose teems with wildness and lyricism, showing the Southern gothic tradition of storytelling is alive and feverishly unwell in the twenty-first century. Gilstrap is in conversation with author Steph Post. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Jonathan Alexander, ”STROKE BOOK”/”BULLIED” w/ Julietta Singh

Mon, 25 Oct 2021 15:50:03 -0700

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussions of homophobia and child abuse. Jonathan Alexander is a writer living in Southern California where he is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books. His cultural journalism has been widely published, especially in the Los Angeles Review of Books for which he is the Young Adult editor, where founding editor Tom Lutz called him one of “our finest essayists.” In this episode, Alexander discusses his two new works, Stroke Book and Bullied, both published in 2021. He is in conversation with Julietta Singh, author three books, most recently The Breaks. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Christian James Madsen, ”TO THE TORCHES” w/ Elaine Madsen

Fri, 22 Oct 2021 13:47:26 -0700

Poet Christian James Madsen discusses his poetry collection, To the Torches, with his grandmother, Elaine Madsen. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Savannah Johnston, ”RITES” w/ Addie Tsai

Thu, 21 Oct 2021 10:15:45 -0700

In Rites, a collection of short stories that focuses on the modern-day experiences of Indigenous people living in Oklahoma, Savannah Johnston documents the quiet sorrow of everyday life as her characters traverse the normalized, heartbreaking rites of passage such as burying your grandfather, mother, or husband, becoming a sex worker, or reconnecting with your family after prison; the effects are subtle, yet loud, and always enduring. Whether Johnston's characters are coming of age and/or grappling with complex family dynamics, Johnston delivers the economy of loss and resilience that marks this post-colonial collection with biting, captivating prose that demands to be read from start to finish. Johnston discusses her collection in this episode with Addie Tsai. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Susanna Newbury, ”THE SPECULATIVE CITY” w/ Cole Akers

Mon, 18 Oct 2021 13:47:31 -0700

Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City, Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one another’s evolution. She compellingly articulates how together they transformed the Southland, establishing the foundation for its contemporary art infrastructure, and explains how artists came to influence Los Angeles’s burgeoning definition as the global city of the twenty-first century.

Pairing particular works of art with specific innovations in real estate development, The Speculative City reveals the connections between real estate and contemporary art as they constructed Los Angeles’s present-day cityscape. From banal parking lots to Frank Gehry’s designs for artists’ studios and museums, Newbury examines pivotal interventions by artists and architects, city officials and cultural philanthropists, concluding with an examination of how, in the wake of the 2008 global credit crisis, contemporary art emerged as a financial asset to fuel private wealth and urban gentrification.

Newbury is in conversation with Cole Akers.

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SKYLIT: Malia Márquez, ”THIS FIERCE BLOOD” w/ Michael Zapata

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 05:17:00 -0700

In rural late-nineteenth-century New England, Wilhelmina Sylte is a settler starting a family with her Norwegian immigrant husband. When she forms an inexplicable connection with a mountain lion and her cubs living near their farm, Mina grapples with divided loyalties and the mysterious bond she shares with the animals.

In 1927 in southern Colorado, Josepa is accused of witchcraft by a local priest for using the healing practices passed down from her Native mother. Fighting for her family’s reputation and way of life, Sepa finds strength in worldly and otherworldly sources.

When Magdalena, an ecologist, inherits her great-grandmother Wilhelmina’s Vermont property, she and her astrophysicist husband decide to turn the old farm into a summer science camp for teens. As Magda struggles with both personal and professional responsibilities, the boundary between science and myth begins to blur.

Rich in historical and cultural detail, This Fierce Blood combines magical realism with themes of maternal ancestral inheritance, and also explores the ways Hispano/Indigenous traditions both conflicted and wove together, shaping the distinctive character of the American Southwest. Readers of Téa Obreht and Ruth Ozeki will find much to admire in this debut novel. Author Malia Márquez is in conversation with Michael Zapata. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

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SKYLIT: Janice Lee & Gabrielle Civil

Wed, 13 Oct 2021 13:18:07 -0700

In the face of a slow but impending apocalypse, what binds three seemingly divergent lives (a writer, a photographer, an old man), isn’t the commonality of a perceived future death, but the layered and complex fabric of how loss, abuse, trauma, and death have shaped their pasts, and how these pasts continue to haunt their present moments, a moment in which time seems to be running out. The writer, traumatized by the violent death of her mother when she was a child, lives alone with her dog and struggles to finish her book. The photographer, stunted by the death of his grandmother and caretaker, struggles to take a single picture and enters into a complicated relationship with the writer. The old man, facing his past in small doses, spends his time watching television and reorganizing the objects in his apartment to stay distracted from the deterioration around him. A depiction of the cycles of abuse and trauma in a prolonged end-time, Janice Lee's Imagine a Death examines the ways in which our pasts envelop us, the ways in which we justify horrible things in the name of survival, all of the horrible and beautiful things we are capable of when we are hurt and broken, and the animal (and plant) companions that ground us. How can you return to where you've never been? ( GHOST GESTURES ) conjures diaspora hauntings and traces black bodies across space and time. In Dakar and Banjul, Detroit and Montreal, Tlaxcala and Río Piedras, Gabrielle Civil showcases black bodies dancing, hiding, and re-emerging. In performance writing, she invokes the doll, the queen, and the ghost to explore where black women have never and always been. She plays hide-and-seek with her own transforming body and tackles history, identity, art, and desire. bring this here / bring this back / keep this here / bring us back / bring us here / bring us back to this. Incorporating chants, notations, images, and scores, ( GHOST GESTURES ) will spirit you away. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Maria Amparo Escandon, ”L.A. Weather”

Tue, 12 Oct 2021 15:53:41 -0700

L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He’s harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters—Claudia, a television chef with a hard-hearted attitude; Olivia, a successful architect who suffers from gentrification guilt; and Patricia, a social media wizard who has an uncanny knack for connecting with audiences but not with her lovers—are blindsided and left questioning everything they know. Each will have to take a critical look at her own relationships and make some tough decisions along the way.

In L.A. Weather, with quick wit and humor, Maria Amparo Escandón follows the Alvarado family as they wrestle with impending evacuations, secrets, deception, and betrayal, and their toughest decision yet: whether to stick together or burn it all down. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Cass Sunstein, ”SLUDGE”

Sat, 09 Oct 2021 12:19:26 -0700

We've all had to fight our way through administrative sludge--filling out complicated online forms, mailing in paperwork, standing in line at the motor vehicle registry. This kind of red tape is a nuisance, but, as Cass Sunstein shows in Sludge, it can also also impair health, reduce growth, entrench poverty, and exacerbate inequality. Confronted by sludge, people just give up--and lose a promised outcome: a visa, a job, a permit, an educational opportunity, necessary medical help. In this lively and entertaining look at the terribleness of sludge, Sunstein explains what we can do to reduce it. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Pornsak Pichetshote, ”THE GOOD ASIAN”

Wed, 06 Oct 2021 15:18:39 -0700

Writer PORNSAK PICHETSHOTE's long-awaited follow-up to the critically acclaimed INFIDEL with stunning art by ALEXANDRE TEFENKGI (OUTPOST ZERO) Following Edison Hark , a haunted, self-loathing Chinese-American detective on the trail of a killer in 1936 Chinatown, THE GOOD ASIAN is Chinatown noir starring the first generation of Americans to come of age under an immigration ban, the Chinese, as they're besieged by rampant murders, abusive police, and a world that seemingly never changes. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: August McLaughlin & Jamila Dawson, ”WITH PLEASURE”

Mon, 04 Oct 2021 14:54:44 -0700

With Pleasure: Managing Trauma Triggers for More Vibrant Sex and Relationships is a companion for anyone experiencing the effects of trauma. Through true survivor stories, expert insight, writing prompts, and grounding exercises, it explores pleasure, relationships, and community as worthy and essential antidotes in trying times.

Written by trauma-informed sex therapist Jamila Dawson, LMFT, and sexuality journalist and podcaster August McLaughlin, With Pleasure provides a much-needed alternative to harmful “self-help” ideologies that instruct people to “change their thoughts” or “choose to be happy.”

Instead, Dawson and McLaughlin encourage readers to respect their feelings, understand the complexities of a society and systems that fuel trauma, foster self-compassion, and embrace pleasure. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Tanya Ko Hong, ”THE WAR STILL WITHIN”

Fri, 01 Oct 2021 12:44:50 -0700

The War Still Within is Tanya Ko Hong's fifth book, and contains 36 poems (25 of which are reprinted from a range of literary venues). This collection also includes "Comfort Woman," her well researched and vividly imagined sequence of six poems based on the experiences of the Korean "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Ramy Youssef w/ Lance Morgan

Wed, 29 Sep 2021 12:49:35 -0700

Join comedian, writer, and actor Ramy Youssef as he discusses the writing process with Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Shy Watson, ”HORROR VACUI”

Tue, 28 Sep 2021 12:44:19 -0700

Join poet Shy Watson as she discusses her new collection, Horror Vacui.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Tracy Swinton Bailey, ”FOREVER FREE”

Mon, 27 Sep 2021 12:49:21 -0700

At the root of every important problem we face, from mass incarceration to income inequality, is an education system influenced by our nation’s fraught history. Just as past generations fought to ensure that all Americans could enjoy the right to fully participate in our democracy, so must we rally tirelessly to advance an educational agenda that promotes equity and inclusion. With the gap between white academic achievement and that of students of color widening, now is the time to turn our attention to the basics, and few would argue with the fact that the single most essential aspect of a good education is literacy. Beyond reading and writing, literacy encompasses a whole host of skills that allow us to develop our potential and succeed in society, including critical thinking, self-discipline, curiosity, leadership, and motivation. Helping all our nation’s young people, especially those who live in low-income communities, improve their literacy skills should be a top priority.

Numerous programs are operating around the country to address the issue of underperformance in light of the shortcomings of our public school system. In Forever Free, Tracy Swinton Bailey charts the journey of one such program, her nonprofit Freedom Readers. From a childhood shaped by books to a career promoting the love of reading, she describes the hurdles and rewards of academia, teaching, mobilizing, and fundraising. Bailey outlines clearly and persuasively how Freedom Readers’ one-to-one tutoring model has worked in the rural South, and how it can work across the US. This book will inspire and empower readers, and should be placed in the hands of educators and organizers at every level. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, Natalie Freeman, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jonathan Wells, ”THE SKINNY” w/ David St. John

Wed, 22 Sep 2021 15:21:26 -0700

Upstate New York in the 1970s: A boy in preparatory day school suffers a harrowing attack by a teacher offended by his failure to put on weight. For the first time in his young life, Jonathan Wells is forced to question his right to take up space in the world. Jonathan's father, reading his weight as a clear and deeply concerning deficit of masculinity, creates a workout regimen meant to bulk him up. When that doesn't help, he has Jonathan seen by a slew of specialists, all claiming he is in perfect health, and yet the problem cannot be denied: the boy is simply too skinny.

Jonathan's complicated relationship with his charming but elusive mother does not help matters. As the eldest son, he is privy to the struggles of a fraying marriage in which he, unwittingly, plays a divisive role. As a result, Jonathan is sent to boarding school in Switzerland, where he manages to establish an identity of his own among the child exiles and outcasts that make up the student body. And yet, his father's obsession follows him to Europe, threatening to destroy the space he has painstakingly won for himself.

The Skinny author Jonathan Wells discusses his novel with David St. John. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: James Sie, ”ALL KINDS OF OTHER”

Mon, 20 Sep 2021 14:51:54 -0700

Two boys are starting over at a new high school. Jules is still figuring out what it means to be gay…and just how out he wants to be. Jack is reeling from a fall-out with his best friend…and isn’t ready to let anyone else in just yet.

When Jules and Jack meet, the sparks are undeniable. But when a video linking Jack to a pair of popular trans vloggers is leaked to the school, the revelations thrust both boys into the spotlight they’d tried to avoid.

Suddenly Jack and Jules must face a choice: to play it safe and stay under the radar, or claim their own space in the world—together.

Join us for a conversation with All Kinds of Other author James Sie.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Darrel J. McLeod, ”PEYAKOW”

Sat, 18 Sep 2021 05:38:00 -0700

In Mamaskatch, Darrel J. McLeod captured an early childhood full of the stories, scents, and sensations of his great-grandfather's cabin, as well as the devastating separation from family, ensuing abuse, and eventual loss of his mother that permeated his adolescence. In the equally potent Peyakow, McLeod follows a young man through many seasons of his life, navigating an ever-turbulent personal and political landscape filled with loss, love, addiction, and perseverance.
Weaving together the past and the present through powerful, linked chapters, McLeod confronts how both the personal traumas of his youth and the historical traumas of his ancestral line impact the trajectory of his life. With unwavering and heart-wrenching honesty, Peyakow--Cree for "one who walks alone"--recounts how one man carries the spirit of his family through the lifelong process of healing. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Rafia Zakaria, ”AGAINST WHITE FEMINISM”

Tue, 14 Sep 2021 05:34:00 -0700

Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as “experts” on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority. An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism’s global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Shugri Said Salh, ”THE LAST NOMAD”

Mon, 13 Sep 2021 05:44:00 -0700

Born in Somalia, a spare daughter in a large family, Shugri Said Salh was sent at age six to live with her nomadic grandmother in the desert. The last of her family to learn this once-common way of life, Salh found herself chasing warthogs, climbing termite hills, herding goats, and moving constantly in search of water and grazing lands with her nomadic family. For Salh, though the desert was a harsh place threatened by drought, predators, and enemy clans, it also held beauty, innovation, centuries of tradition, and a way for a young Sufi girl to learn courage and independence from a fearless group of relatives. Salh grew to love the freedom of roaming with her animals and the powerful feeling of community found in nomadic rituals and the oral storytelling of her ancestors.

As she came of age, though, both she and her beloved Somalia were forced to confront change, violence, and instability. Salh writes with engaging frankness and a fierce feminism of trying to break free of the patriarchal beliefs of her culture, of her forced female genital mutilation, of the loss of her mother, and of her growing need for independence. Taken from the desert by her strict father and then displaced along with millions of others by the Somali Civil War, Salh fled first to a refugee camp on the Kenyan border and ultimately to North America to learn yet another way of life.

Readers will fall in love with Salh on the page as she tells her inspiring story about leaving Africa, learning English, finding love, and embracing a new horizon for herself and her family. Honest and tender, The Last Nomad is a riveting coming-of-age story of resilience, survival, and the shifting definitions of home. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Camille Roy, ”HONEY MINE” w/ Michelle Tea

Wed, 08 Sep 2021 15:59:40 -0700

A content warning for this episode: discussions of sexual assault and incest. Honey Mine unfolds as both excavation and romp, an adventure story that ushers readers into a lesbian writer's coming of age through disorienting, unsparing, and exhilarating encounters with sex, gender, and distinctly American realities of race and class. From childhood in Chicago's South Side to youth in the lesbian underground, Roy's politics find joyful and transgressive expression in the liberatory potential of subculture. Find here, in these new, uncollected and out-of-print fictions by a master of New Narrative, a record of survival and thriving under conditions of danger. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Margret Grebowicz, ”MOUNTAINS AND DESIRE”

Sun, 05 Sep 2021 17:07:57 -0700

Today the question "why do this?" is included in nearly every mountaineering story or interview. Meanwhile, interest in climbing is steadily on the rise, from commercial mountaineering and climbing walls in university gyms and corporate workplaces to the flood of spectacular climbing imagery in advertising, cinema, and social media. Climbing has become the theater for imagining limits—of the human body and of the planet— and the nature of desire, motivation, and #goals.

Covering the degradation of Everest, the banning of climbing on Australia’s Uluru, UNESCO’s decision to name alpinism an Intangible Cultural Heritage, the sudden death of Ueli Steck, and the commercial and critical success of Free Solo, Mountains and Desire chases after what remains of this pursuit – marred by its colonial history, coopted by nationalistic chauvinism, ableism, and the capitalist compulsion to unlimited growth – for both climbers and their fans. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Lucy J Santos, ”HALF LIVES”

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 05:40:00 -0700

Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the nineteenth century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal.

Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item – a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in- the-dark dance costume – to its role as a supposed cure-all in everyday twentieth-century life, when medical practitioners and business people (reputable and otherwise) devised ingenious ways of commodifying the new wonder element, and enthusiastic customers welcomed their radioactive wares into their homes.

Lucy Jane Santos—herself the proud owner of a formidable collection of radium beauty treatments—delves into the stories of these products and details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold and eventually came to fear the once-fetishized substance. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Alix Ohlin, ”WE WANT WHAT WE WANT”

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 13:43:36 -0700

Populated with imperfect families, burned potential, and inescapable old flames, the thirteen stories in Alix Ohlin's We Want What We Want are, each one, diamond-sharp--sparkling with pain, humor, and beauty. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: NYU Poetry Program Reading

Mon, 30 Aug 2021 14:09:10 -0700

Join the NYU Creative Writing Poetry Program for a group reading, led by Garrett Kurai. Participants include: Aaron Balkan, Nellie Bridge, Taj M. Greenlee, Viola Lee, Lucyna Prostko, Rodrigo Rojas, and Sara Wallace. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Keenan Norris, "THE CONFESSION OF COPELAND CANE" w/ Tongo Eisen-Martin

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 13:27:11 -0700

Copeland Cane V, the child who fell outta Colored People Time and into America, is a fugitive... He is also just a regular teenager coming up in a terrifying world. A slightly eccentric, flip-phone loving kid with analog tendencies and a sideline hustling sneakers, the boundaries of Copeland's life are demarcated from the jump by urban toxicity, an educational apparatus with confounding intentions, and a police state that has merged with media conglomerates--the highly-rated Insurgency Alert Desk that surveils and harasses his neighborhood in the name of anti-terrorism.
Recruited by the nearby private school even as he and his folks face eviction, Copeland is doing his damnedest to do right by himself, for himself. And yet the forces at play entrap him in a reality that chews up his past and obscures his future. Copeland's wry awareness of the absurd keeps life passable, as do his friends and their surprising array of survival skills. And yet in the aftermath of a protest rally against police violence, everything changes, and Copeland finds himself caught in the flood of history.
Set in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America becomes a startling reflection of our present moment. Author Keenan Norris is in conversation with Tongo Eisen-Martin. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jon Hale, "THE CHOICE WE FACE" w/ Eddie Cole

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 08:26:37 -0700

Most Americans today see school choice as their inalienable right. In The Choice We Face, scholar Jon Hale reveals what most fail to see: school choice is grounded in a complex history of race, exclusion, and inequality. Through evaluating historic and contemporary education policies, Hale demonstrates how reframing the way we see school choice represents an opportunity to evolve from complicity to action.

The idea of school choice, which emerged in the 1950s during the civil rights movement, was disguised by American rhetoric as a symbol of freedom and individualism. Shaped by the ideas of conservative economist Milton Friedman, the school choice movement was a weapon used to oppose integration and maintain racist and classist inequalities. Still supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, this policy continues to shape American education in nuanced ways, Hale shows—from the expansion of for-profit charter schools and civil rights–based reform efforts to the appointment of Betsy DeVos.

Hale is in conversation with Eddie Cole. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Nawaaz Ahmed, "RADIANT FUGITIVES" w/ Natashia Deón

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 05:01:00 -0700

Working as a consultant for Kamala Harris’s attorney general campaign in Obama-era San Francisco, Seema has constructed a successful life for herself in the West, despite still struggling with her father’s long-ago decision to exile her from the family after she came out as lesbian. Now, nine months pregnant and estranged from the Black father of her unborn son, Seema seeks solace in the company of those she once thought lost to her: her ailing mother, Nafeesa, traveling alone to California from Chennai, and her devoutly religious sister, Tahera, a doctor living in Texas with her husband and children.

But instead of a joyful reconciliation anticipating the birth of a child, the events of this fateful week unearth years of betrayal, misunderstanding, and complicated layers of love—a tapestry of emotions as riveting and disparate as the era itself.

Told from the point of view of Seema’s child at the moment of his birth, and infused with the poetry of Wordsworth and Keats and verses from the Quran, Radiant Fugitives is a moving tale of a family and a country grappling with acceptance, forgiveness, and enduring love. Author Nawaaz Ahmed discusses Radiant Fugitives with Natashia Deón. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Benjamin Hedin, "UNDER THE SPELL" w/ Maaza Mengiste

Fri, 20 Aug 2021 16:33:14 -0700

Under the Spell is the first novel by Benjamin Hedin, a dazzling new voice in American fiction. Newly widowed Sandra is searching her husband’s email for financial information when she discovers a correspondence between him and a woman named Ryan. Rather than simply sharing the news of the death, Sandra, who is shocked and hungry for details, instead impersonates her husband as she writes back to Ryan. This bold course of action will expose the secrets and solitude within her marriage, prompting her to reconsider everything she once held dear.

Unmoored and seeking connection, Sandra also meets Lee, a single mother with a drinking problem, and begins babysitting her daughter. But Sandra can’t stop herself from continuing the correspondence with Ryan, in the process uncovering more about her husband—and Ryan herself. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Pedro Mairal, "THE WOMAN FROM URUGUAY" w/ Jennifer Croft

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 04:05:00 -0700

Lucas Pereyra, an unemployed writer in his forties, embarks on a day trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo to pick up fifteen thousand dollars in cash. An advance due to him on his upcoming novel, the small fortune might mean the solution to his problems, most importantly the tension he has with his wife. While she spends her days at work and her nights out on the town-with a lover, perhaps, he doesn't know for sure-Lucas is stuck at home all day staring at the blank page, caring for his son Maiko and fantasizing about the one thing that keeps him going: the woman from Uruguay whom he met at a conference and has been longing to see ever since.

But that woman, Magalí Guerra Zabala, is a free spirit with her own relationship troubles, and the day they spend together in this beautiful city on the beach winds up being nothing like Lucas predicted. The constantly surprising, moving story of this dramatically transformative day in their lives, The Woman from Uruguay is both a gripping narrative and a tender, thought-provoking exploration of the nature of relationships. An international bestseller published in fourteen countries, it is the masterpiece from Pedro Mairal, one of the most original voices in Latin American literature today. Mairal is in conversation with the translator of The Woman from Uruguay, Jennifer Croft. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Allyson Brantley, "BREWING A BOYCOTT"

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 13:11:36 -0700

In the late twentieth century, nothing united union members, progressive students, Black and Chicano activists, Native Americans, feminists, and members of the LGBTQ+ community quite as well as Coors beer. They came together not in praise of the ice cold beverage but rather to fight a common enemy: the Colorado-based Coors Brewing Company. Wielding the consumer boycott as their weapon of choice, activists targeted Coors for allegations of antiunionism, discrimination, and conservative political ties. Over decades of organizing and coalition-building from the 1950s to the 1990s, anti-Coors activists molded the boycott into a powerful means of political protest.

In Brewing a Boycott, the first narrative history of one of the longest boycott campaigns in U.S. history, Allyson P. Brantley draws from a broad archive as well as oral history interviews with long-time boycotters to offer a compelling, grassroots view of anti-corporate organizing and the unlikely coalitions that formed in opposition to the iconic Rocky Mountain brew. The story highlights the vibrancy of activism in the final decades of the twentieth century and the enduring legacy of that organizing for communities, consumer activists, and corporations today.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Marissa Levien, "THE WORLD GIVES WAY"

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 05:15:00 -0700

In fifty years, Myrra will be free.

Until then, she's a contract worker. Ever since she was five, her life and labor have belonged to the highest bidder on her contract—butchers, laundries, and now the powerful, secretive Carlyles.

But when one night finds the Carlyles dead, Myrra is suddenly free a lot sooner than she anticipated—and at a cost she never could have imagined. Burdened with the Carlyles' orphaned daughter and the terrible secret they died to escape, she runs. With time running out, Myrra must come face to face with the truth about her world—and embrace what's left before it's too late.

A sweeping novel with a darkly glimmering heart, The World Gives Way is an unforgettable portrait of a world in freefall, and the fierce drive to live even at the end of it all. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Brenda Miller, "A BRAIDED HEART" w/ Susanne Paola Antonetta

Tue, 10 Aug 2021 03:12:00 -0700

A Braided Heart provides a friendly, personal, and smart guide to the writing life. It also offers clear and original instruction on craft elements at the forefront of today’s emerging forms in creative nonfiction: from the short-short, to the braided form, to the hermit crab essay. An acknowledged expert in these forms, Brenda Miller gives writers practical advice on how to sustain and invigorate their writing practice, while also encouraging readers to explore their own writing lives. Miller is in conversation with Susanne Paola Antonetta. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Beth Morgan, "A TOUCH OF JEN"

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 05:42:00 -0700

Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia's entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart.

Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Once there, Remy and Alicia try (a little too hard) to fit into Jen’s exalted social circle, but violent desire and class resentment bubble beneath the surface of this beachside paradise, threatening to erupt. As small disturbances escalate into outright horror, we find ourselves tumbling with Remy and Alicia into an uncanny alternate reality, one shaped by their most unspeakable, deviant, and intoxicating fantasies. Is this what “self-actualization” looks like?

Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, Beth Morgan's A Touch of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Calvin Leonard, "FOR THE LOVE OF FILM"

Thu, 05 Aug 2021 05:02:00 -0700

Join photographer Calvin Leonard as he discusses his new book, For the Love of Film, with Skylight's own Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: "NEPANTLA FAMILIAS" Group Reading

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 10:32:40 -0700

Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds—how the authors or their characters create, or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla—or living in the in-between space of the borderland—is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life—the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity. Join us for a group reading featuring key contributors from the collection. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: UC Riverside MFA Panel

Sat, 31 Jul 2021 08:32:00 -0700

Join Rachel Will, Bridgette Bianca, Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, and Sarah LaBrie as they discuss life before, during, and after the MFA, as well the current state of their careers. Co-hosted by the UC Riverside MFA program. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Christina Catherine Martinez, "AESTHETICAL RELATIONS" w/ Isabel Slone

Thu, 29 Jul 2021 05:59:00 -0700

AESTHETICAL RELATIONS is a constellation of essays on art, fashion, cancer, comedy, Los Angeles, and your mom. Christina Catherine Martinez whips elements of fiction and stand up material into bits and pieces addressing both the critical and personal; including how many times you may kiss an art-world acquaintance, the theoretical stakes of sexting, and why German performance art is quite like French clowning. AESTHETICAL RELATIONS is titled after Martinez's ongoing conceptual comedy talk show of the same name. Martinez is in conversation with Isabel Slone. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Daphne A. Brooks, "LINER NOTES FOR THE REVOLUTION" w/ Lynell George

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 16:14:00 -0700

Daphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics, collectors, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible, she asks, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyonc exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry?
Liner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures--a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers. Zora Neale Hurston appears as a sound archivist and a performer, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer Black feminist critic of modern culture, and Pauline Hopkins as America's first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording, song collecting, and rock and roll criticism. She makes lyrical forays into the blues pioneers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith, as well as fans who became critics, like the record-label entrepreneur and writer Rosetta Reitz. In the twenty-first century, pop superstar Janelle Monae's liner notes are recognized for their innovations, while celebrated singers C cile McLorin Salvant, Rhiannon Giddens, and Valerie June take their place as cultural historians.
Brooks is in conversation with Lynell George, and also curated a companion playlist to Liner Notes, which you can listen to here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5pPpJViwMlAjvxsMymDDWv?si=mTt4sXj9QqK6qHQtTixH7Q _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Joseph Rodriguez, "LAPD: 1994" w/ Ruben Martinez

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 15:56:10 -0700

In 1994, the New York Times Magazine assigned Joseph Rodriguez to ride along with cops from the Los Angeles Police Department, photographing them at work. This was just two years after the protests that erupted when four officers were acquitted on charges of beating Rodney King, and LAPD needed a public image makeover.

The photographs, now compiled in LAPD: 1994, tell a story about the power imbalance between police and the community, the constant tension between the stated goal of “protecting and serving” and the reality of police violence. From behind my camera, Rodriguez saw how decades of profiling, racism, and brutality had led to deep distrust in many communities—distrust that the LAPD’s mild attempts at reform couldn’t even touch. The photos capture a particularly turbulent time for the LAPD, just after several very public corruption scandals in addition to the charges of police brutality brought to light by the video of Rodney King’s beating.

Rodgriguez discusses his photographs with Ruben Martinez.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Joie Davidow, "AN UNOFFICIAL MARRIAGE" w/ Esmerelda Santiago

Wed, 21 Jul 2021 13:18:30 -0700

Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous events of 19th century Europe, An Unofficial Marriage dramatizes the equally tumultuous real-life love affair of two great artists—the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev, and the celebrated French opera singer, Pauline Viardot. From the moment he encounters her on the St. Petersburg stage, Ivan falls completely for Pauline. Though Pauline returns his feelings, she is bound by her singular passion for her art and her devotion to her gentle, older husband, Louis. Nevertheless, Ivan pursues Pauline across countries and continents—from Russia to France to Germany to Prussia—and in the decades that follow their fateful meeting, the lives of Pauline, Ivan, and Louis remain permanently intertwined as the lovers face jealousy, separation, the French Revolution of 1848, the cholera epidemic of 1849, the Franco-Prussian War, Turgenev’s arrest in Russia, Louis’s heartbreak and resignation, and the highs and lows of their artistic careers. “You know those unofficial marriages,” Turgenev would write almost thirty years after meeting Pauline, “They sometimes turn out more poisonous than the accepted form.”

With beautiful and compelling prose and employing multiple perspectives, Joie Davidow (who herself has a background in opera) illuminates not only the interior lives of these two intensely passionate artists, but also the grand historic moments that Pauline and Ivan experienced and the celebrated figures who moved in their circles—including George Sand, Leo Tolstoy, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Ary Scheffer—providing insight into the dynamic worlds of 19th century opera, literature, art, and politics. Epic in the tradition of the Russian writers whom we encounter, and as romantic and tragic as the operas that Pauline Viardot performs in, An Unofficial Marriage brings to life with great scope and great humanity this captivating story from the past and explores timeless questions about the relationship between art and passion and the complex workings of the human heart. Davidow is in conversation with Esmerelda Santiago. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Miriam Feldman, "HE CAME IN WITH IT" w/ Jen Pastiloff

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 14:07:30 -0700

In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations of families enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O'Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens permanently off the conventional course.

Like the ten Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another, violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning...even cancer and a brain tumor...play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal of artmaking and drugs. With no time for hand-wringing, Miriam advances, convinced she can fix everything, while a devastated Craig retreats to their property in rural Washington State as home becomes a battlefield.

It is while cleaning out a closet, that Miriam discovers a cache of drawings and journals written by Nick throughout his spiral into schizophrenia. She begins a solitary forensic journey into the lonely labyrinth of his mind.

This is the story of how mental illness unspools an entire family. As Miriam fights to reclaim her son from the ruthless, invisible enemy, we are given an unflinching view into a world few could imagine. It exposes the shocking shortfalls of our mental health system, the destructive impact of stigma, shame and isolation, and, finally, the falsity of the notion of a perfect family. Throughout the book, it is the family's ability to find humor in the absurdities of this life that saves them. It is a parable that illustrates the true definition of a good life, allowing for the blemishes and mistakes that are part of the universal human condition. He Came In With It is the legacy of, and for, her son Nick.

Author Miriam Feldman is in conversation with Jen Pastiloff.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Emma Ramadan, "IN CONCRETE"

Sat, 17 Jul 2021 05:28:00 -0700

Garr ta's first novel in a decade, In Concrete, follows the mania that descends upon a family when the father finds himself in possession of a concrete mixer. As he seeks to modernize every aspect of their lives, disaster strikes when the younger sister is subsumed by concrete.

Through puns, wordplay, and dizzying verbal effect, Garr ta reinvents the novel form and blurs the line between spoken and written language in an attempt to confront the elasticity of communication. Translator Emma Ramadan talks with Skylight's Mike Jeffrey about her experience translating Garr ta's work. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Claire Boyles, "SITE FIDELITY" w/ Zac Hug

Wed, 14 Jul 2021 14:01:44 -0700

Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse.

In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, this knockout debut introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies. Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.

Boyles is in conversation with Zac Hug. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Katie Love, "TWO TICKETS TO PARADISE"

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 16:11:18 -0700

Two Tickets to Paradise is a memoir about growing up Jehovah’s Witness , leaving religion and finding truth and healing through humor. Two Tickets to Paradise has been lauded by peers and early reviewers as, “hauntingly funny, heartbreaking, and bold.” Author Katie Love discusses her book with Skylight's Christine Blackburn. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: WAYFINDING Poets

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 05:00:00 -0700

Wayfinding is a poetry anthology curated and edited by Amy Beth and Derek Wright, published by Finishing Line Press. More than 50 poets share moments of transformation and wonder that have been inspired by parks and public lands, alongside original photography by Derek Wright, and short essays by Amy Beth and Derek Wright. This is a striking color print book of poetry, and the perfect gift for outdoors enthusiasts and readers alike who enjoy the intersection of parks and poetry.

This episode features readings by Mary Ardery, Mike Good, Allyson Whipple, Kristin Bryant Rajan, and Pamela Hobart Carter.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: David Leo Rice, "DRIFTER" w/ Matthew Spellberg

Wed, 07 Jul 2021 16:08:19 -0700

Collecting a decade's worth of stories by acclaimed author David Leo Rice, Drifter is a wild trip through the occult and surreal undercurrents of contemporary life. Ever in pursuit of illumination and unholy opportunity, the characters in these stories roam from blighted Western settlements to eerie New England circuses, from the backwoods of Austria to the remotest reaches of Japan, and from seedy Caribbean islands to the shadow of the Swiss Alps. Rice is in conversation with Matthew Spellberg _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Handsell, Ep. 20: "Kelsey Norris/Libro.fm"

Tue, 06 Jul 2021 22:17:13 -0700

Join Skylight's Lance Morgan for a conversation with Libro.fm's Content Marketing Manager, Kelsey Norris. The conversation spans from Libro.fm's ongoing partnership with independent bookstores, to the role of audiobooks in lives of readers. You don't want to miss it! _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Laura LeMoon, "A THOUSAND LITTLE DEATHS"

Sat, 03 Jul 2021 12:47:59 -0700

A Thousand Little Deaths is a story molded from experience and thrown into verse. For many, poetry is a method of healing, a method of activism, a method of releasing all the pain you've held inside of you in a single burst. Laura LeMoon offers us this brief chapbook of her life in an attempt to share a journey not many are familiar with, taking on existential issues such as death and how absurd life can be when it throws the impossible at you. It's a test of endurance, throwing readers into a world most have probably only seen through television or stereotyped novels. It's a hard read. It's an essential read. And the moment you open up it's pages, LeMoon's words will go right for your gut, sending you spiraling as you move along with her journey. SPONSORED EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Danielle Henderson, "THE UGLY CRY" w/ Ann Friedman

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 12:42:31 -0700

Abandoned at ten years old by a mother who chose her drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend, Danielle Henderson was raised by grandparents who thought their child-rearing days had ended in the 1960s. She grew up Black, weird, and overwhelmingly uncool in a mostly white neighborhood in upstate New York, which created its own identity crises. Under the eye-rolling, foul-mouthed, loving tutelage of her uncompromising grandmother—and the horror movies she obsessively watched—Danielle grew into a tall, awkward, Sassy-loving teenager who wore black eyeliner as lipstick and was struggling with the aftermath of her mother’s choices. But she also learned that she had the strength and smarts to save herself, her grandmother gifting her a faith in her own capabilities that the world would not have most Black girls possess.

With humor, wit, and deep insight, Danielle shares how she grew up and grew wise—and the lessons she’s carried from those days to these. In the process, she upends our conventional understanding of family and redefines its boundaries to include the millions of people who share her story. Here, Danielle discusses her book The Ugly Cry with Ann Friedman. SPONSORED EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Brittany Ackerman, "THE BRITTANYS"

Thu, 01 Jul 2021 09:37:33 -0700

They're not the most popular freshmen at their Florida prep school, but at least everyone knows their name(s). The Brittanys.

Brittany Rosenberg: drives her golf cart around her subdivision to meet boys. Brittany Gottlieb: insists you can't lose your virginity if you haven't gotten your period. (She heard it somewhere ) Brittany Tomassi: is from New York. Brittany Jensen: once threw her tampon into a stranger's swimming pool. A brash, bold, unapologetic tomboy. And the greatest person in the whole wide world.

At least as far as the fifth Brittany--our narrator--is concerned. Even within their friend group, she and Jensen are a duo: with their matching JanSport backpacks, Tiffany chokers, and Victoria's Secret push-up bras, they are unstoppable. And now that they're finally growing up, they're going to do everything: dye their hair, attend no-parent parties, try pot . . . maybe even lose their virginities. 2004 is totally going to be their year

Except Jensen's interests may be diverging from her friends'. And within our narrator's own family--in the lives of her exhausted mother and beloved, genius older brother--life-changing events may be taking shape. Events that only years later, looking back, she has the perspective to see. Enjoy this conversation with The Brittanys author Brittany Ackerman. SPONSORED EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Rosecrans Baldwin, "EVERYTHING NOW" w/ Charles Yu

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 18:17:44 -0700

America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny―this is the city-state of Los Angeles.

Baldwin is in conversation with Charles Yu.

SPONSORED EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Rupert Thomson, "BARCELONA DREAMING"

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 20:59:15 -0700

Barcelona Dreaming is narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.

Exploring themes of addiction, racism, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, and fueled by a longing for the unattainable and a nostalgia for what is about to be lost, Rupert Thomson's Barcelona Dreaming is a love letter to one of the world’s most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times. SPONSORED EPISODE: This episode is brought to you by Rare Bird Lit and Unstoppable by Joshua M. Greene. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Carissa Dorson, "CONVERSATIONS WITH DAD" w/ Aline Smithson

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:17:57 -0700

Today many young people still feel a gap between generations. Conversations With Dad is a beautiful story about a daughter and her father, and their relationship with each other. Los Angeles based photographer Carissa Dorson was trying to overcome her personal gap with her father by looking for something they have in common, which is photography. For two years they have been sending photos to each other, ping-pong-like from East Coast to West Coast. The photos themselves are beautiful, clever, and reveal more about them than words ever could. Their ongoing visual conversation has blossomed into a deeper relationship. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Ben Percy, "THE NINTH METAL"

Wed, 23 Jun 2021 15:13:12 -0700

At first, people gazed in wonder at the radiant tear in the sky. A year later, the celestial marvel became a planetary crisis when Earth spun through the comet’s debris field and the sky rained fire.

The town of Northfall, Minnesota will never be the same. Meteors cratered hardwood forests and annihilated homes, and among the wreckage a new metal was discovered. This “omnimetal” has properties that make it world-changing as an energy source…and a weapon.

John Frontier—the troubled scion of an iron-ore dynasty in Northfall—returns for his sister’s wedding to find his family embroiled in a cutthroat war to control mineral rights and mining operations. His father rightly suspects foreign leaders and competing corporations of sabotage, but the greatest threat to his legacy might be the US government. Physicist Victoria Lennon was recruited by the Department of Defense to research omnimetal, but she finds herself trapped in a laboratory of nightmares. And across town, a rookie cop is investigating a murder that puts her own life in the crosshairs. She will have to compromise her moral code to bring justice to this now lawless community.

In The Ninth Metal, the first in his Comet Cycle, Ben Percy lays bare how a modern-day goldrush has turned the middle of nowhere into the center of everything, and how one family—the Frontiers—hopes to control it all. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Grace Perry, "THE 2000S MADE ME GAY"

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 15:32:18 -0700

Today’s gay youth have dozens of queer peer heroes, both fictional and real, but former gay teenager Grace Perry did not have that luxury. Instead, she had to search for queerness in the (largely straight) teen cultural phenomena the aughts had to offer: in Lindsay Lohan’s fall from grace, Gossip Girl, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl,” country-era Taylor Swift, and Seth Cohen jumping on a coffee cart. And, for better or worse, these touch points shaped her adult identity. She came out on the other side like many millennials did: in her words, gay as hell. Throw on your Von Dutch hats and join Grace on a journey back through the pop culture moments of the aughts in The 2000s Made Me Gay, before the cataclysmic shift in LGBTQ representation and acceptance—a time not so long ago, which many seem to forget. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Liz Brown, "TWILIGHT MAN" w/ Alex Ross

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 06:00:00 -0700

In the booming 1920s, William Andrews Clark Jr. was one of the richest, most respected men in Los Angeles. The son of the mining tycoon known as "The Copper King of Montana," Clark launched the Los Angeles Philharmonic and helped create the Hollywood Bowl. He was also a man with secrets, including a lover named Harrison Post. A former salesclerk, Post enjoyed a lavish existence among Hollywood elites, but the men's money--and their homosexuality--made them targets, for the district attorney, their employees and, in Post's case, his own family. When Clark died suddenly, Harrison Post inherited a substantial fortune--and a wealth of trouble. From Prohibition-era Hollywood to Nazi prison camps to Mexico City nightclubs, Twilight Man tells the story of an illicit love and the battle over a family estate that would destroy one man's life. Author Liz Brown discusses her book with Alex Ross. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: "Katharine Coles, "THE STRANGER I BECOME"

Wed, 16 Jun 2021 14:51:20 -0700

The Stranger I Become probes the permeable boundary between inner life and outer, thought and action, science and experience. Poet Katharine Coles begins her lyric essays with a meditation on "the urge to move beyond, to understand myself as a stranger, estranged." The essays travel, always on foot, from Coles's home with its kept and wild birds, into the canyon her home overlooks, itself populated with creatures ranging from voles to owls, moose, bobcats, and coyotes. From there, always looking, always walking, in the company of the words that move her, they traverse her neighborhood and distant places in this country and the world. All along, they consider the poetry that inhabits her: the winged creatures of Dickinson, Ashbery's "reflections," Keats's "irritable reaching," Anne Carson's ever-unreachable apples, and more. Taken together, they make up what Lance Olsen calls "a poetics of the vivid." _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Daniel Oppenheimer, "FAR FROM RESPECTABLE"

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 13:24:27 -0700

Regarded as both a legend and a villain, the critic Dave Hickey has inspired generations of artists, art critics, musicians, and writers. His 1993 book The Invisible Dragon became a cult hit for its potent and provocative critique of the art establishment and its call to reconsider the role of beauty in art. His next book, 1997's Air Guitar, introduced a new kind of cultural criticism--simultaneously insightful, complicated, vulnerable, and down-to-earth--that propelled Hickey to fame as an iconoclastic thinker, loved and loathed in equal measure, whose influence extended beyond the art world. Far from Respectable is a focused, evocative exploration of Hickey's work, his impact on the field of art criticism, and the man himself, from his Huck Finn childhood to his drug-fueled periods as both a New York gallerist and Nashville songwriter to, finally, his anointment as a tenured professor and MacArthur Fellow. Drawing on in-person interviews with Hickey, his friends and family, and art world comrades and critics, Daniel Oppenheimer examines the controversial writer's distinctive takes on a broad range of subjects, including Norman Rockwell, Robert Mapplethorpe, academia, Las Vegas, basketball, country music, and considers how Hickey and his vision of an "ethical, cosmopolitan paganism" built around a generous definition of art is more urgently needed than ever before. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Lauren Aguirre, "THE MEMORY THIEF"

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 14:22:13 -0700

How could you lose your memory overnight, and what would it mean? The day neurologist Jed Barash sees the baffling brain scan of a young patient with devastating amnesia marks the beginning of a quest to answer those questions. First detected in a cluster of stigmatized opioid overdose victims in Massachusetts with severe damage to the hippocampus—the brain’s memory center—this rare syndrome reveals how the tragic plight of the unfortunate few can open the door to advances in medical science.

After overcoming initial skepticism that investigating the syndrome is worth the effort—and that fentanyl is the likely culprit—Barash and a growing team of dedicated doctors explore the threat that people who take opioids chronically as prescribed to treat severe pain may gradually put their memories at risk. At the same time, they begin to grasp the potential for this syndrome to shed light on the most elusive memory thief of all—Alzheimer’s disease.

Through the prism of this fascinating story, Lauren Aguirre goes on to examine how researchers tease out the fundamental nature of memory and the many mysteries still to be solved. Where do memories live? Why do we forget most of what happens in a day but remember some events with stunning clarity years later? How real are our memories? And what purpose do they actually serve?

Perhaps the greatest mystery in The Memory Thief is why Alzheimer’s has evaded capture for a century even though it afflicts tens of millions around the world and lies in wait for millions more. Aguirre deftly explores this question and reveals promising new strategies and developments that may finally break the long stalemate in the fight against this dreaded disease. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Dahlia Schweitzer, "HAUNTED HOMES"

Wed, 09 Jun 2021 21:11:43 -0700

Haunted Homes is a short but groundbreaking study of homes in horror film and television. While haunted houses can be fun and thrilling, Hollywood horror tends to focus on haunted homes, places where the suburban American dream of safety and comfort has turned into a nightmare. From classic movies like The Old Dark House to contemporary works like Hereditary and the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, Dahlia Schweitzer explores why haunted homes have become a prime stage for dramatizing anxieties about family, gender, race, and economic collapse. She traces how the haunted home film was intertwined with the expansion of American suburbia, but also explores works like The Witch and The Babadook, which transport the genre to different times and places. This lively and readable study reveals how and why an increasing number of films imagine that home is where the horror is.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Illana Masad, "ALL MY MOTHER'S LOVERS" + Jean Kyoung Frazier, "PIZZA GIRL"

Mon, 07 Jun 2021 16:20:22 -0700

Join Illana Masad (All My Mother's Lovers) and Jean Kyoung Frazier (Pizza Girl) as they discuss their respective books. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Anjali Enjeti, "THE PARTED EARTH"

Fri, 04 Jun 2021 15:17:23 -0700

The story begins in August 1947. Unrest plagues the streets of New Delhi leading up to the birth of the Muslim majority nation of Pakistan, and the Hindu majority nation of India. Sixteen-year-old Deepa navigates the changing politics of her home, finding solace in messages of intricate origami from her secret boyfriend Amir. Soon Amir flees with his family to Pakistan and a tragedy forces Deepa to leave the subcontinent forever.

The story also begins sixty years later and half a world away, in Atlanta. While grieving both a pregnancy loss and the implosion of her marriage, Deepa's granddaughter Shan begins the search for her estranged grandmother, a prickly woman who had little interest in knowing her. As she pieces together her family history shattered by the Partition, Shan discovers how little she actually knows about the women in her family and what they endured.

Join us as author Anjali Enjeti discusses her debut The Parted Earth.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: X LA Poets Group Read

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 18:00:42 -0700

The anthology X LA Poets highlights the work of ten women poets defining what it means to call Los Angeles home, while at the same time, envisioning a futuristic, multitudinous Los Angeles. The panoply of poetic voices contained in this anthology will inspire and astound, celebrate and eviscerate the written word and the emotive breath. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sara Sligar, "TAKE ME APART" w/ Steph Cha

Fri, 28 May 2021 14:14:44 -0700

When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son Theo hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to archive his mother’s work and personal effects.

As Kate sorts through the vast maze of material and contends with the vicious rumors and shocking details of Miranda's private life, she pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. But Kate has secrets of her own, including a growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, and when she stumbles across Miranda's diary, her curiosity spirals into a dangerous obsession.

A seductive, twisting tale of psychological suspense, Take Me Apart draws readers into the lives of two darkly magnetic young women pinned down by secrets and lies. Sara Sligar's electrifying debut is a chilling, thought-provoking take on art, illness, and power, from a spellbinding new voice in suspense. Sligar is in conversation with Steph Cha. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Di Lebowitz, "THE MARKS LEFT ON HER"

Wed, 26 May 2021 17:03:42 -0700

DAUGHTER is navigating her otherness as the only mixed-race child in her Hong Kongese family with a bipolar mother, absentee father and staunchly catholic grandmother. GIRL is trying to navigate a world in which she is ignored and mistreated until a sexual assault sets her on a self-destructive spiral. SURVIVOR is battling monsters both real and imagined and coming out victorious as she pieces together her history, her traumas and her strength. A remarkable story written with a courage inspired by the #MeToo movement.

The Marks Left on Her author Di Lebowitz is in conversation with Skylight's Lance Morgan.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Annie Connole, "THE SPRING" w/ Yumi Sakugawa

Mon, 24 May 2021 15:40:29 -0700

The Spring is a book-length lyric essay that examines grief and transformation through the lens of mystical animal appearances following the death of the narrator's partner.

Author Annie Connole is in conversation with Yumi Sakugawa.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Gail Newman, "BLOOD MEMORY" w/ Amy Uyematsu

Wed, 19 May 2021 13:00:31 -0700

Writing about the Holocaust can be difficult now, not that it was ever easy. It has become myth or something people use as a metaphor for something they object to; those who know, who went through it, are dying off. Those who deny what happened multiply. To make fresh powerful poems rooted in Shoah is amazing.--Marge Piercy

Gail Newman discusses her poetry collection Blood Memory with Amy Uyematsu.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Corey Rosen, "YOUR STORY, WELL TOLD"

Mon, 17 May 2021 15:34:35 -0700

Telling stories well is a skill we all need. We've all got stories to tell─but how do you make your story the best? In his book, Your Story, Well Told, Moth veteran and master teacher Corey Rosen inspires you to get on stage and tell your story. Using the best storytelling techniques from improvisational theatre, Rosen designs an accessible guide for all ages and skill levels. Crafted to help ordinary people tell extraordinary stories, this laugh out loud handbook covers everything from how to tell a good story to going off script. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jaya Saxena, "CRYSTAL CLEAR" w/ Helena Fitzgerald

Wed, 12 May 2021 23:26:13 -0700

Highly prized for their beauty, crystals can take the shape of jewelry, household objects, and an array of self-care products. But it’s the ideas they stand for that draw people to their raw forms. Like astrology, tarot, and modern witchcraft, crystals help practitioners understand themselves and the wider world around them. Crystal Clear author Jaya Saxena is in conversation with Helena Fitzgerald. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Lance Morgan.

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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HANDSELL: Ep. 19, Abigail Paxton, "Storyhouse Bookpub" w/ Lance Morgan

Mon, 10 May 2021 15:27:38 -0700

Skylight's Lance Morgan is in conversation with Abigail Paxton, owner of Storyhouse Bookpub in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sarah Berman, "DON'T CALL IT A CULT" w/ Ashley Ray Harris

Sat, 08 May 2021 13:45:44 -0700

Sex trafficking. Self-help coaching. Forced labor. Mentorship. Multi-level marketing. Gaslighting. Investigative journalist Sarah Berman explores the shocking practices of NXIVM, a cult run by Keith Raniere and many enablers. Through the accounts of central NXIVM figures, Berman uncovers how dozens of women seeking creative coaching and networking opportunities instead were blackmailed, literally branded, near-starved, and enslaved. Don't Call It a Cult is a riveting account of NXIVM's rise to power, its ability to evade prosecution for decades, and the investigation that finally revealed its dark secrets to the world. Berman is in conversation with Ashley Ray Harris. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Shaun Slifer and Josh MacPhee, "SO MUCH TO BE ANGRY ABOUT"

Fri, 07 May 2021 15:14:59 -0700

In a remarkable act of recovery, So Much to Be Angry About conjures an influential but largely obscured strand in the nation’s radical tradition—the “movement” printing presses and publishers of the late 1960s and 1970s, and specifically Appalachian Movement Press in Huntington, West Virginia, the only movement press in Appalachia. More than a history, this craft- and activist-centered book positions the frontline politics of the Appalachian Left within larger movements in the 1970s. As Appalachian Movement Press founder Tom Woodruff wrote: “Appalachians weren’t sitting in the back row during this struggle, they were driving the bus.”

Emerging from the Students for a Democratic Society chapter at Marshall University, and working closely with organizer and poet Don West, Appalachian Movement Press made available an eclectic range of printed material, from books and pamphlets to children’s literature and calendars. Many of its publications promoted the Appalachian identity movement and “internal colony” theory, both of which were cornerstones of the nascent discipline of Appalachian studies. One of its many influential publications was MAW, the first feminist magazine written by and for Appalachian women.

So Much to Be Angry About combines complete reproductions of five of Appalachian Movement Press’s most engaging publications, an essay by Shaun Slifer about his detective work resurrecting the press’s history, and a contextual introduction to New Left movement publishing by Josh MacPhee. Amply illustrated in a richly produced package, the volume pays homage to the graphic sensibility of the region’s 1970s social movements, while also celebrating the current renaissance of Appalachia’s DIY culture—in many respects a legacy, Slifer suggests, of the movement publishing documented in his book. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: William J. Simmons, "QUEER FORMALISM" w/ Emily Wells

Wed, 05 May 2021 06:31:00 -0700

Queer Formalism: The Return expands upon William J. Simmons’s original, influential essay “Notes on Queer Formalism” from 2013, offering novel ways of thinking about queer-feminist art outside of the critical-complicit and abstract-representational binaries that continue to haunt contemporary queer art. It therefore proposes a new kind of queer art writing, one that skirts the limits imposed by normative histories of art and film. Artists addressed in Queer Formalism: The Return include: Sally Mann, David Lynch, Lars von Trier, Math Bass, Lorna Simpson, Laurie Simmons, Alex Prager, Lana Del Rey, Jessica Lange, and Louise Lawler, among others. Simmons is in conversation with Emily Wells. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jess Phoenix, "MS. ADVENTURE" w/ Branwen Williams

Sat, 01 May 2021 05:41:00 -0700

As a volcanologist, natural hazards expert, and founder of Blueprint Earth, Jess Phoenix has dedicated her life to scientific exploration. Her career path—hard earned in the male-dominated world of science—has led her into still-flowing Hawaiian lava fields, congressional races, glittering cocktail parties at Manhattan’s elite Explorers Club, and numerous pairs of Caterpillar work boots. It has also inspired her to devote her life to making science more inclusive and accessible.

Ms. Adventure skillfully blends personal memoir, daring adventure, and scientific exploration, following Phoenix’s journey from reality television sites deep in Ecuadorian jungles to Andean glaciers, university classrooms to Death Valley in summer. She has even chased down members of a Mexican cartel to retrieve a stolen favorite rock hammer. Readers will delight in her unbelievable adventures, all embarked on for the love of science. Phoenix is in conversation with Branwen Williams. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Seamus McGraw, "FROM A TALLER TOWER" w/ the Orfanos

Wed, 28 Apr 2021 17:17:27 -0700

We, as a nation, have become desensitized to the shock and pain in the wake of mass shootings. In the bottomless silence between gunshots, as political stalemate ensures inaction, the killing continues; the dying continues. From a Taller Tower attends to the silence that has left us empty in the aftermath of these atrocities. Veteran journalist Seamus McGraw chronicles the rise of the mass shooter to dismantle the myths we have constructed around the murderers and ourselves.

In 1966, America's first mass shooter, from atop the University of Texas tower, unleashed a new reality: the fear that any of us may be targeted by a killer, and the complicity we bear in granting these murderers the fame or infamy they crave. Addressing individual cases in the epidemic that began in Austin, From a Taller Tower bluntly confronts our obsession with the shooters--and explores the isolation, narcissism, and sense of victimhood that fan their obsessions. Drawing on the experiences of survivors and first responders as well as the knowledge of mental health experts, McGraw challenges the notion of the "good guy with a gun," the idolization of guns (including his own), and the reliability of traumatized memory. Yet in this terrible history, McGraw reminds us of the humanity that can stop the killing and the dying.

McGraw is in conversation with Mark and Susan Orfanos.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Melissa Colasanti, "CALL ME ELIZABETH LARK" w/ E. A. Barres

Tue, 27 Apr 2021 12:51:28 -0700

Twenty years ago, Myra Barkley's daughter disappeared from the rocky beach across from the family inn, off the Oregon coast. Ever since, Myra has waited at the front desk for her child to come home. One rainy afternoon, the miracle happens--her missing daughter, now twenty-eight years old with a child of her own, walks in the door.

Elizabeth Lark is on the run with her son. She's just killed her abusive husband and needs a place to hide. Against her better judgment, she heads to her hometown and stops at the Barkley Inn. When the innkeeper insists that Elizabeth is her long lost daughter, the opportunity for a new life, and more importantly, the safety of her child, is too much for Elizabeth to pass up. But she knows that she isn't the Barkleys's daughter, and the more deeply intertwined she becomes with the family, the harder it becomes to confess the truth.

Except the Barkley girl didn't just disappear on her own. As the news spreads across the small town that the Barkley girl has returned, Elizabeth suddenly comes into the limelight in a dangerous way, and the culprit behind the disappearance those twenty years ago is back to finish the job. Join us as Call Me Elizabeth Lark author Melissa Colasanti discusses her book with E. A. Barres. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jana Larson, "REEL BAY" & Jazmina Barrera, "ON LIGHTHOUSES"

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 07:00:00 -0700

Reel Bay: What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers' film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there: unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case. Over the years and across continents, the material Jana gathered in her search for the real Takako outgrew multiple attempts at screenplays and became this remarkable, genre-bending essay that leans into the space between fact and fiction, life and death, author and subject, reality and delusion. On Lighthouses:

Far from home, in the confines of a dim New York apartment where the oppressive skyscrapers further isolate her, Jazmina Barrera offers a tour of her lighthouses--those structures whose message is "first and foremost, that human beings are here."

Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather, an engineer charged with illuminating the Scottish coastline, On Lighthouses artfully examines lighthouses from the Spanish to the Oregon coasts and those in the works of Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ingmar Bergman, and many others.

In trying to "collect" lighthouses by obsessively describing them, Barrera begins to question the nature of writing, collecting, and how, by staring so intently at one thing we are only trying to avoid others. Equal parts personal memoir and literary history, On Lighthouses takes the reader on a desperate flight from raging sea to cold stone--from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one--concluding at last in a place of peace: the home of a selfless, guiding light.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Emma Hine, "Stay Safe" w/ Laura Creste

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 15:18:47 -0700

At the center of this stellar collection are three sisters and their imaginative fear of grief. Their great-uncle was bitten by a shark, their mother has a brain tumor, their neighbor hangs himself from a tree--and to cope with these very real terrors, the oldest sister creates an intimate fantasy world. We hear stories of a mountain lion that slaughters a deer, a transparent body washed up on a beach, a selkie who ventures to shore and becomes their mother: "On land her pelt was heavy / like stewed velvet, so she taught herself / to take it off." The sisters' environment of ocean and sand, forests and farmhouses, forms a lush backdrop to many of these poems. But later, as the speaker ages, we find ourselves in the mountains, in an art museum, in a spacecraft where a recorded voice "has the soft accent of someone only a generation or two removed from Earth." The voice in these poems is the perfect mix of grief and imagination, quiet and explosion. Stay Safe is delicate and extraordinary, a powerful debut. Poet Emma Hine is in conversation with Laura Creste. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Handsell, Ep. 18: Bookstaggramming w/ Lauren Fanella

Mon, 19 Apr 2021 16:29:10 -0700

Skylight's own Lance Morgan talks to "book influencer" Lauren Fanella (@literarylauren_) about the intersection of literature and social media. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Jonathan Ames, "A MAN NAMED DOLL"

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:00:00 -0700

Happy Doll is a charming, if occasionally inexpert, private detective living just one sheer cliff drop beneath the Hollywood sign with his beloved half-Chihuahua half-Terrier, George. A veteran of both the Navy and LAPD, Doll supplements his meager income as a P.I. by working through the night at a local Thai spa that offers its clients a number of special services. Armed with his sixteen-inch steel telescopic baton, biting dry humor, and just a bit of a hero complex, the ex-cop sets out to protect the women who work there from clients who have trouble understanding the word "no."

Doll gets by just fine following his two basic rules: bark loudly and act first. But when things get out-of-hand with one particularly violent patron, even he finds himself wildly out of his depth, and then things take an even more dangerous twist when an old friend from his days as a cop shows up at his door with a bullet in his gut. Jonathan Ames's A Man Named Doll is more than just a fascinating introduction to one truly singular character, it is a highly addictive and completely unpredictable joyride through the sensuous and violent streets of LA. Ames is in conversation with Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sara Kamali, "HOMEGROWN HATE"

Thu, 15 Apr 2021 04:00:00 -0700

Homegrown Hate is a groundbreaking and deeply researched work that directly compares White nationalists and militant Islamists in the United States. In this timely book, scholar and holistic justice activist Sara Kamali examines these Americans’ self-described beliefs, grievances, and rationales for violence, and details their organizational structures within a transnational context. She presents compelling insight into the most pressing threat to homeland security not only in the United States, but in nations across the globe: citizens who are targeting their homeland according to their respective narratives of victimhood. She also explains the hate behind the headlines and provides the tools to counter this hate from within, cogently offering hope in uncertain and divisive times. Innovative and engaging, this is an indispensable resource for all who cherish equity and justice in the United States and around the world.

Kamali is in conversation with Skylight's Emily Van Koughnett.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sam Cohen, "SARAHLAND" w/ Nikki Darling

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 19:26:50 -0700

In Sarahland, Sam Cohen brilliantly and often hilariously explores the ways in which traditional stories have failed us, both demanding and thrillingly providing for its cast of Sarahs new origin stories, new ways to love the planet and those inhabiting it, and new possibilities for life itself. In one story, a Jewish college Sarah passively consents to a form-life in pursuit of an MRS degree and is swept into a culture of normalized sexual violence. Another reveals a version of Sarah finding pleasure—and a new set of problems—by playing dead for a wealthy necrophiliac. A Buffy-loving Sarah uses fan fiction to work through romantic obsession. As the collection progresses, Cohen explodes this search for self, insisting that we have more to resist and repair than our own personal narratives. Readers witness as the ever-evolving "Sarah" gets recast: as a bible-era trans woman, an aging lesbian literally growing roots, a being who transcends the earth as we know it. While Cohen presents a world that will clearly someday end, "Sarah" will continue.

In each Sarah's refusal to adhere to a single narrative, she potentially builds a better home for us all, a place to live that demands no fixity of self, no plague of consumerism, no bodily compromise, a place called Sarahland.

Cohen is in conversation with Nikki Darling.

This episode was recorded on March 9, 2021 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Jim Lewis, "GHOSTS OF NEW YORK" w/ Ruben Martinez

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 17:26:24 -0700

Ghosts of New York is a novel in which the laws of time and space have been subtly suspended. It interweaves four strands: a photographer newly returned to the neighborhood where she grew up, after years spent living overseas; a foundling raised on 14th Street; a graduate student, his romantic partner, and his best friend entangled in a set of relationships with far-reaching personal and political repercussions; and a shopkeeper suffering from first love late in life. Mixing prophecy, history, and a hint of speculative fiction, its stories are bound together even as they are propelled into stranger territory. And undergirding it all is a song, which appears, disappears, and then resurfaces.

Author Jim Lewis is in conversation with Ruben Martinez.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jen Silverman, "WE PLAY OURSELVES" w/ Torrey Peters

Wed, 07 Apr 2021 15:17:26 -0700

Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.” But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape—and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline’s next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls’ clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic.

As Cass is drawn into the film’s orbit, she is awed by Caroline’s ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art—especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she’s no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success. We Play Ourselves author Jen Silverman is in conversation with Torrey Peters. This episode was recorded on February 24, 2021 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Peter Filkins, "WATER/MUSIC"

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 15:41:04 -0700

Exploring the space between nature and culture, the poems of Peter Filkins' Water / Music anchor themselves in the timely and the timeless. Rich and diverse in their formal intricacy, they move with ease from narrative to meditation, from close physical observation to the haunts of memory, and from lyric sorrow to the pleasure of living in the world. Water / Music embraces and celebrates life's mystery and the soul's repose amid "talismans at twilight, the whir of birds." _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Beth Pickens, "MAKE YOUR ART NO MATTER WHAT"

Fri, 02 Apr 2021 18:18:33 -0700

If you are an artist, you need to make your art. That's not an overstatement—it's a fact; if you stop doing your creative work, your quality of life is diminished. But what do you do when life gets in the way? In Make Your Art No Matter What experienced artist coach Beth Pickens offers practical advice for developing a lasting and meaningful artistic practice in the face of life's inevitable obstacles and distractions. This thoughtful volume suggests creative ways to address the challenges all artists must overcome—from making decisions about time, money, and education, to grappling with isolation, fear, and anxiety. No matter where you are in your art-making journey, this book will motivate and inspire you. Because not only do you need your art—the world needs it, too. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Claire Cox, "SILVER BEACH" w/ Clare Needham

Wed, 31 Mar 2021 17:04:01 -0700

It’s been decades since Mara’s family was last together, decades since the day her sister Allison drowned at Silver Beach.

After the family tragedy, Mara’s father took her to the opposite end of the country, where she made a tidy life for herself in western Massachusetts, with a good education, stable job, and loving girlfriend. Her half-sister, Shannon, was left behind with their mother in San Diego. Surviving on disability checks and handouts from family, Shannon can’t remember a time when Linda wasn’t drunk.

When a heart attack lands Linda in the hospital, Shannon’s first impulse is to skip town—to finally escape her mother’s orbit and make her sister step up. While Mara gave up on Linda years ago and couldn’t have less in common with her sister, an unemployed stoner, it’s time for her to stop running from everything that makes her have feelings. This is a novel about the persistent, mystifying ties of family, the extravagant mess of addiction, and what it means to actually live inside your own life. Author Claire Cox is in conversation with Clare Needham. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Kim Addonizio, "NOW WE'RE GETTING SOMEWHERE" w/ Aya Cash

Mon, 29 Mar 2021 21:41:36 -0700

Kim Addonizio’s sharp and irreverent eighth volume, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, is an essential companion to your practice of the Finnish art of kalsarikännit—drinking at home, alone in your underwear, with no intention of going out. Imbued with the poet’s characteristic precision and passion, the collection charts a hazardous course through heartache, climate change, dental work, Outlander, semiotics, and more.

Combatting existential gloom with a wicked, seductive energy, Addonizio investigates desire, loss, and the madness of contemporary life. She calls out to Walt Whitman and John Keats, echoes Dorothy Parker, and finds sisterhood with Virginia Woolf.

Addonizio is in conversation with daughter/actor/writer Aya Cash, who also provides a reading of her essay "Skin."

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Michael Wilson Becerril, "RESISTING EXTRACTIVISM"

Sun, 28 Mar 2021 00:27:45 -0700

Peru is classified as one of the deadliest countries in the world for environmental defenders, where activists face many forms of violence. Through an ethnographic and systematic comparison of four gold-mining conflicts in Peru, Resisting Extractivism presents a vivid account of subtle and routine forms of violence, analyzing how meaning-making practices render certain types of damage and suffering noticeable while occluding others. The book thus builds a theory of violence from the ground up--how it is framed, how it impacts people's lived experiences, and how it can be confronted. By excavating how the everyday interactions that underlie conflicts are discursively concealed and highlighted, this study assists in the prevention and transformation of violence over resource extraction in Latin America.
Author Michael Wilson Becerril draws on a controlled, qualitative comparison of four case studies, extensive ethnographic research conducted over fourteen months of fieldwork, analysis of over nine hundred archives and documents, and unprecedented access to more than 250 semi-structured interviews with key actors across industry, the state, civil society, and the media. Becerril identifies, traces, and compares these dynamics to explain how similar cases can lead to contrasting outcomes--insights that may be usefully applied in other contexts to save lives and build better futures. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Edward Melilo, "THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT"

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:15:14 -0700

Insects might make us shudder in disgust, but they are also responsible for many of the things we take for granted in our daily lives. When we bite into a shiny apple, listen to the resonant notes of a violin, get dressed, receive a dental implant, or get a manicure, we are the beneficiaries of a vast army of insects. Try as we might to replicate their raw material (silk, shellac, and cochineal, for instance), our artificial substitutes have proven subpar at best, and at worst toxic, ensuring our interdependence with the insect world for the foreseeable future.
Drawing on research in laboratory science, agriculture, fashion, and international cuisine, Edward D. Melillo weaves a vibrant world history in The Butterfly Effect that illustrates the inextricable and fascinating bonds between humans and insects. Across time, we have not only coexisted with these creatures but have relied on them for, among other things, the key discoveries of modern medical science and the future of the world's food supply. Without insects, entire sectors of global industry would grind to a halt and essential features of modern life would disappear. Here is a beguiling appreciation of the ways in which these creatures have altered--and continue to shape--the very framework of our existence. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: William Deverell, "KATHY FISCUS"

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 17:35:07 -0700

Kathy Fiscus tells the story of the first live, breaking-news TV spectacle in American history. At dusk on a spring evening in 1949, a three-year old girl fell down an abandoned well shaft in the backyard of her family's home in Southern California. Across more than two full days of a fevered rescue attempt, the fate of Kathy Fiscus remained unknown. Thousands of concerned Southern Californians rushed to the scene. Jockeys hurried over from the nearby racetracks, offering to be sent down the well after Kathy. 20th Century Fox sent over the studio's klieg lights to illuminate the scene. Rescue workers-ditch diggers, miners, cesspool laborers, World War II veterans-dug and bored holes deep into the aquifer below, hoping to tunnel across to the old well shaft that the little girl had somehow tumbled down. The region, the nation, and the world watched and listened to every moment of the rescue attempt by way of radio, newsreel footage, and wire service reporting. They also watched live television. Because of the well's proximity to the radio towers on nearby Mount Wilson, the rescue attempt because the first breaking-news event to be broadcast live on television. The Kathy Fiscus event invented reality television and proved that real-time television news broadcasting could work and could transfix the public. Author William Deverell is in conversation with Skylight's Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Yaba Blay, "ONE DROP"

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 15:22:19 -0700

In the United States, a Black person has come to be defined as any person with any known Black ancestry. Statutorily referred to as “the rule of hypodescent,” this definition of Blackness is more popularly known as the “one-drop rule,” meaning that a person with any trace of Black ancestry, however small or (in)visible, cannot be considered White. A method of social order that began almost immediately after the arrival of enslaved Africans in America, by 1910 it was the law in almost all southern states. At a time when the one-drop rule functioned to protect and preserve White racial purity, Blackness was both a matter of biology and the law. One was either Black or White. Period. Has the social and political landscape changed one hundred years later?

One Drop explores the extent to which historical definitions of race continue to shape contemporary racial identities and lived experiences of racial difference. Featuring the perspectives of 60 contributors representing 25 countries and combining candid narratives with striking portraiture, this book provides living testimony to the diversity of Blackness. Although contributors use varying terms to self-identify, they all see themselves as part of the larger racial, cultural, and social group generally referred to as Black. They have all had their identity called into question simply because they do not fit neatly into the stereotypical “Black box”—dark skin, “kinky” hair, broad nose, full lips, etc. Most have been asked “What are you?” or the more politically correct “Where are you from?” throughout their lives. It is through contributors’ lived experiences with and lived imaginings of Black identity that we can visualize multiple possibilities for Blackness. Author Yaba Blay is in conversation with Skylight's Maddie Gobo. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Celia Laskey, "UNDER THE RAINBOW" w/ Peter Kispert

Fri, 19 Mar 2021 16:13:22 -0700

Big Burr, Kansas, is the kind of place where everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone shares the same values—or keeps their opinions to themselves. But when a national nonprofit labels Big Burr “the most homophobic town in the US” and sends in a task force of queer volunteers as an experiment—they’ll live and work in the community for two years in an attempt to broaden hearts and minds—no one is truly prepared for what will ensue.

Furious at being uprooted from her life in Los Angeles and desperate to fit in at her new high school, Avery fears that it’s only a matter of time before her “gay crusader” mom outs her. Still grieving the death of her son, Linda welcomes the arrivals, who know mercifully little about her past. And for Christine, the newcomers are not only a threat to the comforting rhythms of Big Burr life, but a call to action. As tensions roil the town, cratering relationships and forcing closely guarded secrets into the light, everyone must consider what it really means to belong. Told with warmth and wit, Under the Rainbow is a poignant, hopeful articulation of our complicated humanity that reminds us we are more alike than we’d like to admit.

Author Celia Laskey is in conversation with Peter Kispert.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Ron Nyren, "THE BOOK OF LOST LIGHT" w/ Judy Juanita + Karen Kevorkian

Thu, 18 Mar 2021 10:30:46 -0700

Joseph Kylander's childhood in early 20th century San Francisco has been shaped by his widowed father's obsessive photographic project and by his headstrong cousin Karelia's fanciful storytelling and impulsive acts. The 1906 earthquake upends their eccentric routines, and they take refuge with a capricious patron and a group of artists looking to find meaning after the disaster. THE BOOK OF LOST LIGHT explores family loyalty and betrayal, Finnish folklore, the nature of time and theater, and what it takes to recover from calamity and build a new life from the ashes. Author Ron Nyren discusses his book and shares readings with Judy Juanita and Karen Kevorkian. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sy Hoahwah, "ANCESTRAL DEMON OF A GRIEVING BRIDE"

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 15:36:48 -0700

Fractured storytelling for a fractured world, Ancestral Demon of a Grieving Bride draws readers into a world that appears eerily familiar but unsettling as well. Fierce, visceral, sometimes funny, and wholly original, Sy Hoahwah's poems will linger in a reader's dreams long after she's closed the book.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Joshua Mohr, "MODEL CITIZEN" w/ Gina Frangello

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 18:45:33 -0700

After years of hard-won sobriety, while rebuilding a life with his wife and young daughter, thirty-five-year-old Joshua Mohr suffers a stroke—his third, it turns out— which uncovers a heart condition requiring surgery. Which requires fentanyl, one of his myriad drugs of choice. This forced “freelapse” should fix his heart, but what will it do to his sobriety? And what if it doesn’t work?

Told in stunning, surreal, time-hopping vignettes, Model Citizen is a raw, revealing portrait of an addict. Mohr shines a harsh spotlight into all corners of his life, throwing the wild joys, tragedies, embarrassments, and adventures of his past into bold relief.

Mohr is in conversation with Gina Frangello.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Tod Goldberg, "THE LOW DESERT" w/ Mark Haskell Smith

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 16:35:58 -0800

With gimlet-eyed cool and razor-sharp wit, these spare, stylish stories from master of modern crime fiction Tod Goldberg assemble a world of gangsters and con men, of do-gooders breaking bad and those caught in the crossfire. The uncle of an FBI agent spends his life as sheriff in different cities, living too close to the violent acts of men; a cocktail waitress moves through several desert towns trying to escape the unexplainable loss of an adopted daughter; a drug dealer with a penchant for karaoke meets a talkative lawyer and a silent clown in a Palm Springs bar.

Witty, brutal, and fast-paced, these stories expand upon the saga of Chicago hitman-turned-Vegas-rabbi Sal Cupertine–first introduced in Gangsterland and continued in Gangster Nation–while revealing how the line between good and bad is often a mirage.

Goldberg discusses The Low Desert with Mark Haskell Smith.

This episode was recorded on February 24, 2021 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

SKYLIT: Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan, "LET'S TALK ABOUT IT"

Wed, 10 Mar 2021 16:23:14 -0800

Growing up is complicated.

How do you find the answers to all the questions you have about yourself, about your identity, and about your body? Let's Talk About It provides a comprehensive, thoughtful, well-researched graphic novel guide to everything you need to know.

Covering relationships, friendships, gender, sexuality, anatomy, body image, safe sex, sexting, jealousy, rejection, sex education, and more, Let's Talk About It is the go-to handbook for every teen, and the first in graphic novel form.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo, Lance Morgan, & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: "SPECULATIVE LOS ANGELES"

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 15:25:00 -0800

As an incubator of the future, Los Angeles has long mesmerized writers from Aldous Huxley to Octavia E. Butler. With its natural disasters, Hollywood artifice, staggering wealth and poverty, and urban sprawl, one can argue that Los Angeles is already so weird, surreal, irrational, and mythic that any fiction emerging from this place should be considered speculative. So, bestselling author Denise Hamilton commissioned fourteen stories (including one of her own) and did exactly that. In Speculative Los Angeles, some of the city’s most prophetic and diverse voices reimagine the metropolis in very different ways.

In these pages, you’ll encounter twenty-first-century changelings, dirigibles plying the suburban skies, black holes and jacaranda men lurking in deep suburbia, beachfront property in Century City, walled-off canyons and coastlines reserved for the wealthy, psychic death cults, robot nursemaids, and an alternate LA where Spanish land grants never gave way to urbanization.

As with our city-based Akashic Noir Series, each story in Speculative Los Angeles is set in a distinct neighborhood filled with local color, landmarks, and flavor. Since the best speculative fiction provides a wormhole into other worlds while also commenting on our own, that is exactly what you’ll find here.

Hamilton is joined in conversation by Alex Espinoza and Aimee Bender. This episode was recorded on February 15, 2021 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Dr. Mahmood Mamdani, "NEITHER SETTLER NOR NATIVE" w/ Dr. Gil Anidjar

Fri, 05 Mar 2021 14:01:00 -0800

In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe--from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan--the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.

The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe's nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities. After Nuremberg the template was used to preserve the idea of the Jews as a separate nation. By establishing Israel through the minoritization of Palestinian Arabs, Zionist settlers followed the North American example. The result has been another cycle of violence.

Neither Settler nor Native offers a vision for arresting this historical process. Mamdani rejects the "criminal" solution attempted at Nuremberg, which held individual perpetrators responsible without questioning Nazism as a political project and thus the violence of the nation-state itself. Instead, political violence demands political solutions: not criminal justice for perpetrators but a rethinking of the political community for all survivors--victims, perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries--based on common residence and the commitment to build a common future without the permanent political identities of settler and native. Mamdani points to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa as an unfinished project, seeking a state without a nation. Dr. Mamdani is in conversation with Columbia professor Dr. Gil Anidjar. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Lauren Oyler, "FAKE ACCOUNTS" w/ Naomi Fry

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 13:53:45 -0800

Suddenly left with no reason to stay in New York and increasingly alienated from her friends and colleagues, our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life, from dating apps to expat meetups, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms. She begins to think she can't trust anyone--shouldn't the feeling be mutual?

Narrated with seductive confidence and subversive wit, Fake Accounts challenges the way current conversations about the self and community, delusions and gaslighting, and fiction and reality play out in the internet age.

Author Lauren Oyler is in conversation with The New Yorker's Naomi Fry. This episode was recorded on February 9, 2021 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Melissa Broder, "MILK FED" w/ ryan o'connell

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 15:27:57 -0800

Rachel is twenty-four, a lapsed Jew who has made calorie restriction her religion. By day, she maintains an illusion of existential control, by way of obsessive food rituals, while working as an underling at a Los Angeles talent management agency. At night, she pedals nowhere on the elliptical machine. Rachel is content to carry on subsisting—until her therapist encourages her to take a ninety-day communication detox from her mother, who raised her in the tradition of calorie counting.

Early in the detox, Rachel meets Miriam, a zaftig young Orthodox Jewish woman who works at her favorite frozen yogurt shop and is intent upon feeding her. Rachel is suddenly and powerfully entranced by Miriam—by her sundaes and her body, her faith and her family—and as the two grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers, milk, and honey.

Pairing superlative emotional insight with unabashed vivid fantasy, Melissa Broder tells a tale of appetites: physical hunger, sexual desire, spiritual longing, and the ways that we as humans can compartmentalize these so often interdependent instincts. Milk Fed is a tender and riotously funny meditation on love, certitude, and the question of what we are all being fed, from one of our major writers on the psyche—both sacred and profane. Broder is in conversation with ryan o'connell, the writer, creator and star of the emmy-nominated television show special on netflix. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Richard Thompson Ford, "DRESS CODES" w/ Lance Morgan

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:16:36 -0800

Note: Due to a technical difficulty, this episode was recorded in two different sessions. The listener will note a change in audio quality partway through this episode. In Dress Codes, law professor and cultural critic Richard Thompson Ford presents an insightful and entertaining history of the laws of fashion from the middle ages to the present day, a walk down history’s red carpet to uncover and examine the canons, mores, and customs of clothing—rules that we often take for granted. After reading Dress Codes, you’ll never think of fashion as superficial again—and getting dressed will never be the same. Ford is in conversation with Skylight's own Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Clover Hope, "THE MOTHERLODE" w/ Nadeska Alexis

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 12:41:06 -0800

Clover Hope is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn. Hope’s work has appeared in the pages of Vogue, Vibe, Billboard, the New York Times, WIRED, ESPN The Magazine, Essence, and the Village Voice, among other publications. She is currently the culture editor for Jezebel. Hope discusses her book The Motherlode w/ Nadeska Alexis. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Rebecca Morgan Frank, "OH YOU ROBOT SAINTS!" w/ Catherine Pierce

Wed, 17 Feb 2021 16:23:58 -0800

Part bestiary, part litany, part elegy, Rebecca Morgan Frank’s Oh You Robot Saints! is populated by a strange menagerie of early automata and robots, including octobots and an eighteenth-century digesting duck, set alongside medieval mechanical virgins and robot priests. From a riveting robobee sonnet sequence that links weapons of war and industrial fixes for infertility to a microdrama sketching out a missing Sophocles play on the mythical bronze man, Talos, these muscular poems blur and sing the lines between machines and the divine. This lyrical exploration of the ongoing human desire to create life navigates wonder and grief, joining the uncanny investigation of what it is to be, to make, and to be made. Frank is in conversation with fellow poet Catherine Pierce. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Rich Ferguson, "EVERYTHING IS RADIANT BETWEEN THE HATES" w/ Special Guests

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 14:03:44 -0800

Beloved Los Angeles poet/performer Rich Ferguson delivers a tender, complex collection in Everything is Radiant Between the Hates, whose 8 sections offer free verse and prose poems ranging from hip satire to elegy and beyond - to gentle mantras that you might repeat to yourself in a parking lot or in bed at night when your obnoxious downstairs neighbor won't quieten down. Bold, generous and self-deprecating, Ferguson's work challenges readers to accept grief and dare - despite it, because of it - to dream of glorious things. Ferguson is joined by Heater Woodbury, Gayle Brandeis, and J. Ryan Stradal. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Amy Shira Teitel, "FIGHTING FOR SPACE"

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 06:00:00 -0800

When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man or woman. She had led the Women's Auxiliary Service Pilots during the Second World War, was the first woman to break the sound barrier, ran her own luxury cosmetics company, and counted multiple presidents among her personal friends. She was more qualified than any woman in the world to make the leap from atmosphere to orbit. Yet it was Jerrie Cobb, twenty-five years Jackie's junior and a record-holding pilot in her own right, who finagled her way into taking the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts. The prospect of flying in space quickly became her obsession.

While the American and international media spun the shocking story of a "woman astronaut" program, Jackie and Jerrie struggled to gain control of the narrative, each hoping to turn the rumored program into their own ideal reality—an issue that ultimately went all the way to Congress.

Fighting for Space, a dual biography of audacious trailblazers Jackie Cochran and Jerrie Cobb presents these fascinating and fearless women in all their glory and grit, using their stories as guides through the shifting social, political, and technical landscape of the time. Author Amy Shira Teitel is in conversation with Skylight's own Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Kay Gabriel & Andrea Abi-Karam, "WE WANT IT ALL"

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:53:32 -0800

Editors Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel offer We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics as an experiment into how far literature, written from an identitarian standpoint, can go as a fellow traveler with social movements and revolutionary demands. Writing in dialogue with emancipatory political movements, the intergenerational writers assembled here imagine an altogether overturned world in poems that pursue the particular and multiple trans relationships to desire, embodiment, housing, sex, ecology, history, pop culture, and the working day. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Lynell George, "A HANDFUL OF EARTH, A HANDFUL OF SKY" w/ Louise Steinman

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 14:48:35 -0800

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler offers a blueprint for a creative life from the perspective of award-winning science-fiction writer and “MacArthur Genius” Octavia E. Butler. It is a collection of ideas about how to look, listen, breathe—how to be in the world. This book is about the creative process, but not on the page; its canvas is much larger. Author Lynell George not only engages the world that shaped Octavia E. Butler, she also explores the very specific processes through which Butler shaped herself—her unique process of self-making. It’s about creating a life with what little you have—hand-me-down books, repurposed diaries, journals, stealing time to write in the middle of the night, making a small check stretch—bit by bit by bit. A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky draws the reader into Butler’s world, creating a sense of unmatched intimacy with the deeply private writer.

George is in conversation with writer, artist, and literary curator Louise Steinman.

This episode was recorded on November 9, 2020 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," an unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Megan Rosenbloom, "DARK ARCHIVES" w/ Caitlin Doughty

Fri, 05 Feb 2021 17:10:04 -0800

On bookshelves around the world, surrounded by ordinary books bound in paper and leather, rest other volumes of a distinctly strange and grisly sort: those bound in human skin. Would you know one if you held it in your hand?

In Dark Archives, Megan Rosenbloom seeks out the historic and scientific truths behind anthropodermic bibliopegy—the practice of binding books in this most intimate covering. Dozens of such books live on in the world’s most famous libraries and museums. Dark Archives exhumes their origins and brings to life the doctors, murderers, innocents, and indigents whose lives are sewn together in this disquieting collection. Along the way, Rosenbloom tells the story of how her team of scientists, curators, and librarians test rumored anthropodermic books, untangling the myths around their creation and reckoning with the ethics of their custodianship.

A librarian and journalist, Rosenbloom is a member of The Order of the Good Death and a cofounder of their Death Salon, a community that encourages conversations, scholarship, and art about mortality and mourning. In Dark Archives—captivating and macabre in all the right ways—she has crafted a narrative that is equal parts detective work, academic intrigue, history, and medical curiosity: a book as rare and thrilling as its subject.
Rosenbloom is joined by mortician and activist Caitlin Doughty. This episode was recorded on October 29 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Catie Disabato, "U UP?"

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 16:00:24 -0800

Eve has a carefully curated online life, works occasionally, and texts constantly with her best friend, Ezra. Basically, she is an archetypal L.A. millennial. She has also been carrying on a year-long conversation with her deceased friend Miggy over text. But when Ezra goes missing on the anniversary weekend of Miggy's death, Eve feels like her world is shattering.

Over a frantic weekend Eve investigates Ezra's disappearance, scouring social media for clues, while drowning her anger and anxiety in drinks, drugs, and spiritual cleansing. Eve starts to spiral as her friends try to convince her that she's overreacting, and ghosts--both real and metaphorical--continue to haunt her. When she uncovers clues to a life Ezra kept hidden, Eve starts to question how much she really knows about her best friend...and herself.

In U UP?, Catie Disabato holds a mirror to the ways the phantom selves we create online permeate our emotional lives and hide our worst traits from everyone, including ourselves. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Kim Young, "TIGERS" w/ Sandra Hunter

Mon, 01 Feb 2021 14:28:42 -0800

TIGERS is an exploration of a series of mutigenerational landscapes of the feminine--female adolescence, womanhood, motherhood, and personal revelation. Where the traditional coming of age story moves from innocence to experience, TIGERS moves, through the excavation of trauma, addiction, recovery, adolescence, parenthood, and punk rock, from the ignorance and misunderstanding of a youth's misbegotten toughness, into a turning inward toward tenderness and resilience--toward, in essence, what it really takes to be mature, tough, and--tigerly. With a principle focus on the dangers threatening girlhood, this book examines not merely the threat of degradation and assault, but, more deeply, the squandering of love through ignorance and inattention. TIGERS here surely serve as symbols for such outward and inward threat, but also as a sign of the mature and tender maternal toughness of youth-grown-wise through trial and reclamation. Author Kim Young is in conversation with Sandra Hunter. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Amelia Pang, "MADE IN CHINA" w/ Agnes Borinsky

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 06:53:10 -0800

Trigger Warning: Contains descriptions of torture and sexual violence.

In 2012, an Oregon mother named Julie Keith opened up a package of Halloween decorations. The cheap foam headstones had been five dollars at Kmart, too good a deal to pass up. But when she opened the box, something shocking fell out: an SOS letter, handwritten in broken English.

“Sir: If you occassionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicuton of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”

The note’s author, Sun Yi, was a mild-mannered Chinese engineer turned political prisoner, forced into grueling labor for campaigning for the freedom to join a forbidden meditation movement. He was imprisoned alongside petty criminals, civil rights activists, and tens of thousands of others the Chinese government had decided to “reeducate,” carving foam gravestones and stitching clothing for more than fifteen hours a day.

In Made in China, investigative journalist Amelia Pang pulls back the curtain on Sun’s story and the stories of others like him, including the persecuted Uyghur minority group whose abuse and exploitation is rapidly gathering steam. What she reveals is a closely guarded network of laogai—forced labor camps—that power the rapid pace of American consumerism. Through extensive interviews and firsthand reportage, Pang shows us the true cost of America’s cheap goods and shares what is ultimately a call to action—urging us to ask more questions and demand more answers from the companies we patronize.

Pang is in conversation with fellow author and Skylight's own Agnes Borinsky.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Eileen Myles, "FOR NOW" w/ Adam Fitzgerald

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 14:26:28 -0800

In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity’s immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existential struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbors, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities and the country that reveal the nature of writing as presence in time.

For Myles, time’s “optic quality” is what enables writing in the first place—as attention, as devotion, as excess. It is this chronologized vision that enables the writer to love the world as it presently is, lending love a linguistic permanence amid social and political systems that threaten to eradicate it. Irreverent, generous, and always insightful, For Now is a candid record of the creative process from one of our most beloved artists. Myles is in conversation with Adam Fitzgerald, professor of creative writing at Rutgers University. This episode was recorded on Monday, October 19 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sarah Faith Gottesdiener, "THE MOON BOOK" w/ Pam Grossman

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:05:39 -0800

We all know the moon. We all have a relationship with it. The earliest people obeyed her orbit, timed their months and holidays and celebrations and agriculture to the moon; the echoes of that system are still visible today, though the connection to the moon is often forgotten.

Sarah Faith Gottesdiener is the leader of a movement to remind us of that lineage, guiding our rhythms and our sleep, our energy and our emotions, reminding us of our humanity and our magic. In her self-published Many Moons Workbooks and Lunar Journals, as well as her sold-out classes, she has guided over 60,000 folks to a deeper relationship with the moon, and through it, with themselves.

The Moon Book will be an informative and comprehensive guide to lunar living, incorporating radical, self-empowering, and magical tools and resources for the beginner and experienced lunar-follower alike. Depending on where we are in our lives, depending on what we are feeling or what is happening around us, the moon allows us a space to invite ritual into our daily lives. The Moon Book will provide a framework on how to utilize the entire lunar cycle holistically, while offering ways for the reader to develop a personal relationship with their own cycles—energetic, personal, and emotional—through the lens of the moon’s phases. Gottesdiener is in conversation with Pam Grossman, a writer, curator, and teacher of magical practice and history. This episode was recorded on Monday, December 14 during a live Crowdcast event hosted by Skylight Books. Visit us at www.crowdcast.io/skylightbooks to RSVP for future events. _______________________________________________

Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Betto Arcos, "MUSIC STORIES FROM THE COSMIC BARRIO"

Sat, 23 Jan 2021 09:00:00 -0800

Music Stories from the Cosmic Barrios is a collection of 150 stories about music from all over Latin America, including music from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, as well as music from Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The stories were originally broadcast on public radio programs including NPR, The World, BCC, KPCC and Latino USA. The book contains 12 chapters, each chapter follows a specific narrative: music and identity; education, community building, immigration, women's empowerment, adversity, social unrest and violence, instruments, producers, place and nation; the music of Brazil, Cuba music and the diaspora. The book's main focus is Latin American music from across the continent, with an emphasis on the music of Latinos and other ethnic groups in Los Angeles. The book also tells a personal story: the author's constant, tireless search for stories that help explain how complex and diverse humans are and how we share something so special that brings us together: music. This is a 380 page book, each story is accompanied by a black and white photo of the artist - many of the photos by author Betto Arcos.

Arcos is joined in conversation by NPR's Mandalit Del Barco.

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SKYLIT: David Leo Rice, "A ROOM IN DODGE CITY, VOL. 2" w/ Brian Evenson

Wed, 20 Jan 2021 13:55:00 -0800

The first book in the Room in Dodge City trilogy brought us a nameless drifter arriving in a bizarre Western town that might encompass all of reality. Now, our drifter considers what happens when drifting on is no longer an option. Focusing on the mysterious workings of The Dodge City Film Industry and the personality cult surrounding Blut Branson, its most legendary director, David Leo Rice's Volume 2 asks hard questions about the nature of art, fame, competition and, ultimately, the ongoing struggle to be born. A mystical inquiry into the sacred and the profane, it expands the universe of the first volume, while exploring yet-stranger territory and laying the foundation for the trilogy’s apocalyptic finale.

Rice is in conversation with fellow writer Brian Evenson. _______________________________________________

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Chelsea G. Summers, "A CERTAIN ANGER" w/ Laurie Penny

Fri, 15 Jan 2021 13:50:51 -0800

Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy's clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about.

Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both. But there is something within Dorothy that's different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.

A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers' A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world's most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

Summers is in conversation with award-winning author, columnist, journalist, and screenwriter Laurie Penny. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Bryan Washington, "MEMORIAL" w/ Lance Morgan

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 14:29:11 -0800

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson's a Black day care teacher, and they've been together for a few years—good years—but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike's immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they've ever known. And just maybe they'll all be okay in the end. Author Bryan Washington discusses his novel Memorial with Skylight's own Lance Morgan. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Jim Gauer, "NOVEL EXPLOSIVES" w/ Greg Gerke

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 13:43:08 -0800

It's an otherwise ordinary week in April, the week after Easter, 2009. Late in the week, a man wakes up in Guanajuato, Mexico, with his knowledge intact, but with no memory of who he is, or how he came to live in Guanajuato. Early in the week, a venture capitalist sits at his desk in an office tower in Los Angeles, attempting to complete his business memoirs, but troubled by the fact that a recent deal appears to be some sort of money-laundering scheme. And in the middle of the week, just before dawn on April 15, two gunmen arrive at an El Paso motel to retrieve a duffel bag stuffed full of currency, and eliminate the man who brought it to El Paso.

Thus begins the three-stranded narrative of Novel Explosives, a fiendishly funny search for identity that travels through the worlds of venture finance, the Juarez drug wars, and the latest innovations in thermobaric weaponry, a joyride of a novel with only one catch: the deeper into the book you go, the more dangerous it gets. At the palpitating heart of the novel, at its roiling fundamental core, lies an agonizing reappraisal of the way the U.S behaves in the world, a project that grows more urgent by the day. Author Jim Gauer is in conversation with writer Greg Gerke. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Lory Bedikian, "THE BOOK OF LAMENTING" & Dorianne Laux, "ONLY AS THE DAY IS LONG"

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 03:47:00 -0800

Lory Bedikian’s first collection The Book of Lamenting was awarded the 2010 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. She earned an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon, where she was awarded the Dan Kimble First Year Teaching Award for Poetry. Her work has been selected several times as a finalist in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition and in the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Competition and has received grants from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial fund and AFFMA. Poets & Writerschose her work as a finalist for the 2010 California Writers Exchange Award. Additionally, her poetry was included in the anthology Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, Beyond Baroque Books, 2015 and chosen as a finalist in the 2015 AROHO Orlando Competition. Bedikian’s newer work has been published in Miramar, has been featured on the Best American Poetry blog as part of the “Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live: Poetry & the Body”; series, is included in the Fall 2018 issue of Tin House and appears in recent issues of The Los Angeles Review and MORIA, as well as on Poets.org. Her poem “The Mechanic,” is included in the recently released anthology Border Lines: Poems of Migration, Knopf, 2020. Also, her poem “On the Way to Oshagan,” will be featured by Pádraig Ó Tuama in a forthcoming Poetry Unbound podcast.

Dorianne Laux's sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection,The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.

SKYLIT: Mauro Gatti, "THE HAPPY BROADCAST" w/ Evan Spiridellis

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 13:47:38 -0800

The Happy Broadcast: How to Stay Positive, Take Action & Make the World a Better Place is filled with stories of people doing good, as well as prompts, tips, and how-tos for taking action to make good things happen in your own community. From drone delivered medical supplies, to a cuddle club uniting senior dogs with senior people, to a man who planted a tree every day for thirty-five years and created a forest larger than Central Park, the stories collected in The Happy Broadcast are surprising, diverse, and empowering, featuring Mauro Gatti's charming and humorous illustrations. Packed with ideas and inspiration to make a difference, this book will remind you that no action is too small, and that every person (yes, that's you ) counts. Gatti is in conversation with Evan Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab Media, Inc. _______________________________________________

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SKYLIT: Mark de Silva, "POINTS OF ATTACK" w/ Rachel Allen

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 13:16:00 -0800

In this collage of critical reflections, written in the tradition of the short essay running through Francis Bacon and Roland Barthes, the novelist, philosopher, and former New York Times Opinion staffer Mark de Silva looks into matters of both common curiosity and special concern in America today: technological evolution, virtuality, terrorism, the future of the self, the individual's place in a globalized society, the species' place in the natural world, the state of the arts, and the animadversions of the sciences. Above all, Points of Attack is a handbook of the ways of the good life in bad times, and an inoculation against presumption in an era when the axioms of liberal democratic life have come undone and the end of history once again appears a long way off.

de Silva is in conversation with Rachel Allen.

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SKYLIT: Rebecca Fishow, "THE TROUBLE WITH LANGUAGE" w/ John Colasacco

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 13:33:29 -0800

Weaving together fabulist invention and gritty realism, Rebecca Fishow's debut collection, THE TROUBLE WITH LANGUAGE, unearths stories of men and women whose traumatic experiences make way for dazzlingly cerebral lives. A young man finds a severed head at his door years after his mother takes her own life. A married couple initiates a bloody jailbreak. A young woman poses nude for strangers in attempts to pay for mental health treatment, while another finds herself rapidly shrinking in a hotel room. No two of these surprising and playful fictions are alike, and each encourages us to peek behind life's curtains to discover more bizarre, enchanting, and joyful truths.

Fishow is in conversation with writer John Colasacco.

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SKYLIT: Nathan Elias, "THE REINCARNATIONS" w/ Alex Thurnher

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 14:49:15 -0800

These loosely connected stories are laced with the familiar and the uncanny, the real and the surreal, the ordinary and the fabulistic. A documentary filmmaker refuses to give up on finding his daughter who mysteriously disappears by the river. A small-time real estate agent recovers from a brief psychotic episode upon discovering his fianc e's affair. An actress struggles to grasp reality when the recordings of lucid dreams are used in movies instead of live performances. An eccentric teenager recounts his first romance from beyond the grave.

Spanning the boundaries of literary and speculative fiction, The Reincarnations revolves around multiple forms of Zenlike rebirth. Equal parts raw emotion and wild imagination, Nathan Elias's debut story collection ushers in an electrifying yet tender new voice in fiction.

Elias is in conversation with writer Alex Thurnher.

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SKYLIT: Susan Buttenwieser, "WE WERE LUCKY WITH THE RAIN" w/ Lyman Clayborn

Mon, 28 Dec 2020 13:50:00 -0800

Susan Buttenwieser’s writing has appeared in numerous publications. We Were Lucky with the Rain is her first book. She teaches creative writing in New York City public schools and to incarcerated women.

Buttenwieser is in conversation with Lyman Clayborn.

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SKYLIT: Abdellah Taïa, "A COUNTRY FOR DYING" w/ Colm Toíbín

Mon, 21 Dec 2020 10:03:41 -0800

Paris, Summer 2010.

Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona. Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira.

Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Abdellah Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future." Taïa is in conversation with renowned writer Colm Toíbín.

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SKYLIT: Ruth Gilligan, "THE BUTCHERS' BLESSING" w/ Amber Starks

Fri, 18 Dec 2020 14:22:12 -0800

Every year, Úna prepares for her father to leave her. He will wave goodbye early one morning, then disappear with seven other men to traverse the Irish countryside. Together, these men form the Butchers, a group that roams from farm to farm, enacting ancient methods of cattle slaughter.

The Butchers’ Blessing moves between the events of 1996 and the present, offering a simmering glimpse into the modern tensions that surround these eight fabled men. For Úna, being a Butcher’s daughter means a life of tangled ambition and incredible loneliness. For her mother, Grá, it’s a life of faith and longing, of performing a promise that she may or may not be able to keep. For nonbeliever Fionn, the Butchers represent a dated and complicated reality, though for his son, Davey, they represent an entirely new world—and potentially new love. For photographer Ronan, the Butchers are ideal subjects: representatives of an older, more folkloric Ireland whose survival is now being tested. As he moves through the countryside, Ronan captures this world image by image—a lake, a cottage, and his most striking photo: a man, hung upside down in a pose of unspeakable violence.

Author Ruth Gilligan is in conversation with writer Amber Sparks.

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SKYLIT: Sudeep Sen, "LITERATURES OF THE ATHROPOCENE" w/ Kiran Bhat

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 14:06:23 -0800

Sudeep Sen is widely recognised as a major new generation voice in world literature and "one of the finest younger English-language poets in the international literary scene." His prize-winning books include Postmarked India, Distracted Geographies, Rain, Aria, The HarperCollins Book of English Poetry, and many others. He is the editorial director of aark arts and the editor of Atlas.

Sen is in conversation with fellow writer Kiran Bhat.

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SKYLIT: Rebecca Simon, "WHY WE LOVE PIRATES"

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 14:21:11 -0800

During his life and even after his death, Captain William Kidd's name was known around England and the American colonies. He was infamous for the very crime for which he was hanged, piracy. Why We Love Pirates, by Rebecca Simon, dives into the details of the two-year manhunt for Captain Kidd and the events that ensued afterward. Captain Kidd was hanged in 1701, and from that sprung a massive hunt for all pirates led by the British during a period known as the Golden Age of Piracy. Ironically, public executions only led to pirates' growth in popularity and interest. In addition, because the American colonies relied on pirates for smuggled goods such as spices, wines, and silks, they sought to protect pirates from being captured.

The more pirates were hunted and executed, the more people became supportive of them. They felt for the "Robin Hoods of the Sea"--both because they saw the British's treatment of them as an injustice and because they treasured the goods that pirates brought to them. These historical events were pivotal in creating the portrayal of pirates as we know them today. They grew into romantic antiheroes--which ultimately led to characters like the mischievous but lovable Captain Jack Sparrow. Simon has presented her research on the history of pirates around the world and now she's bringing the spectacular story of Captain Kidd to her readers.

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SKYLIT: Frances F. Denny, "MAJOR ARCANA" w/ Lisa Locascio

Sat, 12 Dec 2020 11:34:31 -0800

Based on her critically acclaimed exhibition, Major Arcana collects the work of photographer Frances F. Denny, who traveled around the U.S. photographing and interviewing a diverse group of people who identify as witches.

This book is an exploration of contemporary witchery told through striking photographs and short, inspiring essays written by the “Terry Gross of witches,” Pam Grossman, and the subjects themselves. From occultists and Neo-pagans, to herbalists and Wiccan High Priestesses, Denny’s portraits capture the face of modern American witchcraft and challenge our assumptions about who and what a witch really is.

Denny is in conversation with writer Lisa Locascio.

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SKYLIT: Michelle Gallen, "BIG GIRL, SMALL TOWN"

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 13:23:40 -0800

Majella is happiest out of the spotlight, away from her neighbors’ stares and the gossips of the small town in Northern Ireland where she grew up just after the Troubles. She lives a quiet life caring for her alcoholic mother, working in the local chip shop, watching the regular customers come and go. She wears the same clothes each day (overalls, too small), has the same dinner each night (fish and chips, microwaved at home after her shift ends), and binge-watches old DVDs of the same show (Dallas, best show on TV) from the comfort of her bed.

But underneath Majella’s seemingly ordinary life are the facts that she doesn’t know where her father is and that every person in her town has been changed by the lingering divide between Protestants and Catholics. When Majella’s predictable existence is upended by the death of her granny, she comes to realize there may be more to life than the gossips of Aghybogey, the pub, and the chip shop. In fact, there just may be a whole big world outside her small town.

Told in a highly original voice, with a captivating heroine readers will love and root for, Michelle Gallen's Big Girl, Small Town will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, and accessible literary fiction with an edge.

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SKYLIT: Jared Milrad & Jan West, "BELIEVE IN YOU"

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:32:02 -0800

In Believe In You, an intimate and revealing conversation between a mother and son, Jared Milrad and Jan West take a fascinating look at the experiences, moments, and people that have shaped their lives - both together and apart. From Childhood to Marriage to Family, Animals, Activism, Movies, Politics and just about everything in between, Jared and Jan hold no punches as they explore how life, love, and loss shaped their lives and fueled their connections with others. A former staffer for President Barack Obama and a filmmaker who has worked with leaders across Hollywood and beyond, Jared reflects on growing up in a single parent household, coming out as a gay man, pursuing multiple creative passions, and working at the highest levels of politics, nonprofit advocacy, and entertainment. In a free-flowing interview style, Jared explores his mom's remarkable life: growing up in a dysfunctional household, marching for civil and human rights, working through a divorce and difficult relationships, and raising two kids as a single mother on a secretary's salary. It's a conversation rarely had - and even less often recorded - between a parent and child, particularly with such raw honesty, thoughtful reflection, and considered insight into what makes a family's bond truly eternal.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Nana-Ama Danquah, "ACCRA NOIR" w/ Anniwaa Buachie

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 13:12:26 -0800

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies (launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir) with Accra Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city.

Accra is the perfect setting for noir fiction. The telling of such tales--ones involving or suggesting death, with a protagonist who is flawed or devious, driven by either a self-serving motive or one of the seven deadly sins--is woven into the fabric of the city's everyday life...

Accra is more than just a capital city. It is a microcosm of Ghana. It is a virtual map of the nation's soul, a complex geographical display of its indigenous presence, the colonial imposition, declarations of freedom, followed by coups d' tat, decades of dictatorship, and then, finally, a steady march forward into a promising future...

Much like Accra, these stories are not always what they seem. The contributors who penned them know too well how to spin a story into a web...It is an honor and a pleasure to share them and all they reveal about Accra, a city of allegories, one of the most dynamic and diverse places in the world.

Editor and Contributor Nana-Ama Danquah is in conversation with actress, filmmaker, and writer Anniwaa Buachie.

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SKYLIT: Tauno Biltsted, "THE ANATOMIST'S TALE" & Caitlin Chung, "SHIP OF FATES"

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 13:35:07 -0800

Tauno Biltsted

Born into abject poverty in the British Empire, our narrator aspires to a better life as a ship’s surgeon—until a tyrannical captain provokes a mutiny, forcing him into a life of piracy and eventually to a tropical commune of maroons called New Madagascar.

Told through a series of confessions to those who visit the narrator during his imprisonment at Marshalsea, Tauno Biltsted's The Anatomist's Tale relates one man’s brush with the heady freedom of outlaws—and the price of returning to “civilization.”

Caitlin Chung

In the gridlocked harbor of San Francisco's Barbary Coast, a ship hung with red paper lanterns draws crowds eager to gamble and drink. Aboard this red-lit ship, the fates of two young women will be altered irrevocably—and tied forever to that of an ancient lighthouse keeper who longs to be free.

Set against the backdrop of Gold Rush–era San Francisco's Chinese immigrant community, Ship of Fates is a coming-of-age fairy tale that stretches across generations.

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Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Farrah Alexander, "RAISING THE RESISTANCE"

Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:29:00 -0800

Acknowledging the dual role of mother and citizen, Scary Mommy writer and mom Farrah Alexander, provides empowerment and guidance for the modern progressive mother.

On the intersection of feminism and motherhood.Mothers are a force to be reckoned with. And after the Women's March and midterm elections, moms have surely secured their spot in today's feminist movement. But for those who aren't ready to make a bid for the presidency, the way forward can seem daunting and unclear. Whether it's correcting a misinformed family member about gender equality or running for political office, this bold and accessible primer presents active parents with different types of activism they can incorporate into their parenting, no matter how big or small.

When active parents support the feminist movement. With practical guidance, political commentary, and inspiration, this feminist manifesto for moms tackles problems from political representation to sexual misconduct. It doesn't just validate present-day feminist frustration, it also offers practical ways to channel it into solutions. Most importantly, it proves that by planting seeds of empathy and political awareness in their children, moms can raise their children to be change-makers. They can raise the resistance.

If you enjoyed books like Good and Mad, Unladylike, and Fight Like a Mother, then you'll love Raising the Resistance.

Alexander is in conversation with Skylight's own Kelsey Nolan.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Daniel Brook, "THE ACCIDENT OF COLOR" w/ Erin Aubry Kaplan & Guenveur Smith

Mon, 30 Nov 2020 10:55:00 -0800

In The Accident of Color, Daniel Brook journeys to nineteenth-century New Orleans and Charleston and introduces us to cosmopolitan residents who elude the racial categories the rest of America takes for granted. Before the Civil War, these free, openly mixed-race urbanites enjoyed some rights of citizenship and the privileges of wealth and social status. But after Emancipation, as former slaves move to assert their rights, the black-white binary that rules the rest of the nation begins to intrude. During Reconstruction, a movement arises as mixed-race elites make common cause with the formerly enslaved and allies at the fringes of whiteness in a bid to achieve political and social equality for all.

In some areas, this coalition proved remarkably successful. Activists peacefully integrated the streetcars of Charleston and New Orleans for decades and, for a time, even the New Orleans public schools and the University of South Carolina were educating students of all backgrounds side by side. Tragically, the achievements of this movement were ultimately swept away by a violent political backlash and expunged from the history books, culminating in the Jim Crow laws that would legalize segregation for a half century and usher in the binary racial regime that rules us to this day.

Brook is in conversation with journalist Erin Aubry Kaplan and actor/director/writer Roger Guenveur Smith.

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SKYLIT: Frederick Kaufman, "THE MONEY PLOT" w/ Indrani Sen

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 12:41:48 -0800

Frederick Kaufman tackles the complex history of money, beginning with the earliest myths and wrapping up with Wall Street’s byzantine present-day doings. Along the way, he exposes a set of allegorical plots, stock characters, and stereotypical metaphors that have long been linked with money and commercial culture, from Melanesian trading rituals to the dogma of Medieval churchmen faced with global commerce, the rationales of Mercantilism and colonial expansion, and the U.S. dollar’s 1971 unpinning from gold.

The Money Plot offers a tool to see through the haze of modern banking and finance, demonstrating that the standard reasons given for economic inequality—the Neoliberal gospel of market forces—are, like dollars, euros, and yuan, contingent upon structures people have designed. It shines a light on the one percent’s efforts to contain a money culture that benefits them within boundaries they themselves are increasingly setting. And Kaufman warns that if we cannot recognize what is going on, we run the risk of becoming pawns and shells ourselves, of becoming characters in someone else’s plot, of becoming other people’s money.

Kaufman is in conversation with Indrani Sen, editor-in-chief at Forge and editorial director at Medium.

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SKYLIT: Riva Lehrer, "GOLEM GIRL: A MEMOIR" w/ Terry Myers

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 06:00:00 -0800

What do we sacrifice in the pursuit of normalcy? And what becomes possible when we embrace monstrosity? Can we envision a world that sees impossible creatures?

In 1958, amongst the children born with spina bifida is Riva Lehrer. At the time, most such children are not expected to survive. Her parents and doctors are determined to fix her, sending the message over and over again that she is broken. That she will never have a job, a romantic relationship, or an independent life. Enduring countless medical interventions, Riva tries her best to be a good girl and a good patient in the quest to be cured.

Everything changes when, as an adult, Riva is invited to join a group of artists, writers, and performers who are building Disability Culture. Their work is daring, edgy, funny, and dark--it rejects tropes that define disabled people as pathetic, frightening, or worthless. They insist that disability is an opportunity for creativity and resistance. Emboldened, Riva asks if she can paint their portraits--inventing an intimate and collaborative process that will transform the way she sees herself, others, and the world. Each portrait story begins to transform the myths she's been told her whole life about her body, her sexuality, and other measures of normal.

Written with the vivid, cinematic prose of a visual artist, and the love and playfulness that defines all of Riva's work, Golem Girl is an extraordinary story of tenacity and creativity. With the author's magnificent portraits featured throughout, this memoir invites us to stretch ourselves toward a world where bodies flow between all possible forms of what it is to be human.

Lehrer is in conversation with writer and editor Terry Myers.

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SKYLIT: Matthew Medney and John Connelly, "BEYOND KUIPER: THE GALACTIC STAR ALLIANCE"

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 11:57:01 -0800

In B eyond Kuiper: The Galactic Star Alliance, an illustrated novel co- created & written by Matthew Medney (Heavy Metal Magazine CEO & NYU adjunct professor) and John Connelly (Lockheed Martin Aerospace Engineer), humankind acknowledges the vastness of time, the cyclical nature of civilization, and the obscurity of our own history.

If our galaxy is so full of sentient life, why has no one said hello? We thought of a simple, logical reason: no one wants to. Stepping back and casting an objective eye on ourselves, it seems painfully obvious that humans lack a fundamental respect for our planet and for each other. We possess extremely short memories and long grudges, and the likelihood of receiving alien tools to hasten our expansion seems downright foolhardy.

The Galactic Star Alliance has been alive and well for millions of earth years. Hundreds of thousands of sentient worlds and trillions of beings walk, run, and crawl across the many home worlds of the Alliance. This revelation led to many questions: How is faster-than-light speed travel possible, and could cohesive, interstellar civilizations exist without it? Is it conceivable to govern a coalition not of different countries, but of different species? Each question led to another and each answer built our world, piece by piece until it spanned thousands of answers and millions of light-years. As for the title, from where would our judges watch us?

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SKYLIT: Unni Turrettini, "BETRAYING THE NOBEL" w/ Brian Keating

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 12:55:00 -0800

The Nobel Prize, regardless of category, has always been surrounded by politics, intrigue, even scandal. But those pale in comparison to the Peace Prize.

In Betraying the Nobel, Norwegian writer Unni Turrettini completely upends what we thought we knew about the Peace Prize—both its history and how it is awarded.

As 1984’s winner, Desmond Tutu, put it, “No sooner had I got the Nobel Peace Prize than I became an instant oracle.” However, the Peace Prize as we know it is corrupt at its core.

In the years surrounding World War I and II, the Nobel Peace Prize became a beacon of hope, and, through its peace champions, became a reference and an inspiration around the world. But along the way, something went wrong. Alfred Nobel made the mistake of leaving it to the Norwegian Parliament to elect the members of the Peace Prize committee, which has filled the committee with politicians more loyal to their political party’s agenda than to Nobel’s prize's prerogative. As a result, winners are often a result of political expediency.

Betraying the Nobel will delve into the surprising, and often corrupt, history of the prize, and examine what the committee hoped to obtain by its choices, including the now-infamously awarded Cordell Hull, as well as Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, and Barack Obama. Turrettini shows the effects of increased media attention, which have turned the Nobel into a popularity prize, and a controversial and provocative commendation.

Turrettini is in conversation with Brian Keating, Distinguished Professor of Physics at the Center for Astrophysics & Space Sciences at UC San Diego, and author of the book Losing the Nobel Prize.

Video chat between Turrettini and Keating: https://youtu.be/3CPfcHoZe7U?sub_confirmation=1

Free meditation download here: https://UnniTurrettini.simplero.com/page/183887-link-to-optin-page-for-free-meditation-download

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SKYLIT: Mauro Javier Cárdenas, "APHASIA" w/ Jeremy M. Davies

Tue, 17 Nov 2020 06:25:00 -0800

Antonio wants to avoid thinking about his sister—even though he knows he won’t be able to avoid thinking about his sister—because his sister is on the run after allegedly threatening to shoot her neighbors, and has been claiming that Antonio, Obama, the Pentagon, and their mother are all conspiring against her. Nevertheless, Antonio is going to try his best to be as avoidant as possible, because he worries that what’s been happening to his sister might somehow infect his relatively contented, ordered American life, and destabilize the precarious arrangement with his ex-wife that’s allowed him to stay close to his two daughters.

In fact, he’s busy doing everything except facing his problems head-on: transcribing recordings of his mother speaking about their troubled life in Colombia, transcribing recordings of his ex-wife speaking about her idyllic life in the Czech Republic; writing about former girlfriends whose words and deeds still recur in his mind; rereading stories by American writers that allow him to skirt the subject of his sister’s state of mind without completely destroying his own.

Written in long, unravelling sentences that accommodate all the detritus of thought—scenes real and imagined, headphones and heartache, Toblerones and Thomas Bernhard—Aphasia captures the immensity of the present moment as well as the pain of the past. It cements Mauro Javier Cárdenas’s place as one of the most innovative and extraordinary novelists working today.

Cárdenas is in conversation with writer and editor Jeremy M. Davies.

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SKYLIT: Carmen Boullosa, "LET'S TALK ABOUT YOUR WALL" w/ Juan Villoro

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 14:27:56 -0800

Despite the extensive coverage in the U.S. media of the southern border and Donald Trump's proposed wall, most English speakers have had little access to the multitude of perspectives from Mexico on the ongoing crisis. Celebrated novelist Carmen Boullosa (author of Texas and Before) and Alberto Quintero redress this imbalance with this collection of essays--translated into English for the first time--drawing on writing by journalists, novelists, and documentary-makers who are Mexican or based in Mexico. Contributors include the award-winning author Valeria Luiselli, whose Tell Me How It Ends is the go-to book on the child migrant crisis, and the novelist Yuri Herrera, author of the highly acclaimed Signs Preceding the End of the World.

Let's Talk About Your Wall uses Trump's wall as a starting point to discuss important questions, including the history of U.S.-Mexican relations, and questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and borders. An essential resource for anyone seeking to form a well-grounded opinion on one of the central issues of our day, Let's Talk About Your Wall provides a fierce and compelling counterpoint to the racist bigotry and irrational fear that consumes the debate over immigration, and a powerful symbol of opposition to exclusion and hate.

Boullosa is in conversation with writer and journalist Juan Villoro.

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SKYLIT: Adam Goodman, "THE DEPORTATION MACHINE" w/ Romeo Guzmán

Wed, 11 Nov 2020 12:01:01 -0800

Constant headlines about deportations, detention camps, and border walls drive urgent debates about immigration and what it means to be an American in the twenty-first century. The Deportation Machine traces the long and troubling history of the US government's systematic efforts to terrorize and expel immigrants over the past 140 years. This provocative, eye-opening book provides needed historical perspective on one of the most pressing social and political issues of our time.

In a sweeping and engaging narrative, Adam Goodman examines how federal, state, and local officials have targeted various groups for expulsion, from Chinese and Europeans at the turn of the twentieth century to Central Americans and Muslims today. He reveals how authorities have singled out Mexicans, nine out of ten of all deportees, and removed most of them not by orders of immigration judges but through coercive administrative procedures and calculated fear campaigns. Goodman uncovers the machine's three primary mechanisms--formal deportations, voluntary departures, and self-deportations--and examines how public officials have used them to purge immigrants from the country and exert control over those who remain. Exposing the pervasive roots of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, The Deportation Machine introduces the politicians, bureaucrats, businesspeople, and ordinary citizens who have pushed for and profited from expulsion.

Goodman is in conversation with academic, public historian, and cultural worker Romeo Guzmán.

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SKYLIT: Emily Schultz, "LITTLE THREATS"

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 17:30:39 -0800

In the summer of 1993, twin sisters Kennedy and Carter Wynn are embracing the grunge era and testing every limit in their privileged Richmond suburb. But Kennedy's teenage rebellion goes too far when, after a night of partying in the woods, her best friend, Haley, is murdered, and suspicion quickly falls upon Kennedy. She can't remember anything about the night in question, and this, along with the damning testimony from a college boy who both Kennedy and Haley loved, is enough to force Kennedy to enter a guilty plea.

In 2008, Kennedy is released into a world that has moved on without her. Carter has grown distant as she questions Kennedy's innocence, and begins a relationship with someone who could drive the sisters apart forever. The twins' father, Gerry, is eager to protect the family's secrets and fragile bonds. But Kennedy's return brings the tragedy back to the surface, along with a whole new wave of media. When a crime show host comes to town asking questions, believing the murder wasn't as simple as it seemed, murky memories of Haley's death come to light. As new suspects emerge and the suburban woods finally give up their secrets, two families may be destroyed again.

Little Threats author Emily Schultz is in conversation with Skylight's own Agnes Borinsky.

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SKYLIT: Stephanie LaCava, "THE SUPERRATIONALS" w/ Sasha Sagan

Fri, 06 Nov 2020 13:55:00 -0800

Over the course of a few days in the fall of 2015, the sophisticated and awkward, wry and beautiful Mathilde upends her tidy world. She takes a short leave from her job at one of New York's leading auction houses and follows her best friend Gretchen on an impromptu trip to Paris. While there, she confronts her late mother's hidden life, attempts to rein in Gretchen's encounters with an aloof and withholding sometime-boyfriend, and faces the traumatic loss of both her parents when she was a teenager.

Reeling between New York, Paris, Munich London, and Berlin, The Superrationals is an erotic and darkly comic story about female friendship, set at the intersection between counterculture and the multimillion dollar art industry. Mathilde takes short, perceptive notes on artworks as a way to organize her own chaotic thoughts and life. Featuring a bitchy gossip chorus within a larger carousel of voices, The Superrationals coolly surveys the international art and media worlds while exploring game theory, the uncanny, and psychoanalysis. Written in the “Young Girl” tradition of Michelle Bernstein's All The King's Horses, Bernadette Corporation's Reena Spaulings and Natasha Stagg's Surveys, The Superrationals confronts the complexity of building narrative in life and on the page and the instability that lies at the heart of everything.

Author Stephanie LaCava is in conversation with writer/filmmaker/TV producer/editor Sasha Sagan.

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SKYLIT: Kevin Mattson, "WE'RE NOT HERE TO ENTERTAIN" w/ Mike Foley

Wed, 04 Nov 2020 13:55:00 -0800

Many remember the 1980s as the era of Ronald Reagan, a conservative decade populated by preppies and yuppies dancing to a soundtrack of electronic synth pop music. In some ways, it was the "MTV generation." However, the decade also produced some of the most creative works of punk culture, from the music of bands like the Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys to avant-garde visual arts, literature, poetry, and film. In We're Not Here to Entertain, Kevin Mattson documents what Kurt Cobain once called a "punk rock world" --the all-encompassing hardcore-indie culture that incubated his own talent. Mattson shows just how widespread the movement became--ranging across the nation, from D.C. through Ohio and Minnesota to LA--and how democratic it was due to its commitment to Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tactics.

Mattson is in conversation with fellow punk rock historian Mike Foley.

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SKYLIT: Carol Hay, "THINK LIKE A FEMINIST" w/ Samia Hesni

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 13:55:00 -0800

Think Like a Feminist is an irreverent yet rigorous primer that unpacks over two hundred years of feminist thought. In a time when the word feminism triggers all sorts of responses, many of them conflicting and misinformed, Professor Carol Hay provides this balanced, clarifying, and inspiring examination of what it truly means to be a feminist today. She takes the reader from conceptual questions of sex, gender, intersectionality, and oppression to the practicalities of talking to children, navigating consent, and fighting for adequate space on public transit, without deviating from her clear, accessible, conversational tone. Think Like a Feminist is equally a feminist starter kit and an advanced refresher course, connecting longstanding controversies to today’s headlines.

Hay is in conversation with Boston University professor Samia Hesni.

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SKYLIT: Johnny Ray Huston & Bradford Nordeen, "BECAUSE HORROR"

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 12:24:00 -0700

BECAUSE HORROR is a collection of 13 essays (incl. one poem) that mixes critical writing and memoir to explore horror movies and how they haunt memory. Bringing the glee of fandom into cinema scholarship, BECAUSE HORROR promiscuously sways through titles like MESSIAH OF EVIL, PULSE, MANDY, DANTE'S COVE and SCRE4M, with prose that spreads sticky like louche gore over the history of a genre and its mutating sites of broadcast. Written between August 1 and September 14, 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown, the chapbook was an exercise in immediacy and a breakneck volley of ideas between Huston and Nordeen who live in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectively. Huston’s chapters span The Brain that Wouldn’t Die, Tourist Trap, Curtis Harrington’s The Killing Kind, Mandy, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Kairo (Pulse) and its TIFF premiere on September 10 of 2001, and a survey of films that lead with the directive, Don’t… Nordeen’s essays broach Deathdream, Blood Diner, Play It As It Lays vs. Messiah of Evil, horror movie posters in the video rental market of the 1990s, what Scre4m looks like on ketamine and an original poem inspired by the gay supernatural soap opera Dante’s Cove. The chapbook features original artwork by Hedi El Kholti, who also penned an afterward, concerning hotel horror. Still lives by Abdi Taslimi.

For over a decade, Johnny Ray Huston was Arts and Entertainment Editor at the San Francisco Bay Guardian. As a writer, artist and curator he has read or shown work at venues including SFMOMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF Camerawork, Artists’ Television Access and [2nd Floor Projects]. A book of stories, published by Straight to Hell, is due in 2021. Bradford Nordeen is a writer, curator and founder of the non-profit organization, Dirty Looks Inc. He has written for Frieze, Art in America and Butt Magazine, and is a recipient of the 2018 Creative Capital / Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. His publications include FEVER PITCH, CHECK YOUR VERNACULAR and four issues of the Dirty Looks Volume series (editor).

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SKYLIT: Jason Horton, "ABANDONED AND HISTORIC LOS ANGELES" w/ Rebecca Leib

Wed, 28 Oct 2020 14:22:21 -0700

Somewhere between the Hollywood sign and the Pacific Ocean, underneath the palm trees and above the crowded highways, there they are. You may have seen one in your favorite movie, or walked by one a thousand times. They're the landmarks, buildings, storefronts, and vintage signs that are part of what make LA and its surroundings so iconic. Not only can you see the history of Los Angeles, you can see history. Every historic location, abandoned storefront, and vintage sign is a lesson in LA's past.

Among the flickering neon portraits are essays, anecdotes, and stories from artists, writers, actors, and musicians about their own personal LA. Take a journey to the towns, cities, and neighborhoods that define Los Angeles culture, one photo at a time.

Author Jason Horton discusses his new book, Abandoned and Historic Los Angeles: Neon and Beyond with writer and comedian Rebecca Leib.

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SKYLIT: Jennifer L. Knox, "CRUSHING IT" w/ Sarah Manguso

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 07:00:00 -0700

The poems in Jennifer L. Knox's darkly imaginative collection, Crushing It, unearth epiphanies in an unbounded landscape of forms, voices and subjects--from history to true crime to epidemiology--while exploring our tenuous connections and disconnections. From Merle Haggard lifting his head from a pile of cocaine to absurdist romps through an apocalypse where mushrooms learn to sing, this versatile collection is brimming with dark humor and bright surprise. Alongside Knox's distinctive surrealism, Crushing It also reveals autobiography in poems about love, family, and adult ADHD, and Knox's empathetic depictions of the ego's need to assert its precious, singular "I" suggest that a self distinct from the hive, the herd, the flock, is an illusion. With clear-eyed spirit, Crushing It swallows all the world, and then some.

Knox is in conversation with American writer and poet Sarah Manguso.

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SKYLIT: Hayley Gene Penner, "PEOPLE YOU FOLLOW" w/ Kathryn Borel

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 11:55:00 -0700

Singer-songwriter Hayley Gene Penner's memoir takes a brutally honest yet humorous look at the dark, intimate truths we spend our lives running from. Like a map of beautiful mistakes, Hayley's stories of questionable sexual encounters, artistic aspirations, and emotional abuse trace her coming of age in the music industry.

Hayley explores all her relationships -- from her childhood as the daughter of a celebrity, to the destructive and coercive relationship with her boss, to her encounter with the actor we all know but who mustn't be named -- and brings them together in a series of sharp, touching vignettes. People You Follow straddles the delicate boundary between ethical and unethical behaviour, self-protection and self-destruction, power and weakness, giddiness and despair.

Penner is in conversation with writer, editor and radio producer Kathryn Borel.

Stream "People You Follow," Penner's title track from her upcoming album, here.

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SKYLIT: Roy A. Meals, "BONES" w/ Vernon Tolo

Wed, 21 Oct 2020 12:34:27 -0700

A lively, illustrated exploration of the 500-million-year history of bone, a touchstone for understanding vertebrate life and human culture.

Human bone is versatile and entirely unique: it repairs itself without scarring, it’s lightweight but responds to stresses, and it’s durable enough to survive for millennia. In Bones, orthopedic surgeon Roy A. Meals explores and extols this amazing material that both supports and records vertebrate life.

Inside the body, bone proves itself the world’s best building material. Meals examines the biological makeup of bones; demystifies how they grow, break, and heal; and compares the particulars of human bone to variations throughout the animal kingdom. In engaging and clear prose, he debunks familiar myths—humans don’t have exactly 206 bones—and illustrates common bone diseases, like osteoporosis and arthritis, and their treatments. Along the way, he highlights the medical innovations—from the first X-rays to advanced operative techniques—that enhance our lives and introduces the giants of orthopedic surgery who developed them.

After it has supported vertebrate life, bone reveals itself in surprising ways—sometimes hundreds of millions of years later. With enthusiasm and humor, Meals investigates the diverse roles bone has played in human culture throughout history. He highlights allusions to bone in religion and literature, from Adam’s rib to Hamlet’s skull, and uncovers its enduring presence as fossils, technological tools, and musical instruments ranging from the Tibetan thighbone kangling horn to everyday drumsticks. From the dawn of civilization through to the present day, humankind has repurposed bone to serve and protect, and even to teach, amuse, and inspire.

Approachable and entertaining, Bones richly illuminates our bodies’ essential framework.

Meals is in conversation with Dr. Vernon Tolo, MD.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Donna Miscolta, "LIVING COLOR" w/ Alex Espinoza

Mon, 19 Oct 2020 11:58:49 -0700

We first meet Angie Rubio at age five, being scolded by her kindergarten teacher for not knowing how to skip properly.

Set in California in the 1960s and '70s, Living Color takes Angie year by year from kindergarten through high school, offering a portrait of the artist as a shy, awkward Mexican-American girl.

Taking place against the backdrop of the Cold War and civil rights eras--the Cuban missile crisis, the Watts riots, Beatlemania, the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics--Living Color also surveys the milestones of American girlhood. We see Brownies, slumber parties, training bras, cheerleader tryouts, and proms through the eyes of a "brown, skinny, and bespectacled" Latina who soon learns that pageant winners as well as high school cheerleaders are always white.

Donna Miscolta's new book traces Angie's formation as a writer, from the child who loves Scrabble and jots down new words she learns in a notebook to the teenager publishing controversial opinions about success and belonging, a person whose voice is now "loud-enough-to-be-heard."

Miscolta is in conversation with fellow author Alex Espinoza.

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SKYLIT: Kaela Green, "SCOTTIE ON THE SPACE STATION"

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 11:15:31 -0700

Ellie and her family love living on the space station With a mother who is an intergalactic doctor and a father who studies the stars, Ellie's life on the station is a blast. They can do anything you can do on Earth... except they can do it with alien visitors in zero gravity. Sometimes the aliens don't know how to play or talk with Ellie's little brother, Scottie, because he is a person with disabilities. But this doesn't stop Ellie from introducing them and showing them that Scottie is a great friend Come join Ellie and Scottie as they meet a young alien who has just arrived on the station...

Scottie on the Space Station author Kaela Green is in conversation with Skylight events manager Maddie Gobbo.

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Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Kazim Ali, "THE VOICE OF SHEILA CHANDRA" w/ Kiki Petrosino

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 15:12:10 -0700

Titled for the influential singer left almost voiceless by a terrible syndrome, The Voice of Sheila Chandra brings sweet melodies and rhythms as the voices blend and become multitudinous. There's an honoring of not only survival, but of persistence, as this part research-based, pensive collection contemplates what it takes to move forward when the unimaginable holds you back.

Author Kazim Ali is in conversation with fellow poet Kiki Petrosino.

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SKYLIT: Xialuo Guo, "A LOVER'S DISCOURSE"

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 14:54:02 -0700

A Chinese woman moves from Beijing to London for a doctoral program--and to begin a new life--just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build a life together.

A Lover's Discourse by Xialuo Guo is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in post-Brexit vote Britain, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humor, this intimate and tender novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

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SKYLIT: Lawrence Rosenthal, "EMPIRE OF RESENTMENT" w/ Harry Levine

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 14:01:17 -0700

Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrence Rosenthal argues, what is happening globally is not the emergence but the transformation of right-wing populism.

Rosenthal, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, suggests right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived cultural elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory and it has been at work across the globe. In Italy, for example, the Northern League reinvented itself in 2018 as an all-Italy party, switching its fury from southerners to immigrants, and came to power.

Rosenthal paints a vivid sociological, political, and psychological picture of the transnational quality of this movement, which is now in power in at least a dozen countries, creating a de facto Nationalist International. In America and abroad, the current mobilization of right-wing populism has given life to long marginalized threats like white supremacy. The future of democratic politics in the United States and abroad depends on whether the liberal and left parties have the political capacity to mobilize with a progressive agenda of their own.

Rosenthal discusses his new book, Empire of Resentment, with sociologist Harry Levine.

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Handsell, Ep. 17: "Dynasty Typewriter"

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 17:29:00 -0700

Mick and Maddie have a spook szn reunion to talk about Halloween costumes and Skylight's new Indiegogo campaign with Punk Rock Martha's! Then, Maddie sits down with the folks at Hayworth Theater's Dynasty Typewriter to talk about marketing and events for independent venues.

Indiegogo: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/la-public-school-virtual-book-fair#/

Dynasty Typewriter: www.dynastytypewriter.com

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Jacquelyn Stolos, "EDENDALE" w/ Madeline Stevens

Fri, 09 Oct 2020 11:45:50 -0700

“Edendale is a sly and smart novel that contains multitudes—itʼs strange, funny, dark, violent, frightening, compelling, and mysterious. Jacquelyn Stolos takes many exciting risks on the page, and together these risks accumulate to become a powerful and unique story about young, alienated people trying to find their way in an inhospitable world.”
--Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of California

Stolos is in conversation with novelist Madeline Stevens.

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SKYLIT: Ken Kwapis, "BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT" w/ David Ulin

Wed, 07 Oct 2020 13:48:52 -0700

He is among the most respected directors in show business, but getting there wasn’t easy. He struggled just like everyone else. With each triumph came the occasional faceplant. Using his background and inside knowledge, But What I Really Want To Do is Direct tackles Hollywood myths through Ken Kwapis’s highly entertaining experiences. It’s a rollercoaster ride fueled by brawls with the top brass, clashes over budgets, and the passion that makes it all worthwhile.

This humorous and refreshingly personal memoir is filled with inspiring instruction, behind-the-scenes hilarity, and unabashed joy. It’s a celebration of the director’s craft, and what it takes to succeed in show business on your own terms.

Kwapis is in conversation with critic David Ulin.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: David Lazar, "CELESTE HOLM SYNDROME" w/ A.S. Hamrah

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 13:16:00 -0700

In Celeste Holm Syndrome, David Lazar looks to our intimate relationships with characters, both well-known and lesser known, from Hollywood’s Golden Age. Veering through considerations of melancholy and wit, sexuality and gender, and the surrealism of comedies of the self in an uncanny world, mixed with his own autobiographical reflections of cinephilia, Lazar creates an alluring hybrid of essay forms as he moves through the movies in his mind. Character actors from the classical era of the 1930s through the 1950s including Thelma Ritter, Oscar Levant, Martin Balsam, Nina Foch, Elizabeth Wilson, Eric Blore, Edward Everett Horton, and the eponymous Celeste Holm all make appearances in these considerations of how essential character actors were, and remain, to cinema.

Lazar is in conversation with film critic A.S. Hamrah.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Handsell, Ep. 16: "Kelsey Nolan"

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 12:06:35 -0700

Former events manager Kelsey Nolan is back at Skylight Books, so we had her on the Handsell to celebrate her return! We hear about her journey into Skylight (and out, and in again), and talk about a little piece of news you may have heard about yesterday.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Mathieu Cailler, "HEAVEN AND OTHER ZIP CODES" w/ Laura Warrell

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 15:29:12 -0700

Heaven and Other Zip Codes follows the complicated relationships between lonely, thirty-something-year-old mother Searcy, her awkward prepubescent son Theo, cheating husband and disingenuous stepfather Hoit, and young, attractive, painter-turned-after-school-tutor Emerson.

Author Mathieu Cailler is in conversation with Los Angeles writer Laura Warrell.

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Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Jacqueline Suskin, "THE EDGE OF THE CONTINENT: THE DESERT"

Mon, 28 Sep 2020 14:01:21 -0700

The Edge of the Continent: The Desert is about California. Specifically, this third volume is about Joshua Tree—the dry, sparsely populated landscape known for its strange topography and spiritual pull. Jacqueline Suskin spent winters on a ranch at the far edge of the desert for many years, caring for mustangs and goats, walking the long sand roads in solitude. This book explores the richness of her experience in a place many view as barren, exposing its unique offerings through personal narrative. In this collection, Suskin invites readers into the often unseen magic of the desert, a place where silence and open space bring gifts of potent healing and ancient insight to those who are willing to sit still and listen.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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HANDSELL, Ep. 15, "John Evans - Diesel Bookstore"

Sun, 27 Sep 2020 11:00:00 -0700

After Maddie and Mick catch up and talk about how nice it is to feel some semblance of the bookstore community, Maddie sits down with John Evans of the Diesel Bookstore to talk about all things bookseller!

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Elisa Gabbert, "THE UNREALITY OF MEMORY" w/ Brandon Taylor

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 15:16:30 -0700

We stare at our phones. We keep multiple tabs open. Our chats and conversations are full of the phrase “Did you see?” The feeling that we’re living in the worst of times seems to be intensifying, alongside a desire to know precisely how bad things have gotten—and each new catastrophe distracts us from the last.

The Unreality of Memory collects provocative, searching essays on disaster culture, climate anxiety, and our mounting collective sense of doom. In this new collection, acclaimed poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert explores our obsessions with disasters past and future, from the sinking of the Titanic to Chernobyl, from witch hunts to the plague. These deeply researched, prophetic meditations question how the world will end—if indeed it will—and why we can’t stop fantasizing about it.

Can we avoid repeating history? Can we understand our moment from inside the moment? With The Unreality of Memory, Gabbert offers a hauntingly perceptive analysis of our new ways of being and a means of reconciling ourselves to this unreal new world.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Mike Davis and Jon Winer, "SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE" w/ Erin Aubry Kaplan & Danny Widener

Wed, 23 Sep 2020 16:35:37 -0700

Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of "Asian American" as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women's movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors' storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis's awardwinning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose.

Davis and Wiener are in conversation with Erin Aubrey Kaplan and Danny Widener

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Vanessa Díaz, "MANUFACTURING CELEBRITY" w/ Elizabeth Hinton

Mon, 21 Sep 2020 14:30:00 -0700

In Manufacturing Celebrity, Vanessa Díaz traces the complex power dynamics of the reporting and paparazzi work that fuel contemporary Hollywood and American celebrity culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, her experience reporting for Peoplemagazine, and dozens of interviews with photographers, journalists, publicists, magazine editors, and celebrities, Díaz examines the racialized and gendered labor involved in manufacturing and selling relatable celebrity personas. Celebrity reporters, most of whom are white women, are expected to leverage their sexuality to generate coverage, which makes them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and assault. Meanwhile, the predominantly male Latino paparazzi can face life-threatening situations and endure vilification that echoes anti-immigrant rhetoric. In pointing out the precarity of those who hustle to make a living by generating the bulk of celebrity media, Díaz highlights the profound inequities of the systems that provide consumers with 24/7 coverage of their favorite stars.

Díaz is in conversation with Elizabeth Hinton, Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is a historian of American inequality who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts on policing and mass incarceration.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Sumbul Ali-Karamali, "DEMYSTIFYING SHARIAH"

Fri, 18 Sep 2020 11:30:00 -0700

Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist wrongly that shariah is a draconian and oppressive Islamic law that all Muslims must abide by. They circulate horror stories, encouraging Americans to fear the “takeover of shariah” law in America and even mounting “anti-shariah protests” . . . . with zero evidence that shariah has taken over any part of our country. (That’s because it hasn’t.) It would be almost funny if it weren’t so terrifyingly wrong—as puzzling as if Americans suddenly began protesting the Martian occupation of Earth.

Demystifying Shariah explains that shariah is not one set of punitive rules or even law the way we think of law—rigid and enforceable—but religious rules and recommendations that provide Muslims with guidance in various aspects of life. Sumbul Ali-Karamali draws on scholarship and her degree in Islamic law to explain shariah in an accessible, engaging narrative style—its various meanings, how it developed, and how the shariah-based legal system operated for over a thousand years. She explains what shariah means not only in the abstract but in the daily lives of Muslims. She discusses modern calls for shariah, what they mean, and whether shariah is the law of the land anywhere in the world. She also describes the key lies and misunderstandings about shariah circulating in our public discourse, and why so many of them are nonsensical.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Fariha Róisín, "LIKE A BIRD" w/ Tanaïs

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 16:18:26 -0700

Taylia Chatterjee has never known love, and certainly has never felt it for herself. Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with her older sister Alyssa, their parents were both overbearing and emotionally distant, and despite idyllic summers in the Catskills, and gatherings with glamorous family friends, there is a sadness that emanates from the Chatterjee residence, a deep well of sorrow stemming from the racism of American society.

After a violent sexual assault, Taylia is disowned by her parents and suddenly forced to move out. As Taylia looks to the city, the ghost of her Indian grandmother dadi-ma is always one step ahead, while another more troubling ghost chases after her. Determined to have the courage to confront the pain that her family can’t face, Taylia finds work at a neighborhood café owned by single mother and spiritualist, Kat. Taylia quickly builds a constellation of friends and lovers on her own, daring herself to be open to new experiences, even as they call into question what she thought she knew about the past.

Taylia's story is about survival, coming to terms with her past and looking forward to a future she never felt she was allowed to claim. Writing this for eighteen years, poet and activist Fariha Róisín’s debut novel Like a Bird is an intense, provocative, and emotionally profound portrait of an inner life in turmoil and the redemptive power of community and love.

Róisín is in conversation with New York author Tanaïs.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Daniel Mendelsohn, "THREE RINGS"

Mon, 14 Sep 2020 10:00:00 -0700

In this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell.

Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own--works that pondered the nature of narrative itself. Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler's Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul... Fran ois F nelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey, The Adventures of Telemachus--a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Europe for one hundred years--resulted in his banishment... and the German novelist W. G. Sebald, self-exiled to England, whose distinctively meandering narratives explore Odyssean themes of displacement, nostalgia, and separation from home.

Intertwined with these tales of exile and artistic crisis is an account of Mendelsohn's struggles to write two of his own books--a family saga of the Holocaust and a memoir about reading the Odyssey with his elderly father--that are haunted by tales of oppression and wandering. As Three Rings moves to its startling conclusion, a climactic revelation about the way in which the lives of its three heroes were linked across borders, languages, and centuries forces the reader to reconsider the relationship between narrative and history, art and life.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Rory Waterman, "SWEET NOTHINGS" w/ Andre Naffis-Sahely

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 14:23:29 -0700

Sweet Nothings is about absences, how they tempt us, and sometimes what they make us do. An absence is a conjuration, not palpably present in longing, imagination or dream. We are lured on by absences, and how they call to us, in Thomas Hardy's memorable phrase.

Rory Waterman's poems sometimes come in sequences; always they are in dialogue with one another, responding, echoing - within and between the book's two sections. At times, the leitmotifs are apparently personal, exploring divisions and painful losses. But we also encounter the largely invented academic Dr Bob Pintle, promoted at work since his cameo in Waterman's previous book, an anti-hero of the modern university system. In this book we also find the zero football score, the zero scores in life's more significant conflicts, and an obverse: the desire to settle at nothing, or for nothing less than what life might offer. Sweet Nothings is in fact a book of hopes and passions - quiet and lyrical at times, but also fiercely witty and bold. Waterman is in conversation with fellow poet Andre Naffis-Sahely.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Bett Williams, "THE WILD KINDNESS" w/ Michelle Tea

Thu, 10 Sep 2020 11:45:02 -0700

The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey is the lyrical, unforgettable memoir of Bett Williams's relationship with psilocybin mushrooms, otherwise known as magic mushrooms. In pursuit of self-healing, she begins experimenting with mushrooms in solitary ceremonies by the fire. Word soon gets out about her New Mexican desert mushroom farm, though, and people arrive in droves. Not long after, the police read her her Miranda Rights, her relationships fall out of whack, and her dog Rosie just might be CIA.

On a quest to find help through the psychedelic community, Bett is led to Cleveland to meet Kai Wingo, an African American leader within a high-dose psilocybin community, and to Huautla de Jim nez, home of well-known, well-respected curandera Mar a Sabina. Back home, Bett begins a solid ritual practice with the help of her partner and friends, bearing in mind the medicine's indigenous roots and power to transform one's life.

Amidst the mainstream flood of New Age practices and products, The Wild Kindness: A Psilocybin Odyssey is a dreamlike reminder that psilocybin mushrooms are a medicine of the people, not to be neatly packaged, marketed, or appropriated.

Williams is in conversation with author, poet, and arts organizer Michelle Tea

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Nancy Pearl & Jeff Schwager, "THE WRITER'S LIBRARY"

Tue, 08 Sep 2020 16:07:09 -0700

In their ebullient new book, The Writer’s Library, America’s favorite librarian Nancy Pearl and noted playwright Jeff Schwager interview a diverse range of America's most notable and influential writers about the books that shaped them and inspired them to leave their own literary mark. The Writer’s Library is a revelatory exploration of the studies, libraries, and bookstores of today’s favorite authors (including Donna Tartt, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Andrew Sean Greer, Laila Lalami, and Michael Chabon) — the creative artists whose imagination and sublime talent make America's literary scene the wonderful, dynamic world it is.

SKYLIT: Dena Igusti, "CUT WOMAN" w/ Ray Jordan Achan

Fri, 04 Sep 2020 11:30:00 -0700

Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Middle Eastern Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. Women Studies. "One of the things I love most is when a poetry book forces me to slow down, to linger in every pause between breaths and reckon with the awareness that Reading is, itself, an act of consumption. CUT WOMAN does just this. From 'night // fall' to 'day // break, ' Dena Igusti's speaker forces readers to linger in the spaces both within and between words, bodies, and countries, even when those spaces do not yet exist: 'altar of my body did i give you // a forever // i could not promise? // ... // an altered kind of grief?' These poems slice, piece, project only to gut open. These poems remember despite Memory: 'i purposely forget // the prayer for when someone dies // inna-illahi-something // i always remember how to start // grieving // but // never when or how to let it out of my mouth.'

Igusti is in conversation with actor, director, writer, producer, and executive director of the Exiled Tongues Theater Company Ray Jordan Achan.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Yxta Maya Murray, "THE WORLD DOESN"T WORK THAT WAY, BUT IT COULD"

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 12:30:00 -0700

The gripping, thought-provoking stories in Yxta Maya Murray’s latest collection find their inspiration in the headlines. Here, ordinary people negotiate tentative paths through wildfire, mass shootings, bureaucratic incompetence, and heedless government policies with vicious impacts on the innocent and helpless. A nurse volunteers to serve in catastrophe-stricken Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and discovers that her skill and compassion are useless in the face of stubborn governmental inertia. An Environmental Protection Agency employee, whose agricultural-worker parents died after long exposure to a deadly pesticide, finds herself forced to find justifications for reversing regulations that had earlier banned the chemical. A Department of Education employee in a dystopic future America visits a highly praised charter school and discovers the horrific consequences of academic failure. A transgender trainer of beauty pageant contestants takes on a beautiful Latina for the Miss USA pageant and brings her to perfection and the brink of victory, only to discover that she has a fatal secret.

The characters in The World Doesn't Work That Way, but it Could grapple with the consequences of frightening attitudes and policies pervasive in the United States today. The stories explore not only our distressing human capacity for moral numbness in the face of evil, but also reveal our surprising stores of compassion and forgiveness. These brilliantly conceived and beautifully written stories are troubling yet irresistible mirrors of our time.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Adam O. Davis, "INDEX OF HAUNTED HOUSES"

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:30:00 -0700

This is a book of ghost stories, and for the most part, ghosts are jealous monsters, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here, yet we gradually become aware of the spirits in haunted houses in the way they tread over creaky floors, slam doors, and issue sudden gusts of wind. These poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words, the more charged they are. The engine driving the sense of haunting and loss is money, which Adam O. Davis describes as “federal bone” boiling around us. Bison in Nebraska are reduced to bones, “seven/standing men/tall” fodder for the fertilizer used by farmers in the 1800s. There is, too, an equality to the hauntings—every instance has its moment, and persists, despite being in the past, present, or future. Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut, one that will surprise, convince, and most of all, delight.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Handsell Ep. 14, "Elisa Garcia"

Sat, 29 Aug 2020 13:30:00 -0700

Return of the Handsell! We come back after a few weeks to talk to Elisa Garcia, a Skylight children's book specialist, host of KQBH's "Heartbreak Mondays" show, and possibly the best human on the planet. She's a veteran of the indie bookselling industry and it's a great discussion! Join ussssss.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Aisha Redux, "STUPID BLACK GIRL"

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 11:30:00 -0700

In this book, a first generation American New Yorker uses her bold voice to share life experiences through the lens of race, culture, and spirituality. Exploring topics ranging from night terrors, to schizophrenia, to gentrification, to the author's personal September 11th story. Illustrated with stunning artwork created in response to the essays, this book is a unique collection. Aisha Redux was raised in New York City by parents who emigrated from West Africa. She is now living in the South Bronx. Stupid Black Girl is her debut title.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Sarah M. Sala, "DEVIL'S LAKE" w/ Yves Nuno

Wed, 26 Aug 2020 15:30:00 -0700

Poetry. LGBTQIA Studies. What does it mean to claim your space in a world that's ending? Sarah M. Sala's DEVIL'S LAKE breaks open the American moment of unchecked gun violence, climate changes, and the growing rift between "us" and "them" with formal daring. Like a prism, this startling debut fractures into shades of possibility and memory, queering science, nature, and form to lay bare the colors of joy despite a world that seems intent on its destruction.

Sala is in conversation with Skylight employee Yves Nuno.

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SKYLIT: Vanessa Veselka, "THE GREAT OFFSHORE GROUNDS"

Mon, 24 Aug 2020 17:17:37 -0700

On the day of their estranged father's wedding, half sisters Cheyenne and Livy set off to claim their inheritance. It's been years since the two have seen each other. Cheyenne is newly back in Seattle, crashing with Livy after a failed marriage and a series of dead ends. Livy works refinishing boats, her resentment against her freeloading sister growing as she tamps down dreams of fishing off the coast of Alaska. But the promise of a shot at financial security brings the two together to claim what's theirs. Except, instead of money, what their father gives them is information--a name--which both reveals a stunning family secret and compels them to come to grips with it. In the face of their new reality, the sisters and their adopted brother each set out on journeys that will test their faith in one another, as well as their definitions of freedom.

Moving from Seattle's underground to the docks of the Far North, from the hideaways of the southern swamps to the storied reaches of The Great Offshore Grounds, Vanessa Veselka spins a tale with boundless verve, linguistic vitality, and undeniable tenderness.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Morgan Jerkins, "WANDERING IN STRANGE LANDS" w/ Soraya Nadia McDonald

Sat, 22 Aug 2020 10:06:15 -0700

Between 1916 and 1970, six million black Americans left their rural homes in the South for jobs in cities in the North, West, and Midwest in a movement known as The Great Migration. But while this event transformed the complexion of America and provided black people with new economic opportunities, it also disconnected them from their roots, their land, and their sense of identity, argues Morgan Jerkins. In this fascinating and deeply personal exploration, she recreates her ancestors’ journeys across America, following the migratory routes they took from Georgia and South Carolina to Louisiana, Oklahoma, and California.

Following in their footsteps, Jerkins seeks to understand not only her own past, but the lineage of an entire group of people who have been displaced, disenfranchised, and disrespected throughout our history. Through interviews, photos, and hundreds of pages of transcription, Jerkins braids the loose threads of her family’s oral histories, which she was able to trace back 300 years, with the insights and recollections of black people she met along the way—the tissue of black myths, customs, and blood that connect the bones of American history.

Incisive and illuminating, Wandering in Strange Lands is a timely and enthralling look at America’s past and present, one family’s legacy, and a young black woman’s life, filtered through her sharp and curious eyes.

Jerkins is in conversation with Soraya Nadia McDonald, award-winning cultural critic for The Undefeated, ESPN’s premiere platform covering race, sports, and culture. She writes about film, television, and the arts.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Christina Hammonds Reed, "THE BLACK KIDS" w/ Brandy Colbert

Wed, 19 Aug 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer.

Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids.

As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson.

With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the us? And who is the them?

The Black Kids author Christina Hammonds Reed is in conversation with award-winning author Brandy Colbert.

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Colin Dickey, "THE UNIDENTIFIED" w/ Molly Lambert, Tess Lynch, & Emily Yoshida

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 05:00:00 -0700

In a world where rational, scientific explanations are more available than ever, belief in the unprovable and irrational–in fringe–is on the rise: from Atlantis to aliens, from Flat Earth to the Loch Ness monster, the list goes on. It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.

Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today’s Illuminati is yesterday’s Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America’s wildest fringe beliefs–from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining “evidence” of the great Kentucky Meat Shower–investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

Dickey is joined in conversation by writers Molly Lambert, Tess Lynch, and Emily Yoshida.

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Karoline Waclawiak, "LIFE EVENTS" w/ Roxane Gay

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 16:21:27 -0700

Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel, Life Events, follows Evelyn, who, at thirty-seven, is on the verge of divorce and anxiously dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and aimlessly driving along the freeways of California looking for an escape—one that eventually comes when she discovers a collective of “exit guides.” Evelyn enrolls in their training course, where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients seeking a conscious departure.

She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die and whom Evelyn falls for, despite knowing better, not to mention the exit guide code. Each client opens something new in Evelyn, allowing her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention to further her death education, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reconcile her life choices.

Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Life Events is a moving, enlivening story of the human condition: the doldrums of loneliness, the consuming regret of past mistakes, and the thrill, finally, of finding meaning—and love—where you least expect it.

Waclawiak is in conversation with Roxane Gay, whose writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, Harper’s Bazaar, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Lori Lansens, "THIS LITTLE LIGHT" w/ Milan Cheylov

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 05:00:00 -0700

Taking place over the course of 48 hours in 2024, This Little Light draws readers into a universe of born-again Christians and celebrity worship where abortion is once again illegal and both religion and surveillance run amok. Heroine Rory Miller and her best friend, Fee, are on the run after a bomb explodes at their elite Christian private school in their triple-gated California community during their American Chastity Ball, where girls in white gowns pledge to their fathers that they will remain virgins until marriage. As the girls struggle to survive while following their own attempted capture on social media and cable news—crowdsourced by Christian zealots and bounty hunters—Rory blogs their story in real time, determined to leave behind a record in their own words in case they don’t make it out alive.

In This Little Light, bestselling author Lori Lansens weaves together the pressing issues of our time—women’s rights, income disparity, religion and politics, immigration—and di˝ uses them through the authentic voice of a 16-year-old navigating a frightening reality. The result is an intense, urgent, and enthralling read about an all-too-believable near future—and the world we already live in.

Lansens is in conversation with husband and TV producer Milan Cheylov.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Ben Ehrenreich, "DESERT NOTEBOOKS" w/ Anthony McCann

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 10:00:59 -0700

National Magazine Award winner and The Nation columnist Ben Ehrenreich layers climate science, mythologies, nature writing, and personal experiences into a stunning reckoning with our current moment and with the literal and figurative end of time. Desert Notebooks examines how the unprecedented pace of destruction to our environment and an increasingly unstable geopolitical landscape have led us to the brink of a calamity greater than any humankind has confronted before. As inhabitants of the Anthropocene, what might some of our own histories tell us about how to confront apocalypse? And how might the geologies and ecologies of desert spaces inform how we see and act toward time—the pasts we have erased and paved over, this anxious present, the future we have no choice but to build? Ehrenreich draws on the stark grandeur of the desert to ask how we might reckon with the uncertainty that surrounds us and fight off the crises that have already begun.

In the canyons and oases of the Mojave and in Las Vegas’s neon apocalypse, Ehrenreich finds beauty, and even hope, surging up in the most unlikely places, from the most barren rocks, and the apparent emptiness of the sky. Desert Notebooks is a vital and necessary chronicle of our past and our present—unflinching, urgent—and yet timeless and profound.

Ehrenreich is in conversation with Anthony McCann, author of four collections of poetry.

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SKYLIT: Jennifer Levitz & Melissa Korn, "UNACCEPTABLE" w/ Asbhy Jones

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 05:00:00 -0700

The largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Department of Justice broke on March 12, 2019, sending shock waves through American schools and families. In Unacceptable, veteran Wall Street Journal reporters Melissa Korn and Jennifer Levitz trace the wiretapped calls, covert payments, and blatant deceit that brought the feds to Beverly Hills mansions and Upper East Side apartments, their residents all linked by one man: college whisperer and ultimate hustler Rick Singer.

The shocking tale at the heart of Unacceptable is how, over decades, the charismatic Singer easily exploited a system rigged against regular people. Exploring the status obsession that seduced entitled parents in search of an edge, Korn and Levitz detail a scheme that eventually entangled more than fifty conspirators—a catalog of wealth and privilege that included CEOs, lawyers, real-estate developers, financiers, and famous actresses, mingling in jail cells and courtrooms.

Detailing Singer’s steady rise and dramatic fall, woven with stories of key players in the case, Unacceptable exposes the ugly underbelly of elite college admissions as a game with no rule book—paid-off proctors and storied college coaches turning a blind eye, helicopter parents and coddled teens spinning lies—opening loopholes and side doors into America’s most exclusive institutions.

Levitz and Korn are in conversation with Ashby Jones, deputy coverage chief for U.S. News at The Wall Street Journal.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Aimee Bender, "THE BUTTERFLY LAMPSHADE" w/ Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

Wed, 05 Aug 2020 14:00:00 -0700

On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she’s sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see.

Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents — her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact — she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world.

As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie’s past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood?

Told in the lush, lilting prose that led the San Francisco Chronicle to say Aimee Bender is “a writer who makes you grateful for the very existence of language,” The Butterfly Lampshade is a heartfelt and heartbreaking examination of the sometimes overwhelming power of the material world, and a broken love between mother and child.

Bender is in conversation with Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, the author of two novels—Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Megan Margulies, "MY CAPTAIN AMERICA" w/ Eva Hagberg,

Tue, 04 Aug 2020 11:00:00 -0700

In the 1990s, Megan Margulies’s Upper West Side neighborhood was marked by addicts shooting up in subway stations, frequent burglaries, and the “Wild Man of 96th Street,” who set fires under cars and heaved rocks through stained glass church windows. The world inside her parents’ tiny one-bedroom apartment was hardly a respite, with a family of five—including some loud personalities—eventually occupying the 550-square-foot space.

Salvation arrived in the form of her spirited grandfather, Daddy Joe, whose midtown studio became a second home to Megan. There, he listened to her woes, fed her Hungry Man frozen dinners, and simply let her be. His living room may have been dominated by the drawing table, notes, and doodles that marked him as Joe Simon the cartoonist. But for Megan, he was always Daddy Joe: an escape from her increasingly hectic home, a nonjudgmental voice whose sense of humor was as dry as his farfel, and a steady presence in a world that felt off balance.

Evoking New York City both in the 1980s and ’90s and during the Golden Age of comics in the 1930s and ’40s, My Captain America flashes back from Megan’s story to chart the life and career of Rochester-native Joe Simon, from his early days retouching publicity photos and doing spot art for magazines, to his partnership with Jack Kirby at Timely Comics (the forerunner of Marvel Comics), which resulted in the creation of beloved characters like Captain America, the Boy Commandos, and Fighting American.

Margulies is in conversation with Eva Hagberg, author of How to Be Loved.

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SKYLIT: Erica C. Barnett, "QUITTER" w/ Maer Roshan

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 13:30:08 -0700

Erica C. Barnett had her first sip of alcohol when she was thirteen, and she quickly developed a taste for drinking to oblivion with her friends. In her late twenties, her addiction became inescapable. Volatile relationships, blackouts, and unsuccessful stints in detox defined her life, with the vodka bottles she hid throughout her apartment and offices acting as both her tormentors and closest friends.

By the time she was in her late thirties, Erica Barnett had run the gauntlet of alcoholism. She had recovered and relapsed time and again, but after each new program or detox center would find herself far from rehabilitated. "Rock bottom," Barnett writes, "is a lie." It is always possible, she learned, to go lower than your lowest point. She found that the terms other alcoholics used to describe the trajectory of their addiction--"rock bottom" and "moment of clarity"--and the mottos touted by Alcoholics Anonymous, such as "let go and let God" and "you're only as sick as your secrets"--didn't correspond to her experience and could actually be detrimental.

With remarkably brave and vulnerable writing, Barnett expands on her personal story to confront the dire state of addiction in America, the rise of alcoholism in American women in the last century, and the lack of rehabilitation options available to addicts. At a time when opioid addiction is a national epidemic and one in twelve Americans suffers from alcohol abuse disorder, Quitter is essential reading for our age and an ultimately hopeful story of Barnett's own hard-fought path to sobriety.

Barnett is in conversation with writer, editor, and entrepreneur Maer Roshan.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Ahrm Choi Wild & Muriel Leung

Wed, 29 Jul 2020 11:00:00 -0700

Join us for a conversation with poets Ahrm Choi Wild and Muriel Leung!

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SKYLIT: Arthur Nersesian, "THE FIVE BOOKS OF (ROBERT) MOSES" w/ Johnny Temple

Mon, 27 Jul 2020 03:00:00 -0700

After a domestic terrorist unleashes a dirty bomb in Manhattan in 1970, making the borough uninhabitable, FBI agent Uli Sarkisian finds himself in a world that is suddenly unrecognizable as the United States is faced with its greatest immigration crisis ever: finding housing for millions of its own citizens. The federal government hastily retrofits an abandoned military installation in the Nevada desert, vast in size. Despite the government's best intentions, as the military pulls out of "Rescue City," the residents are increasingly left to their own devices, and tribal warfare fuses with democracy, forming a frightening evolution of the two-party system: the gangocracy. Years after the Manhattan cleanup was supposed to have been finished, Uli travels through this bizarre new New York City, where he is forced to reckon with his past, while desperately trying to get out alive.

The Five Books of (Robert) Moses alternates between the outrageous present of Rescue City and earlier in the twentieth century, detailing the events leading up to the destruction of Manhattan. We simultaneously follow legendary urban planner Robert Moses through his early years and are introduced to his equally ambitious older brother Paul, a brilliant electrical engineer whose jealousy toward Robert and anger at the devastation caused by the man's "urban renewal" projects lead to a dire outcome.

Arthur Nersesian's most important work to date examines the political chaos of today's world through the lens of the past. Fictional versions of real historical figures populate the pages, from major politicians and downtown drag queens to notorious revolutionaries and obscure poets.

Nersesian is in conversation with musician Johnny Temple.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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SKYLIT: Daniel WK Lee, "ANATOMY OF WANT" w/ Shane Lukas

Sat, 25 Jul 2020 09:00:00 -0700

Poet Daniel WK Lee is in conversation about his debut collection of poetry Anatomy of Want with spoken word artist and creative solutions specialist Shane Lukas.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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SKYLIT: Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, "STAGES" w/ Sarah Ruhl

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 01:00:00 -0700

Poetry. Art. Perfomance Studies. Literary Nonficition. Can care be enacted through art? Inside a cathedral, staff members from a nursing home work with an artist to perform a poetic text about caregiving, loss, and taking the time to feel one's feelings. In the months leading up to the performance, the artist navigates her twenties--and art and life converge in unexpected ways. Weaving between oral history and poetic prose, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff has created a stirring work of hybrid nonfiction that takes us behind the scenes of artmaking and caregiving. Melding curiosity, humility, playfulness, and self-deprecation, STAGES is an inquiry into the work it takes to sustain a meaningful life.

Nalebuff is in conversation with playwright Sarah Ruhl.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

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Handsell, Ep. 13, "Eden Hain of JUNIOR HIGH"

Sat, 18 Jul 2020 15:38:19 -0700

In the lucky number 13th episode of the podcast, Mick and Maddie let off a little bit of steam before we head over to her interview with Eden Hain of Junior High Los Angeles, an arts-centered non-profit.

SKYLIT: Kristen Millares Young, "SUBDUCTION"

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 15:00:05 -0700

Subduction by Kristen Millares Young

Fleeing the shattered remains of her marriage and a betrayal by her sister, in the throes of a midlife freefall, Latina anthropologist Claudia Ranks retreats from Seattle to Neah Bay, a Native American whaling village on the jagged Pacific coast. Claudia yearns to lose herself to the songs of the tribe and the secrets of her guide, a spirited hoarder named Maggie. But when, spurred by his mother’s failing memory, Maggie’s prodigal son Peter returns seeking answers to his father’s murder, Claudia discovers in him the abandon she craves. Through the passionate and violent collision of these two outsiders, Subduction portrays not only their strange allegiance after grievous losses but also their imperfect attempts to find community on the Makah Indian Reservation.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Brandy Colbert, "THE VOTING BOOTH" w/ Nina Lacour

Wed, 15 Jul 2020 16:41:24 -0700

Marva Sheridan was born ready for this day. She's always been driven to make a difference in the world, and what better way than to vote in her first election?

Duke Crenshaw is so done with this election. He just wants to get voting over with so he can prepare for his band's first paying gig tonight.

Only problem? Duke can't vote.

When Marva sees Duke turned away from their polling place, she takes it upon herself to make sure his vote is counted. She hasn't spent months doorbelling and registering voters just to see someone denied their right.

And that's how their whirlwind day begins, rushing from precinct to precinct, cutting school, waiting in endless lines, turned away time and again, trying to do one simple thing: vote. They may have started out as strangers, but as Duke and Marva team up to beat a rigged system (and find Marva's missing cat), it's clear that there's more to their connection than a shared mission for democracy.

Romantic and triumphant, The Voting Booth is proof that you can't sit around waiting for the world to change?but some things are just meant to be.

Author Brandy Colbert is in conversation with Nina Lacour, author of the widely acclaimed Hold Still, The Disenchantments, and Everything Leads to You, and the Michael L. Printz Award-winner, We Are Okay.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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Handsell, Ep. 12, "Chris Pine's Good Mask and LAPL's Jennifer Siron"

Sat, 11 Jul 2020 07:00:00 -0700

Mick and Maddie return to the Handsell after a couple weeks off to talk about the viral Chris Pine photo and use it to remind everyone to WEAR YOUR DAMN MASKS! Then Maddie interviews the Los Angeles Public LIbrary's Jennifer Siron about the legendary Street Fleet! Good ep, good ep.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Wayne Koestenbaum, "FIGURE IT OUT" w/ Maggie Nelson

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 12:45:09 -0700

In his new nonfiction collection, poet, artist, critic, novelist, and performer Wayne Koestenbaum enacts twenty-six ecstatic collisions between his mind and the world. A subway passenger’s leather bracelet prompts musings on the German word for “stranger”; Montaigne leads to the memory of a fourth-grade friend’s stinky feet. Wayne dreams about a handjob from John Ashbery, swims next to Nicole Kidman, reclaims Robert Rauschenberg’s squeegee, and apotheosizes Marguerite Duras as a destroyer of sentences. He directly proposes assignments to readers: “Buy a one-dollar cactus, and start anthropomorphizing it. Call it Sabrina.” “Describe an ungenerous or unkind act you have committed.” “Find in every orgasm an encyclopedic richness . . . Reimagine doing the laundry as having an orgasm, and reinterpret orgasm as not a tiny experience, temporally limited, occurring in a single human body, but as an experience that somehow touches on all of human history.” Figure It Out is both a guidebook for, and the embodiment of, the practices of pleasure, attentiveness, art, and play.

Koestenbaum is in conversation with Maggie Nelson, author of nine books of poetry and prose, including the National Book Critics Circle Award winner The Argonauts, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning, Bluets, The Red Parts, and Jane: A Murder.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

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LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Rosalie Knecht, "VERA KELLY IS NOT A MYSTERY" w/ Amy Stewart

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 14:00:00 -0700

When ex-CIA agent Vera Kelly loses her job and her girlfriend in a single day, she reluctantly goes into business as a private detective. Heartbroken and cash-strapped, she takes a case that dredges up dark memories and attracts dangerous characters from across the Cold War landscape. Before it’s over, she’ll chase a lost child through foster care and follow a trail of Dominican exiles to the Caribbean. Forever looking over her shoulder, she nearly misses what’s right in front of her: her own desire for home, connection, and a new romance at the local bar.

In Vera Kelly is Not a Mystery, the exciting second installment of the Vera Kelly series, Rosalie Knecht challenges and deepens the Vera we love: a woman of sparkling wit, deep moral fiber, and martini-dry humor who knows how to follow a case even as she struggles to follow her heart.

The “splendid genre-pushing” (People) Vera Kelly series returns in full force as our recently out-of-the-spy-game heroine travels from Brooklyn to a sprawling countryside estate in the Caribbean in her first case as a private investigator.

Knecht is joined in conversation by Amy Stewart, best-selling author of the Kopp Sisters series, which are based on the true story of one of America’s first female deputy sheriffs and her two rambunctious sisters.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Tom Rastrelli, "CONFESSIONS OF A GAY PRIEST" w/ Janet Finch

Fri, 03 Jul 2020 12:32:56 -0700

Tom Rastrelli is a survivor of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse who then became a priest in the early days of the Catholic Church’s ongoing scandals. Confessions of a Gay Priest divulges the clandestine inner workings of the seminary, providing an intimate and unapologetic look into the psychosexual and spiritual dynamics of celibacy and lays bare the “formation” system that perpetuates the cycle of abuse and cover-up that continues today.

Under the guidance of a charismatic college campus minister, Rastrelli sought to reconcile his homosexuality and childhood sexual abuse. When he felt called to the priesthood, Rastrelli began the process of “priestly discernment.” Priests welcomed him into a confusing clerical culture where public displays of piety, celibacy, and homophobia masked a closeted underworld in which elder priests preyed upon young recruits.

Rastrelli is in conversation with Janet Finch, author of White Oleander and teacher of fiction writing.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON CROWDCAST: Sara Sligar and Amy Jo Burns

Wed, 01 Jul 2020 13:00:00 -0700

Skylight Events are now on Crowdcast!

Our Crowdcast debut features Sara Sligar (Take Me Apart) and Amy Jo Burns (Shiner) in conversation, discussing their respective books.

Take Me Apart by Sara Silgar

A young archivist’s obsession with her subject’s mysterious death threatens to destroy her fragile grasp on sanity, in a riveting debut novel of psychological suspense

When the famed photographer Miranda Brand died mysteriously at the height of her career, it sent shock waves through Callinas, California. Decades later, old wounds are reopened when her son, Theo, hires the ex-journalist Kate Aitken to create an archive of his mother’s work.

From Miranda’s vast maze of personal effects, Kate pieces together a portrait of a vibrant artist buckling under the pressures of ambition, motherhood, and marriage. As the summer progresses, Kate navigates vicious local rumors and her growing attraction to the enigmatic Theo, all while unearthing the shocking details of Miranda’s private life. But Kate has secrets of her own, and when she stumbles across a diary that may finally resolve the mystery of Miranda’s death, her curiosity starts to spiral into a dangerous obsession.

Shiner by Amy Jo Burns

On a lush mountaintop trapped in time, two women vow to protect each other at all costs-and one young girl must defy her father to survive.

An hour from the closest West Virginia mining town, fifteen-year-old Wren Bird lives in a cloistered mountain cabin with her parents. They have no car, no mailbox, and no visitors-except for her mother’s lifelong best friend. Every Sunday, Wren’s father delivers winding sermons in an abandoned gas station, where he takes up serpents and praises the Lord for his blighted white eye, proof of his divinity and key to the hold he has over the community, over Wren and her mother.

But over the course of one summer, a miracle performed by Wren’s father quickly turns to tragedy. As the order of her world begins to shatter, Wren must uncover the truth of her father’s mysterious legend and her mother’s harrowing history and complex bond with her best friend. And with that newfound knowledge, Wren can imagine a different future for herself than she has been told to expect.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Visit https://www.skylightbooks.com/event for future offerings from the Skylight Books Events team.

LIVE ON ZOOM: "OBJECT LESSONS" Group Reading

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 13:00:00 -0700

Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation-and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time.

Our readers are Dinah Lenney, Steve Mentz, Steven E. Jones, Rolf Halden, and Erik Anderson.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Yuri Herrera, "A SILENT FURY" w/ John Gibler

Sat, 27 Jun 2020 13:00:00 -0700

We're taking a break from producing Handsell episodes for a bit, so we're going to give you guys an extra Skylit episode to get you through the weekend!

On March 10, 1920, in Pachuca, Mexico, the Compañía de Santa Gertrudis — the largest employer in the region, and a subsidiary of the United States Smelting, Refining and Mining Company — may have committed murder.

The alert was first raised at six in the morning: a fire was tearing through the El Bordo mine. After a brief evacuation, the mouths of the shafts were sealed. Company representatives hastened to assert that “no more than ten” men remained inside the mineshafts, and that all ten were most certainly dead. Yet when the mine was opened six days later, the death toll was not ten, but eighty-seven. And there were seven survivors.

A century later, acclaimed novelist Yuri Herrera has reconstructed a workers’ tragedy at once globally resonant and deeply personal: Pachuca is his hometown. A Silent Fury is an act of restitution for the victims and their families, bringing his full force of evocation to bear on the injustices that suffocated this horrific event into silence.

Herrera is in conversation with John Gibler, author of TORN FROM THE WORLD.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Bethany C. Morrow, "A SONG BELOW WATER" w/ Mark Oshiro

Fri, 26 Jun 2020 13:16:28 -0700

Bethany C. Morrow's A Song Below Water is the story for today’s readers — a captivating modern fantasy about black mermaids, friendship, and self-discovery set against the challenges of today's racism and sexism. In a society determined to keep her under lock and key, Tavia must hide her siren powers.

Meanwhile, Effie is fighting her own family struggles, pitted against literal demons from her past. Together, these best friends must navigate through the perils of high school’s junior year. But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice at the worst possible moment.

Soon, nothing in Portland, Oregon, seems safe. To save themselves from drowning, it’s only Tavia and Effie’s unbreakable sisterhood that proves to be the strongest magic of all.

Morrow is in conversation with Mark Oshiro, the author of Anger is a Gift.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Pedro Jiménez & Matthew Gleeson, "EARTHLY DAYS BY JOSÉ REVUELTAS"

Wed, 24 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0700

Publisher Pedro Jiménez and translator Matthew Gleeson get together to discuss the first-ever English translation of José Revueltas's "most accomplished and controversial novel," Earthly Days.

Like Joyce, Revueltas allows the reader to view the inner depths of his characters; like Proust, he meticulously examines memories, thoughts, and feelings; like Dostoyevsky, he focuses his gaze on the darkest passages of the soul; like Sartre, he dwells on the nausea of existence; and like Simone de Beauvoir, he reflects on the possibility of a new woman, leftist and liberated. Revueltas preceded writers of the Latin American boom such as Cort zar, Garc a M rquez, and even Juan Rulfo, authors who achieved the reputation and fame that Revueltas was denied. If one may have differences with his style or ideology, the structure of the book is impeccable. Each chapter is a perfect story, woven together by an Ariadne-like thread that unites all parts. To conceptually define the book, I would have to coin the oxymoronic term "existentialist Marxism," because Revueltas never ceased to be a disciple of Marx; nevertheless, his vision of humanity is brutally negative and ferocious. In a world bereft of God, all that was left for him to describe was our earthly days, "atrocious human life.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Meredith Talusan, "FAIREST" w/ Amber Tamblyn

Mon, 22 Jun 2020 14:00:00 -0700

Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a “sun child” from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Meredith Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community.

She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni’s Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.

Talusan is joined in conversation by Amber Tamblyn, an Emmy and Golden globe nominated actress, writer, director, and the author of six books.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 11, "Juneteenth & Lambda Lit's William Johnson"

Sat, 20 Jun 2020 13:30:00 -0700

Happy belated Juneteenth everyone! Mick and Maddie are joined by Yves to talk about the holiday and give an update on Skylight's new browsing policy. Later, Maddie interviews Lambda Literary's Deputy Director, William Johnson.

What We're Reading:

Maddie: Luster by Raven Leilani

Mick: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Yves: Whore Foods by L.A. Warman

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Charles Flowers, "THE IDEA OF HIM" w/ Blas Falconer

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0700

"Charles Flowers' long-awaited collection, The Idea of Him, evokes the implacable power of desire, from its earliest appearance in boyhood to the ache of adult experience. These wrenchingly honest, beautifully felt poems make clear nothing less than the soul hunger that lies deep in the body's dreams."—Joan Larkin

Flowers is in conversation with Blas Falconer, the author of Forgive the Body This Failure, The Foundling Wheel, A Question of Gravity and Light, and The Perfect Hour.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Jean Kyoung Frazier, "PIZZA GIRL"

Wed, 17 Jun 2020 13:30:00 -0700

In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.**

Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (whom she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.

Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled-covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.

Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Tess Taylor, "RIFT ZONE" w/ Stephanie Danler

Mon, 15 Jun 2020 13:00:00 -0700

Tess Taylor’s previous book of poetry, Work & Days, was named one of the best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Now, with her extraordinary new collection, Rift Zone, Taylor presents her most powerful and timely work yet. Rift Zone shows a critically acclaimed poet—known to many as the on-air Poetry Reviewer for NPR’s “All Things Considered”—at work on a one-of-a-kind endeavor, mapping a California and a country at the brink. Addressing issues of gun violence, homelessness, and climate change, Taylor reveals the fault lines, literal and figurative, in her Northern California hometown and our country as a whole. At the same time, Rift Zone is a deeply intimate and tender book about parenting, specifically about becoming a parent in a fraught time.

Taylor is in conversation with novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter Stephanie Danler.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 10, "Harry Potter Alternatives & Anji Williams"

Sat, 13 Jun 2020 13:25:08 -0700

For the tenth episode of the Handsell, Mick & Maddie talk about an incredibly busy week in the world, including J.K. Rowling's controversial comments. Maddie handsells Ursula K. Le Guin's stellar Earthsea series for people who are looking for a new, more inclusive fantasy series.

Our main event is a fantastic conversation with Anji Williams, founder of nonprofit Punk Rock Marthas. Don't miss it!

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Harry Dodge, "MY METEORITE"

Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:27:43 -0700

Is love a force akin to gravity? A kind of invisible fabric which enables communications through space and time? Artist Harry Dodge finds himself contemplating such questions as his father declines from dementia and he rekindles a bewildering but powerful relationship with his birth mother. A meteorite Dodge orders on eBay becomes a mysterious catalyst for a reckoning with the vital forces of matter, the nature of consciousness, and the bafflements of belonging.

Structured around a series of formative, formidable coincidences in Dodge’s life, My Meteorite journeys with stylistic bravura from Barthes to Blade Runner, from punk to Pale Fire. It is a wild, incandescent book that creates a literary universe of its own. Blending the personal and the philosophical, the raw and the surreal, the transgressive and the heartbreaking, Harry Dodge revitalizes our world, illuminating the magic just under the surface of daily life.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Tin House Poetry Night

Mon, 08 Jun 2020 12:00:22 -0700

Join us for the best reading in all of time and space, featuring the poets of Tin House: Jenny Zhang, Tommy Pico, Morgan Parker and Khadijah Queen!

Find their works on the Event Page, here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 9, "In Defense of Black Life"

Sat, 06 Jun 2020 15:33:01 -0700

In this episode of the Handsell, Mick and Maddie are joined by series regulars Sydney and Yves, as well as special guest Tamara, to have a fairly raw discussion about police brutality, institutionalized racism, and experiences protesting in Los Angeles. They also discuss the growing calls to defund police departments, what alternatives might look like, and how popular culture has contributed to police attitudes towards their jobs.

We mention a Twitter thread that we posted with a list of actions/organizations to support. Here's the link:

https://twitter.com/skylightbooks/status/1267197444946710529

Meena Harris, "KAMALA AND MAYA'S BIG IDEA"

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 13:03:29 -0700

Based on a true story from the childhood of Meena Harris’s aunt, Senator Kamala Harris, and mom, Maya Harris, Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea is about two sisters working together to create change in their community.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Mary Ann Cherry, "MORRIS KIGHT"

Tue, 02 Jun 2020 12:00:00 -0700

No matter how unlikely it is that an effective gay movement could have been born from an upper middle-class, law-abiding, conservative populace, there are those who refuse to identify gay history with a liberal ideology. Obtuse efforts are underway to deny the “hippie” element that makes up a large part of the DNA of gay rights. Activist Morris Kight, a unique force of nature and the grand panjandrum of post-Stonewall gay liberation, represents a large part of that hippie DNA. He was a complicated character with an instinct for social services and a tendency towards self aggrandizement. His ego stood out in a room full of egos. In a time before “gay pride,” Kight quite deliberately and openly shunned the shame that was expected of homosexuals. He created organizations, sat on boards, worked with committees, and lead seminal protests that created a new quality of life for homosexuals and, eventually, the first generation of never-closeted Gays. This book does not provide all the answers on the history of gay liberation; however, it may pose a few new questions.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Andrés Neuman, "FRACTURE" w/ Chad Post

Mon, 01 Jun 2020 12:12:10 -0700

Mr. Yoshie Watanabe, a former electronics company executive and a survivor of the atomic bomb, has always lived like a fugitive from his own memories. He’s spent decades traveling the world, making a life in different languages, only to find himself home again, living in Tokyo in his old age. On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, Watanabe, like millions of others, is stunned by powerful tremors. A massive earthquake has struck to the north, triggering the Fukushima nuclear disaster—and a stirring of the collective past. As the catastrophe unfolds, Watanabe’s mind, too, undergoes a tectonic shift. With his native land yet again under nuclear threat, he braces himself to make the most surprising decision of his nomadic life.

Meanwhile, four women who have known him intimately at various points in time narrate their stories to a strangely obsessive Argentinian journalist. Their memories, colored by their respective cultures and describing different ways of loving, trace sociopolitical maps of Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, and Madrid over the course of the twentieth century. The result is a metalingual, border-defying constellation of fractures in life and nature—proof that nothing happens in only one place, that every human event reverberates to the ends of the earth.

With unwavering empathy and bittersweet humor, and facing some of the most urgent environmental concerns of our time, Andrés Neuman’s Fracture is a powerful novel about the resilience of humankind, and the beauty that can emerge from broken things.

Neuman is in conversation with writer Chad Post.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 8, "Protests are Good, Curbside Update, and David Gonzalez"

Sat, 30 May 2020 12:00:00 -0700

It's our longest episode yet! Mick and Maddie give a statement about the George Floyd protests on behalf on Skylight Books and recommend some books that might make for good reading right about now. Mary makes a special appearance to give an update on Skylight's curbside pickup, and Maddie comes back for a great main event conversation with David Gonzalez, her predecessor as events manager.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Genevieve Hudson, "BOYS OF ALABAMA" w/ Cyrus Grace Dunham

Fri, 29 May 2020 12:00:00 -0700

In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.

Max already expects some of the raucous behavior of his new, American friends—like their insatiable hunger for the fried and cheesy, and their locker room talk about girls. But he doesn’t expect the comradery—or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he’s “playing dress-up.” That is until he meets Pan, the school “witch,” in Physics class: “Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up.” Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their true selves, or staying true in Alabama.

Writing in verdant and visceral prose that builds to a shocking conclusion, Genevieve Hudson “brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic, mapping queer love in a land where God, guns, and football are king” (Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks). Boys of Alabama becomes a nuanced portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.

Hudson is in conversation with Cyrus Grace Dunham, a writer and organizer living in Los Angeles. They recently published their memoir A Year Without A Name.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Anna Dorn, "VAGABLONDE" w/ Crissy Milazzo

Wed, 27 May 2020 13:02:28 -0700

Vagablonde

An exploration of the toxic nature of viral fame and a generation’s dangerous dependence on external validation, Anna Dorn’s debut is as illuminating as the light bouncing off Echo Park Lake, speaking directly to our time in biting detail.

Prue only wants two things: to live without psychotropic medication, and make it as a rap artist. Her life is good on paper but unsatisfying—she’s a lawyer with an easy government job and a nice girlfriend who gets her in to all the right shows. When Prue is introduced to music producer Jax Jameson, they instantly click. Prue joins Jax’s “Kingdom,” a collective of musicians and artists who share Prue’s aesthetic sensibilities and lust for escapism. Soon she’s off her meds, exiting her law practice, and becoming entangled with a suspect, hard-partying crew. The group they form, Shiny AF, is starting to take off and Prue is on the precipice of getting everything she thought she wanted. Life couldn’t possibly be better, or could it?

Author Anna Dorn is in conversation with Crissy Milazzo, a writer living in Los Angeles, whose memoir BAD LAWYER will be published by Hachette Books in Spring 2021.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Porochista Khakpour, “BROWN ALBUM” w/ Myriam Gurba

Mon, 25 May 2020 12:39:11 -0700

Novelist Porochista Khakpour's family moved to Los Angeles after fleeing the Iranian Revolution, giving up their successes only to be greeted by an alienating culture. Growing up as an immigrant in America means that one has to make one's way through a confusing tangle of conflicting cultures and expectations. And Porochista is pulled between the glitzy culture of Tehrangeles, an enclave of wealthy Iranians and Persians in LA, her own family's modest life and culture, and becoming an assimilated American. Porochista rebels--she bleaches her hair and flees to the East Coast, where she finds her community: other people writing and thinking at the fringes. But, 9/11 happens and with horror, Porochista watches from her apartment window as the towers fall. Extremism and fear of the Middle East rises in the aftermath and then again with the election of Donald Trump. Porochista is forced to finally grapple with what it means to be Middle-Eastern and Iranian, an immigrant, and a refugee in our country today.

Brown Album is a stirring collection of essays, at times humorous and at times profound, drawn from more than a decade of Porochista's work and with new material included. Altogether, it reveals the tolls that immigrant life in this country can take on a person and the joys that life can give.

Khakpour is in conversation with Myriam Gurba, a writer, spoken-word artist, and visual artist.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 7, "Maddie & Tara Marsden"

Sat, 23 May 2020 15:38:01 -0700

Lucky number 7! Sorry for the delay, folks. For this episode, we talk about Skylight's curbside pickup procedure and offer some helpful tips for getting your books in a safe and secure manner. Yves talks about his conversation with Mandy Williams for Handsell Ep. 6, and Maddie hosts Tara Marsden from Wolfman Books for a great conversation. Don't miss it!

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Joanne McNeil, "LURKING" w/ Sarah Jaffe

Fri, 22 May 2020 12:00:00 -0700

In a shockingly short amount of time, the internet has bound people around the world together and torn us apart and changed not just the way we communicate but who we are and who we can be. It has created a new, unprecedented cultural space that we are all a part of—even if we don’t participate, that is how we participate—but by which we’re continually surprised, betrayed, enriched, befuddled. We have churned through platforms and technologies and in turn been churned by them. And yet, the internet is us and always has been.

In Lurking, Joanne McNeil digs deep and identifies the primary (if sometimes contradictory) concerns of people online: searching, safety, privacy, identity, community, anonymity, and visibility. She charts what it is that brought people online and what keeps us here even as the social equations of digital life—what we’re made to trade, knowingly or otherwise, for the benefits of the internet—have shifted radically beneath us. It is a story we are accustomed to hearing as tales of entrepreneurs and visionaries and dynamic and powerful corporations, but there is a more profound, intimate story that hasn’t yet been told.

McNeil is in conversation with Sarah Jaffe, a Type Media Center fellow and an independent journalist covering labor, economic justice, social movements, politics, gender, and pop culture.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Amy Meyerson, "THE IMPERFECTS" w/ Quig Bruning

Wed, 20 May 2020 13:00:00 -0700

The Millers are far from perfect. Estranged siblings Beck, Ashley and Jake find themselves under one roof for the first time in years, forced to confront old resentments and betrayals, when their mysterious, eccentric matriarch, Helen, passes away. But their lives are about to change when they find a secret inheritance hidden among her possessions—the Florentine Diamond, a 137-carat yellow gemstone that went missing from the Austrian Empire a century ago.

Desperate to learn how one of the world’s most elusive diamonds ended up in Helen’s bedroom, they begin investigating her past only to realize how little they know about their brave, resilient grandmother. As the Millers race to determine whether they are the rightful heirs to the diamond and the fortune it promises, they uncover a past more tragic and powerful than they ever could have imagined, forever changing their connection to their heritage and each other.

Inspired by the true story of the real, still-missing Florentine Diamond, The Imperfects illuminates the sacrifices we make for family and how sometimes discovering the truth of the past is the only way to better the future.

Author Amy Meyerson is in conversation with Sotheby's vice president Quig Bruning.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 6, "Yves and Mandy Harris Williams"

Tue, 19 May 2020 13:00:00 -0700

In this special early edition of the Handsell podcast, Yves talks to Mandy Harris Wiliams (@idealblackfemale), the Programming Director at the Women's Center for Creative Work. Williams is launching the Algorithms of Oppression Book Club, co-hosted by WCCW and FeministAI, in alliance with The Free Black Women's Library LA.

The first meeting of the book club is tonight (5/19), and will occur monthly! Please use the following link to find out more:

https://womenscenterforcreativework.com/events/algorithms-of-oppression/

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Deborah Lott & Paul Lisicky

Mon, 18 May 2020 12:00:00 -0700

Deborah Lott and Paul Lisicky will discuss their new books, writing life in quarantine, and what they've been reading.

Don’t Go Crazy Without Me by Deborah Lott

Don’t Go Crazy Without Me tells the tragicomic coming of age story of a girl who grew up under the seductive sway of her outrageously eccentric father. He taught her how to have fun; he also taught her to fear food poisoning, other children’s infectious diseases, and the contaminating propensities of the world at large. Alienated from her emotionally distant mother, the girl bonded closely with her father and his worldview. When he plunged from neurotic to full-blown psychotic, she nearly followed him. Sanity is not always a choice, but for the sixteen-year-old, decisions had to be made and lines drawn between reality and what her mother called her “overactive imagination.” She would have to give up beliefs carried by the infectious agent of her father’s love.

Later: My Life At The Edge Of The World by Paul Lisicky

When Paul Lisicky arrived in Provincetown in the early 1990s, he was leaving behind a history of family trauma to live in a place outside of time, known for its values of inclusion, acceptance, and art. In this idyllic haven Lisicky searches for love and connection. At the same time, the center of this community is consumed by the AIDS crisis and the very structure of town life is being rewired out of necessity. What might this utopia look like during a time of dystopia?

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 5, "Skylight Update, Ingrid, and Liz"

Sat, 16 May 2020 12:30:00 -0700

What a week! With social distancing measures beginning to relax a touch, Mick and Maddie talk about what it's going to be like for the Skylighters as they prep the store for curbside pickup. Mary comes on for an official Skylight Update and briefs us on a couple different ways we can support the store. Ingrid recommends a book, and Maddie comes back for a great conversation with Liz from Oakland's East Bay Booksellers.

Staff Pick:

Ingrid - Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

LIVE ON ZOOM: Chelsea Bieker, Aja Gabel, Nina Renata Aron

Fri, 15 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

Join us for a Skylight virtual event! Chelsea Bieker, Aja Gabel and Nina Renata Aron will talk about their journeys to publication, the current literary landscape, and moms in all their forms.

Order Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

Order The Ensemble by Aja Gabel

Order Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls by Nina Renata Aron

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Angie Kim, "MIRACLE CREEK" w/ Maddie Gobbo

Wed, 13 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

In a small town in Virginia, a group of people know each other because they’re part of a special treatment center, a hyperbaric chamber that may cure a range of conditions from infertility to autism. But then the chamber explodes, two people die, and it’s clear the explosion wasn’t an accident.

A powerful showdown unfolds as the story moves across characters who are all maybe keeping secrets, hiding betrayals. Chapter by chapter, we shift alliances and gather evidence: Was it the careless mother of a patient? Was it the owners, hoping to cash in on a big insurance payment and send their daughter to college? Could it have been a protester, trying to prove the treatment isn’t safe?

“A stunning debut about parents, children and the unwavering hope of a better life, even when all hope seems lost" (Washington Post), Miracle Creek uncovers the worst prejudice and best intentions, tense rivalries and the challenges of parenting a child with special needs. It’s “a quick-paced murder mystery that plumbs the power and perils of community” (O Magazine) as it carefully pieces together the tense atmosphere of a courtroom drama and the complexities of life as an immigrant family. Drawing on author Angie Kim's own experiences as a Korean-American, former trial lawyer, and mother of a “miracle submarine” patient, this is a novel steeped in suspense and igniting discussion. Recommended by Erin Morgenstern, Jean Kwok, Jennifer Weiner, Scott Turow, Laura Lippman, and more-- Miracle Creek is a brave, moving debut from an unforgettable new voice.

Kim is in conversation with Maddie Gobbo, events manager for Skylight Books.

Lane Moore, "HOW TO BE ALONE"

Mon, 11 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

Lane Moore is a rare performer who is as impressive onstage—whether hosting her iconic show Tinder Live or being the enigmatic front woman of It Was Romance—as she is on the page, as both a former writer for The Onion and an award-winning sex and relationships editor for Cosmopolitan. But her story has had its obstacles, including being her own parent, living in her car as a teenager, and moving to New York City to pursue her dreams. Through it all, she looked to movies, TV, and music as the family and support systems she never had.

From spending the holidays alone to having better “stranger luck” than with those closest to her to feeling like the last hopeless romantic on earth, Lane reveals her powerful and entertaining journey in all its candor, anxiety, and ultimate acceptance—with humor always her bolstering force and greatest gift.

How to Be Alone is a must-read for anyone whose childhood still feels unresolved, who spends more time pretending to have friends online than feeling close to anyone in real life, who tries to have genuine, deep conversations in a roomful of people who would rather you not. Above all, it’s a book for anyone who desperately wants to feel less alone and a little more connected through reading her words.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 4, "Mick, Sydney, Joseph, & Sarah"

Sat, 09 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

In this week's episode, Maddie gives us a quick update on Skylight and whether it will open after California Governor Gavin Newsom's big announcement this week. Mick gives you a book recommendation, and Sydney is joined by Joseph and Sara, two bookselling pals from Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, for a great discussion on what we mean when we talk about bookstores as essential businesses, and the real impact on booksellers. Don't miss it!

Staff Pick:

Mick - Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Ali Araghi, "THE IMMORTALS OF TEHRAN"

Fri, 08 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

This sweeping multi-generational debut tells the story of a centuries-old curse carrying one family to the brink of the 1979 Iranian revolution--and announces the arrival of a bold new literary talent. The Torkashvand family reveres their seemingly immortal patriarch, Agha, the trunk of their widely branching, family tree. When we come to the story, Agha is so old that he spends his days sitting in the family orchard, drinking tea and telling stories to his great-great-great-great grandson Ahmad. Agha's favorite story tells of a family curse that seems to shed light on the political turmoil roiling Iran and foretell Ahmad's fated role in the country's future. There is certainly something plaguing Ahmad's family. At the age of ten Ahmad witnesses his father's suicide and consequently loses his voice. But this is only the beginning of what will become another very long life: of many loves and losses, of ever-tangled family dramas, a doomed career in politics, and of incendiary poetry, all of which converge and catch fire at the center of the Revolution.

Order The Immortals of Tehran here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Janelle Brown, "PRETTY THINGS" w/ Family

Wed, 06 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

Nina once bought into the idea that her fancy liberal arts degree would lead to a fulfilling career. When that dream crashed, she turned to stealing from rich kids in L.A. alongside her wily Irish boyfriend, Lachlan. Nina learned from the best: Her mother was the original con artist, hustling to give her daughter a decent childhood despite their wayward life. But when her mom gets sick, Nina puts everything on the line to help her, even if it means running her most audacious, dangerous scam yet.

Vanessa is a privileged young heiress who wanted to make her mark in the world. Instead she becomes an Instagram influencer—traveling the globe, receiving free clothes and products, and posing for pictures in exotic locales. But behind the covetable façade is a life marked by tragedy. After a broken engagement, Vanessa retreats to her family’s sprawling mountain estate, Stonehaven: a mansion of dark secrets not just from Vanessa’s past, but from that of a lost and troubled girl named Nina.

Nina’s, Vanessa’s, and Lachlan’s paths collide here, on the cold shores of Lake Tahoe, where their intertwined lives give way to a winter of aspiration and desire, duplicity and revenge.

This dazzling, twisty, mesmerizing novel showcases acclaimed author Janelle Brown at her best, as two brilliant, damaged women try to survive the greatest game of deceit and destruction they will ever play.

Brown is in conversation with her family: husband Greg, daughter Auden, and son Theo!

Order Pretty Things here.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Kathryn Scanlan, "THE DOMINANT ANIMAL" w/ Brian Evenson

Mon, 04 May 2020 06:26:00 -0700

In The Dominant Animal, compression is key. Sentences have been relentlessly trimmed, tuned, and teased, rendering both their syntax and subjects wondrous and strange. A ferocious attention to rhythm and sound creates a thrum of excitability and distress. The nature of love is questioned at a golf course, a flower shop, an all-you-can-eat buffet. The clay head of a man is bought and displayed as a trophy. Interior life manifests on the physical plane, where characters—human and animal—eat and breathe, provoke and injure one another.

With exquisite control, Kathryn Scanlan moves from expansive moods and fine afternoons to unease and violence—and also from deliberate and generative ambiguity to shocking, revelatory exactitude. Disturbances accrue as the collection progresses. How often the conclusions open—rather than tie—up. How they twist alertly. No mercy, a character says—and these stories are merciless and strange and absolutely masterful.

Scanlan is in conversation with Brian Evensen, author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World (Coffee House Press, 2019).

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 3, "Dylan, Yves, and Trisha Low"

Sat, 02 May 2020 07:00:00 -0700

Happy May Day, everyone! For the third episode of the Handsell series, Mick gets a quick, overdue lowdown on International Workers Day from Maddie and Yves. Mary gives an update on Skylight's status in the midst of the pandemic (12:55), Dylan gives his staff pick (15:00), and Yves comes back for a conversation with author Trisha Low (15:30) on the importance and struggles of Small Press Distribution. Another good one! We're on a roll!

Staff Pick:

Dylan - The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis by Lydia Davis

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall, "THE MERMAID, THE WITCH, AND THE SEA"

Fri, 01 May 2020 06:30:00 -0700

The pirate Florian, born Flora, has always done whatever it takes to survive—including sailing under false flag on the Dove as a marauder, thief, and worse. Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, a highborn Imperial daughter, is on board as well—accompanied by her own casket. But Evelyn’s one-way voyage to an arranged marriage in the Floating Islands is interrupted when the captain and crew show their true colors and enslave their wealthy passengers. Both Florian and Evelyn have lived their lives by the rules, and whims, of others. But when they fall in love, they decide to take fate into their own hands—no matter the cost.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s sweeping fantasy, full of stolen memories, illicit mermaid’s blood, double agents, and haunting mythical creatures, conjures an extraordinary cast of characters and the unforgettable story of a couple striving to stay together in the face of myriad forces wishing to control their identities and destinies.

Order The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Lulu Miller, "WHY FISH DON'T EXIST"

Wed, 29 Apr 2020 06:30:00 -0700

David Starr Jordan was a taxonomist, a man possessed with bringing order to the natural world. In time, he would be credited with discovering nearly a fifth of the fish known to humans in his day. But the more of the hidden blueprint of life he uncovered, the harder the universe seemed to try to thwart him. His specimen collections were demolished by lightning, by fire, and eventually by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake--which sent more than a thousand of his discoveries, housed in fragile glass jars, plummeting to the floor. In an instant, his life's work was shattered.

Many might have given up, given in to despair. But Jordan? He surveyed the wreckage at his feet, found the first fish he recognized, and confidently began to rebuild his collection. And this time, he introduced one clever innovation that he believed would at last protect his work against the chaos of the world.

When NPR reporter Lulu Miller first heard this anecdote in passing, she took Jordan for a fool --a cautionary tale in hubris, or denial. But as her own life slowly unraveled, she began to wonder about him. Perhaps instead he was a model for how to go on when all seemed lost. What she would unearth about his life would transform her understanding of history, morality, and the world beneath her feet.

Part biography, part memoir, part scientific adventure, Why Fish Don't Exist reads like a fable about how to persevere in a world where chaos will always prevail.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Emily Gould, "PERFECT TUNES" and Rufie Thorpe, "KNOCKOUT QUEEN" w/ Stephanie Danler

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 06:30:00 -0700

Perfect Tunes by Emily Gould

It’s the early days of the new millennium, and Laura has arrived in New York City’s East Village with the hopes of recording her first album. A songwriter with a one-of-a-kind talent, she’s just beginning to book gigs when she falls hard for Dylan, a troubled but magnetic musician whose star is on the rise. Their time together is stormy and short-lived— Dylan dies a few months into their relationship—but will reverberate for the
rest of Laura’s life.

Flash forward fourteen years: Laura’s daughter, Marie, is asking questions about the father she never knew, questions that Laura does not want to answer. Laura has built a quiet life that bears little
resemblance to the one she envisioned when she left Ohio all those years ago, and she’s taken pains to close the door on what was and what might have been. But Marie won’t let her, and when she attempts to track down Dylan’s family, both mother and daughter are forced to confront the heartbreak at the root of their relationship.

Funny, wise, and utterly immersive, Emily Gould's Perfect Tunes explores the fault lines between parents and children, and asks whether dreams deferred can ever be reclaimed.

The Knockout Queen by Rufie Thorpe

Bunny Lampert is the princess of North Shore⁠--beautiful, tall, blond, with a rich real-estate-developer father and a swimming pool in her backyard. Michael⁠--with a ponytail down his back and a septum piercing⁠--lives with his aunt in the cramped stucco cottage next door. When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her yard, he discovers that her life is not as perfect as it seems. At six foot three, Bunny towers over their classmates. Even as she dreams of standing out and competing in the Olympics, she is desperate to fit in, to seem normal, and to get a boyfriend, all while hiding her father's escalating alcoholism. Michael has secrets of his own. At home and at school Michael pretends to be straight, but at night he tries to understand himself by meeting men online for anonymous encounters that both thrill and scare him. When Michael falls in love for the first time, a vicious strain of gossip circulates and a terrible, brutal act becomes the defining feature of both his and Bunny's futures⁠--and of their friendship. With storytelling as intoxicating as it is intelligent, Rufi Thorpe has created a tragic and unflinching portrait of identity, a fascinating examination of our struggles to exist in our bodies, and an excruciatingly beautiful story of two humans aching for connection.

Gould and Thorpe are in conversation with Stephanie Danler, the author of the international bestseller Sweetbitter.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Jessi Jezewska Stevens, "THE EXHIBITION OF PERSEPHONE Q" w/ Amina Cain

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 12:00:00 -0700

Percy is pregnant. She hasn’t told a soul. Probably she should tell her husband—certainly she means to—but one night she wakes up to find she no longer recognizes him. Now, instead of sleeping, Percy is spending her nights taking walks through her neighborhood, all the while fretting over her marriage, her impending motherhood, and the sinister ways the city is changing.

Amid this alienation—from her husband, home, and rapidly changing body—a package arrives. In it: an exhibition catalog for a photography show. The photographs consist of a series of digitally manipulated images of a woman lying on a bed in a red room. It takes a moment for even Percy to notice that the woman is herself . . . but no one else sees the resemblance.

Percy must now come to grips with the fundamental question of identity in the digital age: To what extent do we own our own image, and to what extent is that image shaped by the eyes of others?

Capturing perfectly the haunted atmosphere of Manhattan immediately after 9/11—and the simmering insanity of America ever since—Jessi Jezewska Stevens's The Exhibition of Persephone Q is a darkly witty satire about how easy it is to lose ownership of our own selves.

Stevens is in conversation with Amina Cain, the author of two collections of short fiction, Creature and I Go to Some Hollow.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 2, "Andie, Ben, & Sydney"

Sat, 25 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Back at it! Mick, Maddie, and Sydney talk about albums and books that are inextricably linked for them. Then, Andie gives a book recommendation, and Sydney comes right back for a conversation with Ben. It was supposed to be 15 minutes, but it's really tough to stop the book-talkin' train once it gets going! Hence the length of this episode. Trust us...it's #GoodContent.

Staff Picks:

Andie - The Exhibition of Persephone Q by Jesse Jezewska Stevens

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Zan Romanoff, "LOOK" w/ Gina Delvac

Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Things Lulu Shapiro's 5,000 Flash followers don't know about her:
  •  That the video of her with another girl was never supposed to go public.
  •  That Owen definitely wasn't supposed to break up with her because of it.
  •  That behind the carefully crafted selfies and scenes Lulu projects onto people's screens, her life feels like a terrible, uncertain mess.

Then Lulu meets Cass. Cass isn't interested in looking at Lulu's life, only in living in it. And The Hotel--a gorgeous space with an intriguing, Old Hollywood history and a trust-fund kid to restore it--seems like the perfect, secret place for them to get to know each other. But just because Lulu has stepped out of the spotlight doesn't mean it'll stop following her every move.

Look is about what you present vs. who you really are, about real intimacy and manufactured intimacy and the blurring of that line. It's a deceptively glamorous, feminist, emotionally complex, utterly compelling, queer coming-of-age novel about falling in love and taking ownership of your own self--your whole self--in the age of social media.

Author Zan Romanoff is in conversation with Gina Delvac, founding producer of the Call Your Girlfriend podcast.

Order Look from Skylight Books.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, "THE MOUNTAINS SING"

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee's Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner's In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore not just her beloved country, but her family apart. Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope.

The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's first novel in English.

Order The Mountains Sing from Skylight Books.

Part of Skylight Books' "SKYLIT" series.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Felicia Angeja Viator, "TO LIVE AND DEFY IN LA"

Mon, 20 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

We all take for granted how synonymous hip-hop music, which dominates the music charts around the world, is with American culture today. This is a product of Los Angeles rap in the 1980s, argues Felicia Angeja Viator in her compelling new history TO LIVE AND DEFY IN LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America (Harvard University Press). Her book tells a unique story about black LA to explain how and why the region's rap artists, labels, and audiences forever transformed American popular culture.

Viator, who worked for years as a DJ, tells the history of a sub-genre of hip-hop considered so dystopian that it initially struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as "over the top." In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, drug-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA simply wasn't hard enough to generate "authentic" hip-hop. The assumption was that defiant black youth music couldn't come from La-La Land. Yet, by the end of the '80s, these self-styled “ghetto reporters” from Compton, South Central, Inglewood, Crenshaw, and Long Beach had fought their way onto the nation’s radio and TV stations, and thus into America’s consciousness. In doing so, they exposed the nation to police brutality, mocked law-and-order crusaders, outraged moral guardians, minted rebel anthems, and demanded that America confront its flaws.

Viator created a Spotify playlist with songs featured in her book. To listen, click here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5SYpeARYAjpIYcKaFww4qP?si=kHi53tSyQmuwWjs4ZCJqtw

Part of Skylight Books' "SKYLIT" series.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Handsell, Ep. 1, "Lane & Sydney"

Sat, 18 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In the premiere episode of the Skylight Books Booksellers Series, Lane and Sydney handsell us their staff picks. Plus, Mary gives us an update on how Skylight is faring during the coronavirus crisis, and Maddie details how the events staff is switching course when you...can't have any events.

Staff Picks:

Lane - Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis

Sydney - The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Silmani.

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Produced by Maddie Gobbo & Michael Kowaleski

Theme: "I Love All My Friends," a new, unreleased demo by Fragile Gang.

Katie Orphan, "READ ME, LOS ANGELES" w/ Liska Jacobs

Mon, 13 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Read Me, Los Angeles is a colorful, lively, and informed celebration of all things bookish in L.A. past and present, including interviews with current L.A. writers; day trips in search of favorite fictional characters, from Marlowe to Weetzie Bat; author quotes galore; curated lists of the must-read L.A. books, from fiction to history to poetry; a look at where writers have lived and worked in the City of Angels; and insight into the city’s literary festivals, bookstores, publishers, literacy nonprofits, libraries, and more. Rich with photographs, book images, and vintage maps.

Author Katie Orphan is in conversation with Liska Jacobs, the author of Catalina.

Neda Disney, "PLANTING WOLVES"

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

A writer in a purgatory bar, an art collecting housewife who time travels, a movie Production Assistant with stigmata, a codependent AA sponsor, a sex addict, a movie star with issues, a two-time liver transplant recipient and an abusive TV costumer who gets what’s coming to her. All connected to one another but completely and utterly alone.

MariNaomi, "DISTANT STARS" w/ Myriam Gurba

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In the final volume of the Life on Earth trilogy, celebrated cartoonist MariNaomi concludes her tale of growing up, falling in and out of love, and possible alien interventions. Shy, self-deprecating Paula Navarro is coming into her own—and it's making her new girlfriend, Johanna, a little nervous. Paula's former friend Emily Baker is learning to look inward. Brett Hathaway, Emily and Paula's mutual ex-hook-up, is torn about reconnecting with his estranged dad. And Nigel Jones is smitten with his tutor, Claudia—whose disappearance and reappearance remains a mystery to everyone around her. As Claudia and her guardians put the final plan in motion, they'll reveal the truth that links everyone's fate.

MariNaomi is in conversation with Myriam Gurba, a writer, a spoken-word artist, and a visual artist.

Bernice Steinhardt, "MEMORIES OF SURVIVAL"

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

This stunning collection of fabric and embroidered panels depicts Esther Nisenthal Krinitz’s remarkable journey of living through the Holocaust in Poland. At the age of fifteen, she and her thirteen-year-old sister separated from their family and went into hiding, assuming the identities of Catholic farmgirls. Though untrained as an artist but a skilled seamstress, Esther picked up needle and thread forty years later to retell her childhood memories. At once naïve and infinitely complex, these images reveal both the extreme horrors of war, and the cherished family memories shared before the war began. Told in Esther’s own words, with commentary written by her daughter, Bernice Steinhardt, this is an unforgettable look back to a time and events that must never be forgotten.

Steffie Nelson, "SLOUCHING TOWARDS LOS ANGELES" w/ Contributors

Tue, 07 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In The White Album, Joan Didion wrote that “a place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively…loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.” Cruising the freeways in her Daytona yellow Corvette, taking it all in behind dark glasses, Joan Didion claimed California for all time. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a multi-faceted portrait of the literary icon who, in turn, belongs to us. This collection of original essays covers the turf that made Didion a sensation—Hollywood and Patty Hearst; Malibu, Manson and the Mojave; the Summer of Love and the Central Park Five—while bringing together some of the finest voices of today’s Los Angeles and beyond. Slouching Towards Los Angeles is a love letter and thank you note; personal memoir and social commentary; cultural history and literary critique. Fans of Didion, lovers of California, and fellow writers alike will all find something to dig into, in this rich exploration of the inner and outer landscapes Joan Didion traveled, coloring our own journeys in the process.

This evening's event will feature contributors DAN CRANE, JESSICA HUNDLEY, TRACY MCMILLAN, CAROLINE RYDER and MARGARET WAPPLER along with editor STEFFIE NELSON reading and discussing the book and Joan Didion's life and work.

Sarah Gailey, "WHEN WE WERE MAGIC", & Mallory O'Meara, "THE LADY FROM THE BLACK LAGOON"

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

A moving, darkly funny novel about six teens whose magic goes wildly awry from Magic for Liars author Sarah Gailey, who Chuck Wendig calls an "author to watch."

Keeping your magic a secret is hard. Being in love with your best friend is harder.

Alexis has always been able to rely on two things: her best friends, and the magic powers they all share. Their secret is what brought them together, and their love for each other is unshakeable--even when that love is complicated. Complicated by problems like jealousy, or insecurity, or lust. Or love.

That unshakeable, complicated love is one of the only things that doesn't change on prom night.

When accidental magic goes sideways and a boy winds up dead, Alexis and her friends come together to try to right a terrible wrong. Their first attempt fails--and their second attempt fails even harder. Left with the remains of their failed spells and more consequences than anyone could have predicted, each of them must find a way to live with their part of the story.

Mallory O’Meara is the bestselling author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, along with being a screenwriter and film producer.

Emily Beyda, "THE BODY DOUBLE" w/ Ivy Pochoda

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

From a refreshingly honest new voice in fiction, Emily Beyda, comes The Body Double. Taking cues from both David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring, The Body Double is a cinematic and fabulously plotted noir that follows a young woman plucked from obscurity by a charming stranger to impersonate reclusive starlet, Rosanna Feld.

At first alluring and exciting, our narrator’s new life as a body double quickly turns sour. Locked up in a small apartment in the hills, she studies footage of Rosanna, eats her favorite foods, wears her clothes, and endures punishing exercises to obtain Rosanna’s “perfect” body. She takes on Rosanna’s public persona and gains entry to her inner circle, but her sense of self deteriorates and doubts start to arise.

The Body Double is a stunning exploration of fame, beauty, and the hidden cost of keeping up appearances. Equal parts engrossing and unnerving, Beyda’s debut novel offers a sharply observed portrayal of the dark side of Hollywood. Growing up in LA, Beyda worked for the family of a famous Hollywood star and her intimate knowledge of that world informs every detail on the page.

Erin Khar, "STRUNG OUT" w/ Jen Pastiloff

Thu, 02 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Growing up in Los Angeles as the only child of divorced parents, Erin Khar, often consumed with loneliness, looked for an escape from the pervasive belief that she wasn't enough—not enough to keep her parents together or her mother from depression—and yet, she never shared with anyone this private sadness. Instead, she hid behind the façade of a perfect childhood filled with good grades, a popular group of friends, and horseback riding. By the time she was thirteen, the act becoming too difficult to keep up, and she started experimenting with her grandmother's expired valium, quickly followed by heroin. The drug allowed her to feel the calm she was missing from her life and suppress all the heavy feelings she couldn't understand. Heroin, while keeping her from other forms of self-harm, became the addiction that destroyed her.

Khar is in conversation with Jen Pastiloff, who travels the world with her unique workshop On Being Human, a hybrid of yoga-related movement, writing, sharing aloud, letting the snot fly, and the occasional dance party.

Porsha Olayiwola, "I SHIMMER SOMETIMES, TOO"

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Porsha Olayiwola is from the future! Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the artistic director at MassLEAP, a literary youth organization. Olayiwola is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College and is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston.

Her debut poetry collection soars with the power and presence of live performance. These poems dip their hands deep into the fabric of black womanhood, pulling out all of its threads. This book establishes Porsha O firmly in the lineage of black queer poetics, pulling equally from Audre Lorde and Danez Smith. This is a book of gentle breaking and inventive reconstruction. This is a book of self-care, and community-care--the pursuit of building a world that will keep you alive.

Megan Fernandes, "GOOD BOYS" w/ Catherine Pond & Callie Siskel

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In an era of rising nationalism and geopolitical instability, Megan Fernandes's Good Boys offers a complex portrait of messy feminist rage, negotiations with race and travel, and existential dread in the Anthropocene. The collection follows a restless, nervy, cosmically abandoned speaker failing at the aspirational markers of adulthood as she flips from city to city, from enchantment to disgust, always reemerging-just barely-on the trains and bridges and barstools of New York City. A child of the Indian ocean diaspora, Fernandes enacts the humor and devastation of what it means to exist as a body of contradictions. Her interpretations are muddied. Her feminism is accusatory, messy. Her homelands are theoretical and rootless. The poet converses with goats and throws a fit at a tarot reading; she loves the intimacy of strangers during turbulent plane rides and has dark fantasies about the "hydrogen fruit" of nuclear fallout. Ultimately, these poems possess an affection for the doomed: false beloveds, the hounded earth, civilizations intent on their own ruin. Fernandes skillfully interrogates where to put our fury and, more importantly, where to direct our mercy.

Fernandes is in conversation with Catherine Pond and Callie Siskel.

April Davila, "142 OSTRICHES" w/ Amy Meyerson

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 05:35:00 -0700

Set against the unexpected splendor of an ostrich ranch in the California desert, April Dávila’s beautifully written debut conjures an absorbing and compelling heroine in a story of courage, family and forgiveness.

When Tallulah Jones was thirteen, her grandmother plucked her from the dank Oakland apartment she shared with her unreliable mom and brought her to the family ostrich ranch in the Mojave Desert. After eleven years caring for the curious, graceful birds, Tallulah accepts a job in Montana and prepares to leave home. But when Grandma Helen dies under strange circumstances, Tallulah inherits everything—just days before the birds inexplicably stop laying eggs.

Guarding the secret of the suddenly barren birds, Tallulah endeavors to force through a sale of the ranch, a task that is complicated by the arrival of her extended family. Their designs on the property, and deeply rooted dysfunction, threaten Tallulah’s ambitions and eventually her life.

With no options left, Tallulah must pull her head out of the sand and face the fifty-year legacy of a family in turmoil: the reality of her grandmother's death, her mother's alcoholism, her uncle's covetous anger, and the 142 Ostriches whose lives are in her hands.

Davila is in conversation with Amy Meyerson, the bestselling author of The Bookshop of Yesterdays.

Brandon Taylor, "REAL LIFE" w/ Miles Klee

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Taking place over the course of a single summer weekend, Real Life chronicles the life of Wallace, a young black graduate student studying biochemistry at a Midwest university. While navigating racial, class, and sexual tensions in his lab—as well as his friend community, with whom he feels both love and alienation—Wallace questions whether he should leave his program. When a tentative friendship transforms into a deeper connection, however, Wallace finds himself confronting the horrific trauma of his past, and wrestling with the challenge of building a new life while carrying such painful wounds. Told in poignant, heart-stopping sentences, the novel vividly immerses the reader into the insular world of graduate school—full of competitive lab sessions, sexually tense dinner parties, and complicated love triangles.

Like André Aciman or Alan Hollinghurst, Brandon Taylor depicts a story of sexual turmoil with beautiful intensity and rawness. Wallace’s story is one that is at times agonizingly intimate, and yet so fully human and resonant. Through absorbing narrative and richly drawn characters, Taylor forces readers to face the legacy of trauma, how it connects and isolates us from one another; to sit with uncomfortable but necessary questions around race, privilege and white fragility; and the differences that radically affect our experience in the world. As the title suggests, Real Life also reexamines the conventional metrics of success in America, asking how one is meant to live in a system designed to suppress. How are we to rescue one another from suffering, to heal from damage, without forsaking our identities? And is it truly possible to live a life that is honest and dignified—that coexists with pain and love, productivity and pleasure, community and self-realization—a life, in other words, that is real?

Taylor is in conversation with Miles Klee, MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert.

Katharine Coldiron, "CEREMONIALS" w/ Christopher Higgs

Thu, 26 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Ceremonials is a twelve-part lyric novella inspired by Florence + the Machine’s 2011 album of the same name. It’s the story of two girls, Amelia and Corisande, who fall in love at a boarding school. Corisande dies suddenly on the eve of graduation, but Amelia cannot shake her ghost. A narrative about obsession, the Minotaur, and the veil between life and death, Ceremonials is a poem in prose, a keening in words, and a song etched in ink.

Author Katharine Coldiron is in conversation with Christopher Higgs, a published author who teaches narrative theory and technique at California State University Northridge.

Ebony Flowers, "HOT COMB" w/ Taneka Stotts

Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Hot Comb by Ebony Flowers is one of the most acclaimed graphic novels of 2019, receiving nominations from the YALSA Great Graphic Novels for Teens and Alex Awards, as well as the NAACP Image Awards. The book offers a poignant glimpse into Black women’s anxieties, support networks, and coming of age stories. Hot Comb is insightful and empathetic about the imperfections of identity, a propitious display of talent from a vital new voice.

Flowers will be joined in conversation by TV and comics writer Taneka Stotts.

Jenn Shapland, "MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARSON MCCULLERS" w/

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

While working as an intern in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center, Jenn Shapland encounters the love letters of Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie—letters that are tender, intimate, and unabashed in their feelings. Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language—but does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her.

And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of McCullers’s life: she wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at McCullers’s childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives McCullers’s days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and McCullers, she sees how McCullers’s story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results reveal something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories.

In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.

Shapland is in conversation with Andy Campbell, PhD, an art historian, critic, and curator.

Emily Nemens, "THE CACTUS LEAGUE" w/

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Jason Goodyear is the star outfielder for the Los Angeles Lions, stationed with the rest of his team in the punishingly hot Arizona desert for their annual spring training. Handsome, famous, and talented, Goodyear is nonetheless coming apart at the seams. And the coaches, writers, wives, girlfriends, petty criminals, and diehard fans following his every move are eager to find out why—as they hide secrets of their own.

Humming with the energy of a ballpark before the first pitch, Emily Nemens' The Cactus League unravels the tightly connected web of people behind a seemingly linear game. Narrated by a sportscaster, Goodyear’s story is interspersed with tales of Michael Taylor, a batting coach trying to stay relevant; Tamara Rowland, a resourceful spring-training paramour, looking for one last catch; Herb Allison, a legendary sports agent grappling with his decline; and a plethora of other richly drawn characters, all striving to be seen as the season approaches. It’s a journey that, like the Arizona desert, brims with both possibility and destruction.

Anchored by an expert knowledge of baseball’s inner workings, Emily Nemens's The Cactus League is a propulsive and deeply human debut that captures a strange desert world that is both exciting and unforgiving, where the most crucial games are the ones played off the field.

Nemens is in conversation with J. Ryan Stradal the author of the New York Times bestseller, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which won the 2016 American Booksellers Association Indie's Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, the 2016 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for debut fiction, and the 2016 Southern California Independent Booksellers Association award for 2016's top novel.

Kyle Chayka, "THE LONGING FOR LESS" w/ Geoff Manaugh

Fri, 20 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Everywhere we hear the mantra: Less is more. Marie Kondo and other decluttering gurus promise that shedding our stuff will solve our problems, while tech-industry lifehackers preach a ruthless time-management gospel. We commit to cleanse diets and strive for inbox zero. Amid the frantic pace and distraction of everyday life, we covet silence--and airy, Instagrammable spaces in which to enjoy it. All the while, the enduring values of minimalism become harder to discern through its branding as yet another luxury commodity.

After spending years covering these trends for leading publications, cultural critic Kyle Chayka delves beneath the minimalist lifestyle's glossy surface, seeking ways to better claim the time and space we crave, on our own terms. He finds that the origins of our current love affair with austerity go back further than we realize, as his search leads him to the stories of the singular innovators whose creativity laid the foundation for minimalism as we know it today: artists such as Donald Judd and Agnes Martin; composers such as John Cage and Julius Eastman; architects and ascetics; philosophers and poets. As Chayka looks anew at their extraordinary lives and explores the places where they worked, he gleans fresh insights into our longing for less. And finally, tracing the footsteps of two Japanese literary masters, he arrives at an elegant new synthesis of our minimalist desires and our profound emotional needs.

Chayka discusses The Longing for Less w/ Geoff Manaugh, Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the author of A Burglar’s Guide to the City

Sands Hall, "RELCAIMING MY DECADE LOST IN SCIENTOLOGY" w/ Maggie Rowe

Thu, 19 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In the secluded canyons of Hollywood, Sands Hall—a young woman from a literary family striving to forge her own way as an artist—finds herself increasingly drawn toward the certainty that Scientology appears to offer. Her time in the Church, the 1980s, includes the secretive illness and death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and the ascension of David Miscavige. In Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, Hall compellingly reveals what drew her into the religion—what she found intriguing and useful—and how she came to confront its darker sides and escape.

Hall is in conversation with Maggie Rowe, who has performed in and produced the Comedy Central stage show sitnspin, Los Angeles’s longest running spoken-word show, having taken the reins from creator Jill Soloway in 2002.

SEAWITCHES, VOL. 4 w/ Olivia VanDamme & Margaret Seelie

Wed, 18 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Seawitches is a bi-annual print publication with the eternal theme of water. Within the water theme we’ve explored menstruation, mental health, white privilege, technology, environmental issues, and more.

Every issue has an Artist In Residence (AIR), including Leah Koransky (1), Caitlin Mattisson (2), and Savannah Rusher (4). Writers include Easkey Britton, Serena Renner, Kehinde Apara, Margaret Seelie, Maureen Murphy, Coco Peezy, and more. Artists include Amelia Coplan, Andrew Kaineder, Bleen Photography, Chris Duncan, Cristine Blanco, Elizabeth Pepin Silva, Rebecca Schillinger, Kaylee Savage-Wright, Kimberly Rose Wendt, Luke Allen, Marley Reynosa, Paige Laverty, Preston Richardson, Sarah Beeby, Susan Mattisson, Yoni Matatyaou, and more.

Whether you love oceans with wild waves, lakes that leave your skin smelling of fresh dirt, pools with sunlight slithering across blue paint, or a good soak in the tub – we think you'll like what you find with Seawitches.

BEST WOMEN'S EROTICA OF THE YEAR, VOL. 5

Tue, 17 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 5, award-winning editor Rachel Kramer Bussel takes readers on an outrageous journey into the world of female fantasy and desire. These sexy stories offer up wild, hot, and steamy tales from today’s top authors. You’ll be swept away by the sexiest business deal ever, break the rules in a future world where skin-on-skin contact is forbidden, and discover the art of getting off by phone sex. From threesomes to mermaid sex, fetishes, sex parties, and much more, these authors steam up the pages with tales of trysts, love, and lust where nothing is held back. If you’re looking to escape from the everyday and discover what happens when women are ready to get totally outrageous, this book is for you. With new stories by beloved authors including Joanna Angel, Balli Kaur Jaswal, CD Reiss, Sierra Simone, and Sabrina Sol, along with newcomers to the genre, you’ll savor every sizzling page.

Amina Cain, "INDELICACY" w/ Adam Novy

Mon, 16 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In "a strangely ageless world somewhere between Emily Dickinson and David Lynch" (Blake Butler), a cleaning woman at a museum of art nurtures aspirations to do more than simply dust the paintings around her. She dreams of having the liberty to explore them in writing, and so must find a way to win herself the time and security to use her mind. She escapes her lot by marrying a rich man, but having gained a husband, a house, high society, and a maid, she finds that her new life of privilege is no less constrained. Not only has she taken up different forms of time-consuming labor―social and erotic―but she is now, however passively, forcing other women to clean up after her. Perhaps another and more drastic solution is necessary?

Reminiscent of a lost Victorian classic in miniature, yet taking equal inspiration from such modern authors as Jean Rhys, Octavia Butler, Clarice Lispector, and Jean Genet, Amina Cain's Indelicacy is at once a ghost story without a ghost, a fable without a moral, and a down-to-earth investigation of the barriers faced by women in both life and literature. It is a novel about seeing, class, desire, anxiety, pleasure, friendship, and the battle to find one’s true calling.

Cain is in conversation with Adam Novy, author of The Avian Gospels came out in 2010.

Emma Copley Eisenberg, "THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL" w/ Steph Cha

Fri, 13 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

In the early evening of June 25, 1980 in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian, 26, and Nancy Santomero, 19, were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived; they traveled with a third woman however, who lived. For thirteen years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community, depicted as poor, dangerous, and backward. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. With the passage of time, as the truth seemed to slip away, the investigation itself caused its own traumas--turning neighbor against neighbor and confirming a fear of the violence outsiders have done to this region for centuries.

Emma Copley Eisenberg spent years living in Pocahontas and re-investigating these brutal acts. Using the past and the present, she shows how this mysterious act of violence has loomed over all those affected for generations, shaping their fears, fates, and the stories they tell about themselves. In The Third Rainbow Girl, Eisenberg follows the threads of this crime through the complex history of Appalachia, forming a searing and wide-ranging portrait of America--its divisions of gender and class, and of its violence.

Eisenberg is in conversation with Steph Cha, the author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, Dead Soon Enough, and Your House Will Pay, out from Ecco in 2019.

Crissy Van Meter, "CREATURES" w/ Edan Lepucki

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Unique in its structure and written to mimic the tidal charts that Evie studies as well as the natural ebbs and flows of life, Creatures takes readers on a provocative and mesmerizing journey as Evie is forced to reckon with her complicated upbringing in this lush, feral land off the coast of Southern California. On the eve of Evie’s wedding, a dead whale is trapped in the harbor of Winter Island, the groom may be lost at sea, and Evie’s mostly absent mother has shown up out of the blue. Evie grew up with her well-meaning but negligent father, surviving on the money he made dealing the island’s world-famous strain of marijuana, Winter Wonderland. Although he raised her with a deep respect for the elements, the sea, and the creatures living within it, he also left her to parent herself.

Crissy Van Meter based Creatures on her own coming of age in Newport Beach. “I was asking questions about what it means to grieve, to love, to experience love informed by grief, and to love someone who isn’t always good.” She explains, “I was interested in digging into my own experiences with my father’s drug and alcohol addiction, his failures as a father, and the dichotomy of still loving him so much… And, I was interested in exploring what it means to have a treacherous past with a father like this, and what it means as an adult to decipher what it means to love, what it means to forgive.”

Van Meter is in conversation with Edan Lepucki, bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17.

Lidia Yuknavitch, "VERGE"

Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Lidia Yuknavitch's bestselling novels The Book of Joan and The Small Backs of Children, and her groundbreaking memoir The Chronology of Water, have established her as one of our most urgent contemporary voices: a writer with a rare gift for tracing the jagged boundaries between art and trauma, sex and violence, destruction and survival. In Verge, her first collection of short fiction, she turns her eye to life on the margins, in all its beauty and brutality. A book of heroic grace and empathy, Verge is a viscerally powerful and moving survey of our modern heartache life.

WRITEGIRL 4 Group Reading

Tue, 10 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

WriteGirl is an innovative nonprofit organization that empowers teen girls through creative writing. Join us for this special chance to hear WriteGirl teens speak their minds and read their original poetry and prose. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll be surprised—you won’t want to miss it!

In WriteGirl’s new award-winning anthology, This Moment: Bold Voices from WriteGirl, 180 teens share stories, poems, memoirs, scripts and songs about their hopes and fears, loves and losses, amigas and pan dulce, as they navigate a challenging present and uncertain future with determination and grace. Their words inspire reflection and ignite action. The book includes a Creativity Starter Kit with 15 fresh writing activities to inspire young writers. This Moment is available for purchase at Skylight Books.

Chani Nicholas, "YOU WERE BORN FOR THIS" w/ Jen Richards

Mon, 09 Mar 2020 05:30:00 -0700

Your weekly horoscope is merely one crumb of astrology's cake. In her first book You Were Born For This, Chani Nicholas shows how your birth chart--a snapshot of the sky at the moment you took your first breath--reveals your unique talents, challenges, and opportunities. Fortified with this knowledge, you can live out the life you were born to. Marrying the historic traditions of astrology with a modern approach, You Were Born for This explains the key components of your birth chart in an easy to use, choose your own adventure style. With journal prompts, reflection questions, and affirmations personal to your astrological makeup, this book guides you along the path your chart has laid out for you.

Nicholas is in conversation with transgender activist, writer, actress, and producer Jen Richards.

Elaine Kahn, "ROMANCE OR THE END"

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 04:15:00 -0800

Romance or The End takes up the tools of romantic narrative in order to perform the rupture between self and story that occurs at the onset of trauma. Using known and pathologized literary arcs, Elaine Kahn unspools the fundamental instability of truth, love, and language to create an experiential portrait of narrative’s power to both disfigure and restore.

Kahn is in conversation with Justin Torres, who has published short fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, Glimmer Train, Flaunt.

A Tribute to Holly Prado

Thu, 05 Mar 2020 04:30:00 -0800

"The last time I saw Holly Prado, whom I’d known forty years, we were part of a group performance of Song of Myself at Beyond Baroque. Now we have her experiment in the long poem, Weather, a single, book-length poem in the larger tradition of Whitman’s personal epic, presenting the account of a voyage, lasting from fall 2015 to fall of 2018, through the inner seasons of a mythically conscious woman’s Los Angeles.

"In a more specific tradition, Prado’s work is in the line of Diane Wakoski, Anais Nin, Diane DiPrima, Lyn Hejenian, and other women who have written with wisdom and courage about their resonantly three-dimensional inner lives. Sadly, it is her last book; but a near-compensation is, it is her best. Farthest and deepest in reach, a modernist collage orchestrated by a expressive hand, the poem is open enough to be entered virtually anywhere, yet organically shaped by a mature mythic awareness to have narrative momentum and coherence. Beautifully turned phrases, sentences, and lines abound. An example: "Out in the huge autumn sky, / leonid meteors give us their message: Don’t think too much / of your human pursuits. Don’t think you won’t be / dissolved in everything wilder than you. Enter / your myths with your open-palmed hands on your knees."

“Dissolved in everything wilder than you” — that is the state of feeling and vision Prado’s imagination makes available to us. It is also the promise all real poetry makes: that our veil of pursuits be lifted, that we see the wild truth."

—James Cushing, joined in conversation and readings by Harry E. Northup and Phoebe MacAdams.

Ejeris Dixon & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, "BEYOND SURVIVAL" w/ Guests

Wed, 04 Mar 2020 04:28:00 -0800

Afraid to call 911, but not sure what to do instead? Read this book! Beyond Survival collects tools, strategies and personal stories of the struggle to create safety, justice and accountability beyond the criminal justice system.

This long-awaited and deeply necessary book documents some of the work of the transformative justice movement- collecting everything from personal stories of successful interventions in abuse and violence to guides to being accountable if you’ve been abusive, from strategies to support folks having emotional crises without calling 911 to toolkits for creating safer party spaces and community safety zones from ICE. Along the way, there’s plenty of personal essays and reflections from long time organizers on the state of the movement, and visions for the future we’re building that will bring us all home.

Editors Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha are in conversation with activist-contributors Amita Swadhin and Raquel Lavina.

Chana Porter, "THE SEEP" w/ Agnes Borinsky

Tue, 03 Mar 2020 04:15:00 -0800

Trina Goldberg-Oneka is a fifty-year-old trans woman whose life is irreversibly altered in the wake of a gentle—but nonetheless world-changing—invasion by an alien entity called The Seep. Through The Seep, everything is connected. Capitalism falls, hierarchies and barriers are broken down; if something can be imagined, it is possible.

Trina and her wife, Deeba, live blissfully under The Seep’s utopian influence—until Deeba begins to imagine what it might be like to be reborn as a baby, which will give her the chance at an even better life. Using Seeptech to make this dream a reality, Deeba moves on to a new existence, leaving Trina devastated.

Heartbroken and deep into an alcoholic binge, Trina follows a lost boy she encounters, embarking on an unexpected quest. In her attempt to save him from The Seep, she will confront not only one of its most avid devotees, but the terrifying void that Deeba has left behind. A strange new elegy of love and loss, The Seep explores grief, alienation, and the ache of moving on.

Author Chana Porter is in conversation with Agnes Borinsky, a playwright and performer based in Los Angeles.

Michael Lee, "THE ONLY WORLDS WE KNOW" and Morgan Parker "MAGICAL NEGRO"

Mon, 02 Mar 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Join poets Morgan Parker (Magical Negro) and Michael Lee (The Only Worlds We Know) as they read from their respective collections.

Ian Brennan, "SILENCED BY SOUND" w/ Tunde Adebimpe

Thu, 30 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Popular culture has woven itself into the social fabric of our lives, penetrating people's homes and haunting their psyches through images and earworms. Justice, at most levels, is something the average citizen may have little influence upon, leaving us feeling helpless and complacent. But pop music is a neglected arena where concrete change can occur — by exercising active and thoughtful choices to reject the low-hanging, omnipresent corporate fruit, we begin to rebalance the world, one engaged listener at a time.

Silenced by Sound is a powerful exploration of the challenges facing art, music, and media. Ian Brennan delves into his personal story to address the inequity of distribution in the arts and demonstrates that there are millions of talented people around the world more gifted than the superstars for whom billions of dollars are spent to promote the delusion that they have been blessed with unique genius.

Brennan is in conversation with Tunde Adebimpe, a Grammy-nominated musician, actor, director, and visual-artist best known as the lead singer of the band TV on the Radio.

Melissa Matthewson, "TRACING THE DESIRE LINE" w/ Mathieu Cailler

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Tracing the Desire Line follows a writer's journey of opening her marriage with her husband. The story—told through short memoirs, essays, lists, letters, and hybrid prose poems—is an intimate inquiry into one woman’s search for autonomy with detours into meditations on music, motherhood, religion, love, and wildness.

Matthewson is in conversation with Mathieu Cailler, an award-winning author, whose poetry and prose have been widely featured in numerous national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Saturday Evening Post.

Caroline Zancan, "WE WISH YOU LUCK" w/ Aja Gabel

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

An exhilarating novel about a group of students who take revenge on a wunderkind professor after she destroys one of their own-- a story of collective drive to create, sabotage, and ultimately, to love.

It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible, and brilliant. Leslie, glamorous and brash, has declared that she wants to write erotica and make millions. Hannah is quietly confident, loyal, elegantly beautiful, and the person they all want to be; and Jimmy is a haunted genius with no past. After Simone - young, bestselling author and erstwhile model - shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious.

Love. Death. Revenge. These age-old tropes come to life as the semesters unfold. The threesome came to study writing, to be writers, and this is the story they've woven together: of friendship and passion, of competition and envy, of creativity as life and death. Now, they submit this story, We Wish You Luck, for your reading pleasure.

Author Caroline Zancan is in conversation with Aja Gabel, whose debut novel, The Ensemble, was released by Riverhead in 2018.

André Naffis-Sahely and Fred D'Aguiar, "A STRANGER"

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Exile lies at the root of our earliest stories. Charting varied experiences of people forced to leave their homes from the ancient world to the present day, The Heart of a Stranger is an anthology of poetry, fiction and non-fiction that journeys through six continents, with over a hundred contributors drawn from twenty-four languages.

Highlights include the wisdom of the 5th century Desert Fathers and Mothers, The Flight of the Irish Earls, Madame de Staël’s thoughts on Napoleon’s tyranny, Emma Goldman’s travails in the wake of the First Red Scare, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s tales of European colonial settlers in Kenya and the work of the contemporary Eritrean poet Ribka Sibhatu.

Edited by poet and translator André Naffis-Sahely, The Heart of a Stranger offers a uniquely varied look at a theme both ancient and urgently contemporary.

Naffis-Sahely is in conversation with Fred D'Aguiar, poet, novelist, playwright, born in London of Guyanese parents and raised in Guyana.

Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding, "SWITCHED ON POP"

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Switched on Pop gives readers the tools they need to interpret our modern soundtrack. Each chapter investigates a different song and artist, revealing musical insights such as how a single melodic motif follows Taylor Swift through every genre that she samples, André 3000 uses metric manipulation to get listeners to "shake it like a Polaroid picture," or Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee create harmonic ambiguity in "Despacito" that mirrors the patterns of global migration.

Replete with engaging discussions and eye-catching illustrations, Switched on Pop brings to life the musical qualities that catapult songs into the pop pantheon. Readers will find themselves listening to familiar tracks in new ways—and not just those from the Top 40. The timeless concepts that Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding define can be applied to any musical style. From fanatics to skeptics, teenagers to octogenarians, non-musicians to professional composers, every music lover will discover something ear-opening in Switched on Pop.

Tom Lutz, "BORN SLIPPY" w/ Steph Cha

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

Frank Baltimore is a bit of a loser, struggling by as a carpenter and handyman in rural New England when he gets his big break, building a mansion in the executive suburbs of Hartford. One of his workers is a charismatic eighteen-year-old kid from Liverpool, Dmitry, in the US in the summer before university. Dmitry is a charming sociopath, who develops a fascination with his autodidact philosopher boss, perhaps thinking that, if he could figure out what made Frank tick, he could be less of a pig. Dmitry heads to Asia and makes a neo-imperialist fortune, with a trail of corpses in his wake. When Dmitry’s office building in Taipei explodes in an enormous fireball, Frank heads to Asia, falls in love with Dmitry’s wife, and things go from bad to worse.

Combining the best elements of literary thriller, noir and political satire, Born Slippy is a darkly comic and honest meditation on modern life under global capitalism.

Author Tom Lutz is in conversation with Steph Cha, author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, Dead Soon Enough, and Your House Will Pay.

Claire Rudy Foster, "SHINE OF THE EVER"

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

By turns tender and punk-tough, Shine of the Ever is a literary mixtape of queer voices out of 1990s Portland. This collection of short stories explores what binds a community of queer and trans people as they negotiate love, screwing up, and learning to forgive themselves for being young and, sometimes, foolish.

Amy Spalding, "WE USED TO BE FRIENDS"

Mon, 20 Jan 2020 04:30:00 -0800

At the start of their senior year in high school, James (a girl with a boy’s name) and Kat are inseparable, but by graduation, they’re no longer friends. James prepares to head off to college as she reflects on the dissolution of her friendship with Kat while, in alternating chapters, Kat thinks about being newly in love with her first girlfriend and having a future that feels wide open. Over the course of senior year, Kat wants nothing more than James to continue to be her steady rock, as James worries that everything she believes about love and her future is a lie when her high-school sweetheart parents announce they’re getting a divorce.

Amy Spalding delicately explores the breakup of childhood best friends. Told in dual timelines—half of the chapters moving forward in time and half moving backward—We Used to Be Friends is funny, honest and full of heart.

Alvin Orloff, "DISASTERAMA!" w/ Trebor Healy

Thu, 28 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

In Disasterama!, Alvin Orloff recalls the delirious adventures of his youth—from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York—where insane nights, deep friendships with the creatives of the underground, and thrilling bi-coastal living led to a free-spirited life of art, manic performance, high camp antics, and exotic sexual encounters. Orloff looks past the politics of AIDS to the people on the ground, friends of his who did not survive AIDS’ wrath—the boys in black leather jackets and cackling queens in tacky frocks—remembering them not as victims, but as people who loved life, loved fun, and who were a part of the insane jigsaw of his community. Includes more than 60 rare photos of the underground counterculture, club flyers, drag queens, and queer icons of era.

Orloff is in conversation with Trebor Healey, author of three novels, A Horse Named Sorrow, Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors

Jami Attenberg, "ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS" w/ Alissa Nutting

Wed, 27 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

From critically acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg comes a novel of family secrets: think the drama of Big Little Lies set in the heat of a New Orleans summer

"If I know why they are the way they are, then maybe I can learn why I am the way I am," says Alex Tuchman of her parents. Now that her father is on his deathbed, Alex--a strong-headed lawyer, devoted mother, and loving sister--feels she can finally unearth the secrets of who Victor is and what he did over the course of his life and career. (A power-hungry real estate developer, he is, by all accounts, a bad man.) She travels to New Orleans to be with her family, but mostly to interrogate her tightlipped mother, Barbra.

As Barbra fends off Alex's unrelenting questions, she reflects on her tumultuous life with Victor. Meanwhile Gary, Alex's brother, is incommunicado, trying to get his movie career off the ground in Los Angeles. And Gary's wife, Twyla, is having a nervous breakdown, buying up all the lipstick in drug stores around New Orleans and bursting into crying fits. Dysfunction is at its peak. As each family member grapples with Victor's history, they must figure out a way to move forward--with one another, for themselves, and for the sake of their children.

All This Could Be Yours is a timely, piercing exploration of what it means to be caught in the web of a toxic man who abused his power; it shows how those webs can tangle a family for generations and what it takes to--maybe, hopefully--break free.

Attenberg is in conversation with Alissa Nutting, assistant professor of English at Grinnell College.

Mark Z. Danielewski, "THE LITTLE BLUE KITE"

Tue, 26 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

We all have fears, but if we can’t face the small ones how will we face the big ones? Kai is afraid to fly a little blue kite. But Kai is also very, very brave, and overcoming this small fear will lead him on a great adventure.

Remember: all great adventures start with one little moment. You know the one. It’s like a gentle breeze whispering in your ear what you already know by heart:

not even the sky is the limit . . .

The only other thing you might want to know about this book is that there are at least three ways to read it.

The first way takes only a few minutes. Just follow the rainbow-colored words.

The second takes only a little bit longer. Just follow the words haloed with blue and red and the rainbow words too.

For the third way, just start at the beginning.

Addie Tsai, "DEAR TWIN" w/ C.B. Lee

Mon, 25 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Poppy wants to go to college like everyone else, but her father has other ideas. Ever since her mirror twin sister, Lola, mysteriously vanished, Poppy’s father has been depressed and forces her to stick around. She hopes she can convince Lola to come home, and perhaps also procure her freedom, by sending her twin a series of eighteen letters, one for each year of their lives.

When not excavating childhood memories, Poppy is sneaking away with her girlfriend Juniper, the only person who understands her. But negotiating the complexities of queer love and childhood trauma are anything but simple. And as a twin? That’s a whole different story.

Dear Twin author Addie Tsai is in conversation with C.B. Lee, a Lambda Literary Award nominated writer of young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Jung Young Moon, "SEVEN SAMURAI SWEPT AWAY IN A RIVER"

Thu, 21 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

In his inimitable, recursive, meditative style that reads like a comedic zen koan but contains universes, Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River recounts Korean cult writer Jung Young Moon’s time spent at an artists’ and writers’ residency in small-town Texas. Jung embraces the rambling landscape of Texas, two-stepping, cowboy hats and cowboy churches, antique stores and their an- tique owners, and transmutes them into the even more expansive space of his mind. The author plucks at each surprisingly elucidating concept over pages of reflection – moving seamlessly from chili recipe etiquette (with beans or without?) to the origins of Texas itself – and muses on his outsider experiences in this most unique of places. All the while, the author is asking what a novel is and must be, while accompanied by an invented mental cast of seven samurai who the author carries with him, silent companions in a pantomime of existential theater. Jung blends fact with imagination, humor with reflection, and meaning with meaninglessness, as his meanderings become an absorbing, quintessential novel of ideas.

Dan Goldman, "CHASING ECHOES"

Wed, 20 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Malka, the black sheep of her family, learns that her relatives are making a decades-in-the-planning pilgrimage to their grandfather's pre-Holocaust home in Poland...and she wasn't invited. After guilt-tripping herself a ticket as the self-appointed "Keeper of the Family Archives," it becomes clear that everyone's brought more baggage than just their suitcases.

Chasing Echoes is a heartfelt tale about dysfunctional family dynamics, the ghosts of war and what brings us back together.

Franny Howe, "LOVE AND I" w/ Martha Ronk

Tue, 19 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Set in transit even as they investigate the transitory, the cinematic poems in Love and I move like a handheld camera through the eternal, the minds of passengers, and the landscapes of Ireland and America. From this slight remove, Fanny Howe explores the edge of “pure seeing” and the worldly griefs she encounters there, cast in an otherworldly light. These poems layer pasture and tarmac, the skies above where airline passengers are compressed with their thoughts, and the ground where miseries accumulate, alongside comedies, in the figures of children in a park.

Love can do little but walk with the person and suddenly vanish, and that recurrent abandonment makes it necessary for these poems to find a balance between seeing and believing. For Howe, that balance is found in the Word, spoken in language, in music, in and on the wind, as invisible and continuous lyric thinking heard by the thinker alone. These are poems animated by belief and unbelief. Love and I fulfills Howe's philosophy of Bewilderment.

Howe is in conversation with Martha Ronk, author of 11 books of poetry and one book of short stories, Glass Grapes.

Liska Jacobs, "THE WORST KIND OF WANT" w/ Allie Rowbottom

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

To cool-headed, fastidious Pricilla Messing, Italy will be an escape, a brief glimpse of freedom from a life that's starting to feel like one long decline.

Rescued from the bedside of her difficult mother, forty-something Cilla finds herself called away to Rome to keep an eye on her wayward teenage niece, Hannah. But after years of caregiving, babysitting is the last thing Cilla wants to do. Instead she throws herself into Hannah's youthful, heedless world—drinking, dancing, smoking—relishing the heady atmosphere of the Italian summer. After years of feeling used up and overlooked, Cilla feels like she's coming back to life. But being so close to Hannah brings up complicated memories, making Cilla restless and increasingly reckless, and a dangerous flirtation with a teenage boy soon threatens to send her into a tailspin.

With the sharp-edged insight of Ottessa Moshfegh and the taut seduction of Patricia Highsmith, The Worst Kind of Want is a dark exploration of the inherent dangers of being a woman. In her unsettling follow-up to Catalina, Liska Jacobs again delivers hypnotic literary noir about a woman whose unruly desires and troubled past push her to the brink of disaster.

Jacobs is in conversation with Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls.

THE SCIENCE OF POETRY: A READING

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Six poets will read work that engages with scientific disciplines such as physics, mathematics, biology, and ecology. These readings will Involve the audience in a discussion of the embodied, material consequences of experimental engagements for both scientists and poets.

Josh Kun, "THE AUTOGRAPH BOOK OF L.A."

Wed, 13 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

The autograph is the premise for a dream: maybe, just maybe, the autograph hunter will become the autograph hunted, maybe the autograph will double as a magical transfer of renown, and by receiving the signature, one day you will be signing your name when someone asks.

So surmises Josh Kun in the pages of The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City, the third in his trilogy of books sponsored by the Library Foundation of Los Angeles and based on the Special Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library. But leave it to MacArthur Fellow and culture communicator par excellence Kun to take the concept of “autographs” beyond the mere signing of names in little forget-me-not books. He looks at Los Angeles, his hometown, and sees the stamp of other people who also call it home. Suddenly imagery, graffiti, and yes—hand-written names—become the signature of a new Los Angeles, far beyond the one envisioned by Charles Lummis, the city librarian who created the LAPL autograph collection by soliciting a cache of famous people’s signatures on the
library’s own embossed stationery.

Alex Dimitrov, "ASTRO POETS" w/ Melissa Broder

Tue, 12 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Critically-acclaimed poets Alex Dimitrov (Sagittarius) and Dorothea Lasky (Aries) met at a party nearly a decade ago. There a lengthy conversation about their mutual love for astrology first planted the seed that would become @poetastrologers, a Twitter account they started for their own amusement. The Twitter went viral and now has almost 500,000 followers. These online phenoms now bring us the first great astrology primer of the 21st century, Astro Poets: Your Guides to the Zodiac.

With humor and insight, the Astro Poets are here to share astrology with everyone from the uninitiated to the firm believers, to help you see what's written in the stars and use it to navigate your friendships, your career, and your very complicated love life. The book opens with a general primer on astrology— which explains everything from what a rising sign actually is, to where each sign falls along the karmic wheel. The rest of the book is devoted to each sign in turn and mixes classic components from the Linda Goodman playbook (“Pisces as a Lover”) with some fresher takes (“Texting with an Aquarius”). The references are equal parts high (Emily Dickinson) and low (Drake).

If you’ve ever wondered why your Gemini friend won't let you get a word in edge-wise at drinks, you've come to the right place. When will that Scorpio texting “u up?” at 2AM finally take the next step in your relationship? (Hint: they won’t.) What makes Andy Warhol a textbook Leo, or Beyoncé the ultimate example of a Virgo? Start with the chapter on your own sun sign, then move on to the signs of your partner, your children, your co-workers, your mortal enemy. You’ll walk away understanding them, and yourself, a little better.

Dimitrov will be in conversation with Melissa Broder author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections.

Jonathan Blum, "THE USUAL UNCERTAINTIES"

Mon, 11 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

The Usual Uncertainties—Jonathan Blum's highly anticipated first collection—is storytelling at its finest. In precise, elegant prose, these stories follow characters and communities often consigned to the edge of the frame: a community college dropout, a geriatric care manager, a square dance bar mitzvah, a Scrabble club, an entrepreneurial Thai immigrant, and a South Florida country club. With echoes of Leonard Michaels, Mavis Gallant, and Lore Segal, Blum explores the ways our divergent histories tether us together and at times push us completely apart. The Usual Uncertainties revels in the persistent human struggle to love with abandon and marks a radiant voice in American short fiction.

Helen Shewolfe Tseng & Beatrix Gravesguard, "THE ASTROLOGICAL GRIMOIRE" w/ Yumi Sakugawa

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

The Astrological Grimoire is an illustrated interactive guide and workbook that uses the astrological calendar as a framework for considering introspection and self-discovery, creative practices, connecting with your intuition, and more.

Join Helen Shewolfe Tseng and Beatrix Gravesguard in conversation with the interdisciplinary artist and author Yumi Sakugawa for an evening of exploration and discussion on intuition, rituals, creativity, astrology, writing, and more. Yumi will offer a brief guided meditation to start off the event.

Roshanak Kheshti, "WENDY CARLOS'S SWITCHED-ON BACH" (33 1/3) w/ Karen Tongson

Fri, 08 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

So much, popular and scholarly, has been written about the synthesizer, Bob Moog and his brand-name instrument, and even Wendy Carlos, the musician who made this instrument famous. No one, however, has examined the importance of spy technology, the Cold War and Carlos's gender to this critically important innovation.

Through a postcolonial lens of feminist science and technology studies, Roshanak Kheshti engages in a reading of Carlos's music within this gendered context. By focusing on Switched-On Bach (the highest selling classical music recording of all time), this book explores the significance of gender to the album's--and, as a result, the Moog synthesizer's--phenomenal success.

Kheshti is in conversation with Karen Tongson, author of Why Karen Carpenter Matters (2019), and Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries (2011).

Monique Truong, "THE SWEETEST FRUITS" w/ Diep Tran

Thu, 07 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

The Sweetest Fruits introduces readers to a trio of tenacious, brave, and inspiring women who have largely been left out of the historical record—until now. In her beautifully crafted and captivating work, Monique Truong retells the remarkable life story of 19th century writer, wanderer, and epicurean Lafcadio Hearn through the eyes of those who cared for him and made his work possible.

Truong is in conversation with Diep Tran, chef and former owner of Good Girl Dinette in Los Angeles.

Amanda Yates Garcia, "INITIATED" w/ Pam Grossman

Wed, 06 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

An initiation signals a beginning: a door opens and you step through. Traditional Wiccan initiates are usually brought into the craft through a ceremony with a High Priestess. But even though Amanda Yates Garcia's mother, a practicing witch herself, initiated her into the earth-centered practice of witchcraft when she was 13 years old, Amanda's real life as a witch only began when she underwent a series of spontaneous initiations of her own.

Descending into the underworlds of poverty, sex work, and misogyny, Initiated describes Amanda's journey to return to her body, harness her power, and create the magical world she longed for through witchcraft. Hailed by crows, seduced by magicians, and haunted by ancestors broken beneath the wheels of patriarchy, Amanda's quest for self-discovery and empowerment is a deep exploration of a modern witch's trials - healing ancient wounds, chafing against cultural expectations, creating intimacy - all while on a mission to re-enchant the world. Peppered with mythology, tales of the goddesses and magical women throughout history, Initiated stands squarely at the intersection of witchcraft and feminism. With generosity and heart, this book speaks to the question: is it possible to live a life of beauty and integrity in a world that feels like it's dying?

Garcia is in conversation with Pam Grossman, creator and host of The Witch Wave podcast and the author of Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power.

Mimi Lok, "LAST OF HER NAME" w/ Amelia Gray

Tue, 05 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

Mimi Lok's Last of Her Name is an eye-opening story collection about the intimate, interconnected lives of diasporic women and the histories they are born into. Set in a wide range of time periods and locales, including '80s UK suburbia, WWII Hong Kong and contemporary urban California, the book features an eclectic cast of outsiders: among them, an elderly housebreaker, wounded lovers and kung-fu fighting teenage girls. Last of Her Name offers a meditation on female desire and resilience, family and the nature of memory.

Lok is in conversation with Amelia Gray, author of five books, most recently Isadora.

Cyrus Grace Dunham, "A YEAR WITHOUT A NAME"

Mon, 04 Nov 2019 04:30:00 -0800

For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman--until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable. Beginning as Grace and ending as Cyrus, Dunham brings us inside the chrysalis of gender transition, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we are constituted. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely theirs, A Year Without a Name is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and desire.

Molly Lambert, Geoff Dyer and Tosh Berman discuss "I USED TO BE CHARMING: THE REST OF EVE BABITZ"

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Eve Babitz knew everyone, tried everything (at least once), and was never shy about sharing her thoughts on any subject, be it sex, weight loss, drug use, or her ambivalence toward New York City. From the 1970s through the 1990s, Babitz wrote on a wild variety of topics for some of the biggest publications around, from Esquire to Vogue to The New York Times Book Review. I Used to Be Charming brings together this nonfiction work. All previously uncollected, these pieces range from sharp personal essays on body image and the male gaze to playful meditations on everything from ballroom dancing to kissing to perfume. There are breathtaking celebrity profiles, too. In one, Nicolas Cage takes her for a ride in his '67 Stingray and in another she dishes about dragging Jim Morrison to bed before the Doors had even settled on a band name ("Jim was embarrassing because he wasn't cool, but I still loved him," she writes). In another essay, the author ponders her earliest days in the spotlight, posing nude with Marcel Duchamp, and in another, the never-before-published title essay, she writes about the tragic accident that compelled her to leave that spotlight behind forever.

Hanif Abdurraqib, "A FORTUNE FOR YOUR DISASTER"

Thu, 31 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In A Fortune For Your Disaster, his much-anticipated follow-up to The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, poet, essayist, biographer, and music critic Hanif Abdurraqib has written a book of poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak, the kind that renders them a different version of themselves than the one they knew. It’s a book about a mother’s death, and admitting that Michael Jordan pushed off, about forgiveness, and how none of the author’s black friends wanted to listen to “Don’t Stop Believin’.” It’s about wrestling with histories, personal and shared. Abdurraqib uses touchstones from the world outside—from Marvin Gaye to Nikola Tesla to his neighbor’s dogs—to create a mirror, inside of which every angle presents a new possibility.

Aziza Barnes, "THE BLIND PIG" w/ Yesika Salgado

Wed, 30 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

the blind pig is an afro surrealist excavation of a gender queer blk millennial’s formal introduction to their ancestral point of Mecca and No Return; the American South. In essayistic prose, this book weaves and unbraids the synapses of a blk American falling in and out of time.

Author Aziza Barnes is in conversation with Yesika Salgado, a Los Angeles based Salvadoran poet who writes about her family, her culture, her city, and her brown body.

Liana Finck,"EXCUSE ME" w/ Charlie Hankin

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

If you’re one of the 310,000 people who follow author Liana Finck on Instagram, you’ve probably seen a few of the following comments before: “Freaking Perfect”; “this rings so true for me I can’t even describe it”; “I'm putting this one on my bathroom mirror”; “WHY IS THIS LITERALLY ME”; “Can I get this tattooed on my body 100 times?” No matter what topic she’s covering—love and intimacy, politics, art, social anxiety, humanity—Liana’s work contains a precision and thoughtfulness that resonates deeply with those who encounter her work. This fall, Random House is thrilled to share a new book of over 500 of Liana’s most relatable and heartfelt drawings, EXCUSE ME: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self.

Liana’s thin-penned line drawings have an uncanny ability to communicate life’s absurdities, in a way that feels not only timely and sharp, but accessible and wondrously insightful. Her fans flock to her because they feel seen in her art—she never shies away from showing us life at its most hilarious, uncomfortable, and surreal. EXCUSE ME is divided into a series of distinctive chapters on: Love & Dating; Gender & Other Politics; Animals; Art & Myth-Making; Humanity; Time, Space, and How to Navigate Them; Strangeness, Shyness, Sadness; and Notes to Self. Each chapter is packed with Liana’s signature humor and wit, but also a deep sense of compassion and a profound curiosity in what it means to be a human in this world.

Finck is in conversation with Charlie Hankin, a writer/performer, cartoonist, and animator.

Mike Pearl, "THE DAY IT FINALLY HAPPENS" w/ Brian Merchant

Mon, 28 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

If you live on planet Earth you’re probably scared of the future. How could you not be? Some of the world’s most stable democracies are looking pretty shaky. Technology is invading personal relationships and taking over jobs. Relations among the three superpowers—the US, China, and Russia—are growing more complicated and dangerous. A person watching the news has to wonder: is it safe to go out there or not?

Taking inspiration from his virally popular Vice column “How Scared Should I Be?,” Mike Pearl in The Day It Finally Happens games out many of the “could it really happen?” scenarios we’ve all speculated about, assigning a probability rating, and taking us through how it would unfold. He explores what would likely occur in dozens of possible scenarios—among them the final failure of antibiotics, the loss of the world’s marine life, a complete ban on guns in the US, and even the arrival of aliens—and reports back from the future, providing a clear picture of how the world would look, feel, and even smell in each of these instances.

Pearl is in conversation with Brian Merchant, a journalist, producer, and author, focusing on science & technology.

AJ Dungo, "IN WAVES" w/ Jamie Brisick

Fri, 25 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In this visually arresting graphic novel, surfer and illustrator AJ Dungo remembers his late partner, her battle with cancer, and their shared love of surfing that brought them strength throughout their time together. With his passion for surfing uniting many narratives, he intertwines his own story with those of some of the great heroes of surf in a rare work of nonfiction that is as moving as it is fascinating.

Dungo is in conversation with Jamie Brisick, author of Becoming Westerly.

Leslie Jamison, "MAKE IT SCREAM, MAKE IT BURN" w/ Chris Kraus

Thu, 24 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

With the virtuosic synthesis of memoir, criticism, and journalism for which she has become known, Leslie Jamison offers us fourteen new essays that are by turns ecstatic, searching, staggering, and wise. In its kaleidoscopic sweep, Make It Scream, Make It Burn creates a profound exploration of the oceanic depths of longing and the reverberations of obsession.

Among Jamison’s subjects are 52 Blue, deemed “the loneliest whale in the world”; the eerie past-life memories of children; the devoted citizens of an online world called Second Life; the haunted landscape of the Sri Lankan Civil War; and an entire museum dedicated to the relics of broken relationships. Jamison follows these examinations to more personal reckonings — with elusive men and ruptured romances, with marriage and maternity — in essays about eloping in Las Vegas, becoming a stepmother, and giving birth.

Jamison is in conversation with Chris Kraus, the author of four novels and three books of art and cultural criticism.

Shea Serrano w/ Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion

Wed, 23 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Movies (And Other Things) is a book about, quite frankly, movies (and other things).

One of the chapters, for example, answers which race Kevin Costner was able to white savior the best, because did you know that he white saviors Mexicans in McFarland, USA, and white saviors Native Americans in Dances with Wolves, and white saviors Black people in Black or White, and white saviors the Cleveland Browns in Draft Day?

Another of the chapters, for a second example, answers what other high school movie characters would be in Regina George's circle of friends if we opened up the Mean Girls universe to include other movies (Johnny Lawrence is temporarily in, Claire from The Breakfast Club is in, Ferris Bueller is out, Isis from Bring It On is out...). Another of the chapters, for a third example, creates a special version of the Academy Awards specifically for rom-coms, the most underrated movie genre of all. And another of the chapters, for a final example, is actually a triple chapter that serves as an NBA-style draft of the very best and most memorable moments in gangster movies.

Many, many things happen in Movies (And Other Things), some of which funny, others of which are sad, a few of which are insightful, and all of which are handled with the type of care and dedication to the smallest details and pockets of pop culture that only a book by Shea Serrano can provide.

Serrano is joined in conversation by his Ringer colleagues Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion.

Nick Flynn, "I WILL DESTROY YOU" w/ Kai Carlson-Wee

Tue, 22 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Beginning with a poem called “Confessional” and ending with a poem titled “Saint Augustine,” Nick Flynn interrogates the potential of art to be redemptive, to remake and reform. But first the maker of art must claim responsibility for his past, his actions, his propensity to destroy others and himself. “Begin by descending,” Augustine says, and the poems delve into the deepest, most defeating parts of the self: addiction, temptation, infidelity, and repressed memory. These are poems of profound self-scrutiny and lyric intensity, jagged and probing. I Will Destroy You is an honest accounting of all that love must transcend and what we must risk for its truth.

Flynn is in conversation with Kai Carlson-Wee, author of Rail.

Nefertiti Austin, "MOTHERHOOD SO WHITE"

Mon, 21 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

When Nefertiti Austin, a single African-American woman, decided she wanted to adopt a Black baby boy out of the foster care system, she was unprepared for the fact there is no place for Black women in the “mommy wars.” Austin set off on her path without the ability to seek guidance from others who looked like her or shared her experience. She soon realized that she would not only have to navigate skepticism from
the adoption community, who deal almost exclusively with white women, but surprisingly, from her own family and friends as well.

Motherhood So White is the story of Nefertiti’s fight to create the family she always knew she was meant to have and the story of motherhood that all American families need now. In this unflinching account of her parenting journey, Nefertiti examines the history of adoption in the African-American community, faces off against stereotypes of single, Black motherhood, and confronts the reality of raising children of color in racially charged, modern-day America.

R. Zamora Linmark, "THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WILDE AT HEART"

Fri, 18 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

From accomplished poet and author R. Zamora Linmark comes his debut YA novel, The Importance of Being Wilde At Heart (Delacorte Press / On sale August 13, 2019 / $17.99; Ages 12+), about a seventeen-year-old boy's journey through first love and first heartbreak, guided by his personal hero,
Oscar Wilde.

Words have always been more than enough for Ken Z, but when he meets Ran at the mall food court, everything changes. Beautiful, mysterious Ran opens the door to a number of firsts for Ken: first kiss, first love. But as quickly as he enters Ken's life, Ran disappears, and Ken Z is left wondering: Why love at all, if this is where it leads?

Letting it end there would be tragic. So with the help of his best friends, the comfort of his haikus and lists, and even strange, surreal appearances by his hero, Oscar Wilde, Ken will find that love is worth more than the price of heartbreak.

Fariha Róisín, "HOW TO CURE A GHOST" w/ Fatimah Asghar

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

A poetry compilation recounting a woman’s journey from self-loathing to self-acceptance, confusion to clarity, and bitterness to forgiveness

Following in the footsteps of such category killers as Milk and Honey and Whiskey Words & a Shovel I, Fariha Róisín’s poetry book is a collection of her thoughts as a young, queer, Muslim femme navigating the difficulties of her intersectionality. Simultaneously, this compilation unpacks the contentious relationship that exists between Róisín and her mother, her platonic and romantic heartbreaks, and the cognitive dissonance felt as a result of being so divided among her broad spectrum of identities.

Róisín is in conversation with Fatimah Asghar, creator of the Emmy-nominated Web series Brown Girls.

Jen Wang, "STARGAZING"

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Moon is everything Christine isn't. She’s confident, impulsive, artistic . . . and though they both grew up in the same Chinese-American suburb, Moon is somehow unlike anyone Christine has ever known.

But after Moon moves in next door, these unlikely friends are soon best friends, sharing their favorite music videos and painting their toenails when Christine's strict parents aren't around. Moon even tells Christine her deepest secret: that she has visions, sometimes, of celestial beings who speak to her from the stars. Who reassure her that earth isn't where she really belongs.

Moon's visions have an all-too-earthly root, however, and soon Christine's best friend is in the hospital, fighting for her life. Can Christine be the friend Moon needs, now, when the sky is falling?

Jen Wang draws on her childhood to paint a deeply personal yet wholly relatable friendship story that’s at turns joyful, heart-wrenching, and full of hope.

DRAWING POWER Discussion

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Today we find ourselves at the center of a new kind of sexual revolution, one that is focused on amplifying the voices of survivors of sexual assault who have been systematically dismissed, shamed, stifled, and victim-blamed. Motivated by the wave of women who have come forward to tell their stories in recent years and the public exposure of powerful predators, comics creator Diane Noomin (Twisted Sisters anthology) has curated a collection that gives female cartoonists a platform to speak about their own personal experiences with assault, harassment, and rape culture. The result is a truly revolutionary comics anthology: Drawing Power: Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival.

Edited by Noomin, Drawing Power includes sixty-three new and personal stories told through the powerful medium of comics. Featuring contributions from a wide-ranging group of international female cartoonists of many ages, sexual identities, and races, Drawing Power offers catharsis, social critique, humor, and disarming honesty about what it means to be a survivor. The comics in this anthology are a collective call for understanding, respect, and, most importantly, change.

Attica Locke, "HEAVEN, MY HOME"

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes black.

Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

An unlikely possibility of rescue arrives in the form of a case down Highway 59, in a small lakeside town where the local economy thrives on nostalgia for ante-bellum Texas - and some of the era's racial attitudes still thrive as well. Levi's disappearance has links to Darren's last case, and to a wealthy businesswoman, the boy's grandmother, who seems more concerned about the fate of her business than that of her grandson.

Darren has to battle centuries-old suspicions and prejudices, as well as threats that have been reignited in the current political climate, as he races to find the boy, and to save himself.

Attica Locke proves that the acclaim and awards for Bluebird, Bluebird were justly deserved, in this thrilling new novel about crimes old and new.

USC PhD Writers of Color

Thu, 10 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

How do people of color make literary careers? Find out in a showcase of POC writers in USC’s Ph.D. program in creative writing and literature. Part reading, part panel, the evening will demystify the multiple paths taken by writers of color at different stages of their careers.

Jacqueline Woodson, "RED AT THE BONE" w/ Kara Brown

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody's mother, for her own ceremony-- a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody's parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Jacqueline Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they've paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives--even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.

Woodson is in conversation with Kara Brown, writer, speaker and co-host of Crooked Media's pop culture podcast, Keep It!.

Annalee Newitz, "THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE" w/ Sean Carroll

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In a modern-day United States just a step away from our own, time travel is possible – in fact, it has existed for as long as humanity itself. Jumping into the past is simple, and scientists say that altering the timeline is almost impossible. But Tess, an idealistic geology professor, has figured out how to use time travel to try to undo a horrible injustice in the past whose effects are still being felt in her own time. Meanwhile, in 1992, teenage riot grrl Beth’s ordinary life is about to become a tangle of toxic friendship and murder. And across the timeline, a secret war is brewing as a group of men attempt to destroy time travel. If they succeed, only a small elite will have the power to shape past, present, and future. Tess and Beth are part of this hidden war that stretches back millions of years. But with the help of unlikely allies from times past and times yet to come, they may be able to save each other—and build a different future.

The Future of Another Timeline author Annalee Newitz is in conversation with Sean Carroll, Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Zenobia Neil, "THE QUEEN OF WARRIORS"

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Alexandra of Sparta vowed her sword and her heart to the goddess Artemis. And the goddess blessed her. But no warrior lives at peace, and soon, Alexandra loses her title, her troops, and all she holds dear, including the man who holds her heart.

Cursed by a Babylonian witch, she is forced to return to a city she once conquered to make amends, but is captured by the powerful Persian rebel, Artaxerxes. As his prisoner, she awaits judgment for her crimes. But Artaxerxes is not what he seems. With death approaching, Alexandra must face her violent past and discover the truth of her captor’s identity before it’s too late.

Jess Row, "WHITE FLIGHTS"

Thu, 03 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

At the heart of White Flights, a meditation on whiteness in American fiction and culture, Jess Row ties “white flight”—the movement of white Americans into segregated communities, whether in suburbs or newly gentrified downtowns—to white writers setting their stories in isolated or emotionally insulated landscapes. Row uses brilliant close readings of work from well-known writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace to examine the ways these and other writers have sought imaginative space for themselves at the expense of engaging with race.

Carolina De Robertis, "CANTORAS"

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet Romina, Flaca, Anita "La Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"--somehow, miraculously, find one another and then, together, discover an isolated, nearly uninhabited cape, Cabo Polonio, which they claim as their secret sanctuary. Over the next thirty-five years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. And throughout, again and again, the women will be tested--by their families, lovers, society, and one another--as they fight to live authentic lives.

A genre-defining novel and Carolina De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit

Jennifer Croft, "HOMESICK" w/ Marisa Silver

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Sisters Amy and Zoe grow up in Oklahoma where they are homeschooled for an unexpected reason: Zoe suffers from debilitating and mysterious seizures, spending her childhood in hospitals as she undergoes surgeries. Meanwhile, Amy flourishes intellectually, showing an innate ability to glean a world beyond the troubles in her home life, exploring that world through languages first. Amy’s first love appears in the form of her Russian tutor Sasha, but when she enters university at the age of 15 her life changes drastically and with tragic results.

Jennifer Croft complements her stunning prose with beautiful color photography to tell her coming of age story. Homesick is about learning to love language in its many forms, healing through words and the promises and perils of empathy and sisterhood.

Mina Javaherbin, "MY GRANDMA AND ME"

Mon, 30 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

While Mina is growing up in Iran, the center of her world is her grandmother. Whether visiting friends next door, going to the mosque for midnight prayers during Ramadan, or taking an imaginary trip around the planets, Mina and her grandma are never far apart. At once deeply personal and utterly universal, Mina Javaherbin’s words make up a love letter of the rarest sort: the kind that shares a bit of its warmth with every reader. Soft, colorful, and full of intricate patterns, Lindsey Yankey’s illustrations feel like a personal invitation into the coziest home, and the adoration between Mina and her grandma is evident on every page.

Anthony McCann, "SHADOWLANDS" w/ Brian Evenson, "Song for the Unraveling of the World"

Wed, 25 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In 2016, a group of armed, divinely inspired right-wing protestors led by Ammon Bundy occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the high desert of eastern Oregon. Encamped in the shadowlands of the republic, insisting that the Federal government had no right to own public land, the occupiers were seen by a divided country as either dangerous extremists dressed up as cowboys, or as heroes insisting on restoring the rule of the Constitution. From the Occupation's beginnings, to the trials of the occupiers in federal court in downtown Portland and their tumultuous aftermaths, Shadowlands is the resonant, multifaceted story of one of the most dramatic flashpoints in the year that gave us Donald Trump.

Sharing the expansive stage with the occupiers are a host of others--Native American tribal leaders, public-lands ranchers, militia members, environmentalists, federal defense attorneys, and Black Lives Matter activists--each contending in their different ways with the meaning of the American promise of Liberty. Gathering into its vortex the realities of social media technology, history, religion, race, and the environment--this piercing work by Anthony McCann offers us a combination of beautiful writing and high-stakes analysis of our current cultural and political moment. Shadowlands is a clarifying, exhilarating story of a nation facing an uncertain future and a murky past in a time of great collective reckoning.

McCann is in conversation with Brian Evenson,the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Song for the Unraveling of the World.

Yesika Salgado, "HERMOSA"

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Hermosa is the path to becoming one's own home. A thread pulled when Yesika Salgado thinks about who she is and who she has been. Beyond the survival, grief, and fight, Hermosa lives in the small moments hidden beneath it all. A journey of firsts, of mistakes, of celebrations, of the love, the crush, the disaster, the rebuilding, and the never-ending cycle of growth.

Susan Steinberg, "MACHINE" w/ Sarah Manguso

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Susan Steinberg’s first novel, Machine, is a dazzling and innovative leap forward for a writer whose most recent book, Spectacle, gained her a rapturous following. Machine revolves around a group of teenagers—both locals and wealthy out-of-towners—during a single summer at the shore. After a local girl drowns, the narrator tries to piece together what happened and struggles to find mooring in the aftermath. In formally daring prose, Steinberg captures the violence of desire and its reverberations. The restless rhythm of the novel propels a sharply drawn narrative that ferociously interrogates gender, class, privilege, and the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma. Machine is the kind of novel--relentless and bold--that only Susan Steinberg could have written.

Steinberg is in conversation with Sarah Manguso, the author of seven books including Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay.

Drew Minh, "NEON EMPIRE"

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Imagine a city fueled entirely by social media. Rising out of the American desert, this city is a real-world manifestation of a social media network where fame-hungry desperados compete for likes and followers. The bloodier and more daring posts pay off the most. As crime rises, no one stands to gain more than the city’s architects—and, of course, the shareholders who make the place possible.

This multiple-POV novel follows three characters as they navigate the city’s underworld: Cedric Travers, a has-been Hollywood director; A’rore, the city’s lead social media influencer whose star is fading; and Sacha Villanova, a tech and culture reporter.

Bold, colorful, and seductive, Neon Empire is a radically inventive near-future thriller in the mold of Black Mirror or Altered Carbon.

Elizabeth Cantwell, "ALL THE EMERGENCY-TYPE STRUCTURES"

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Elizabeth Cantwell's poems navigate both cultural anxieties—climate change, American consumerism, technological creep—and personal anxieties—motherhood, apocalyptic thinking, suburban complacency. What does it mean to face a future in which building emergency-type structures may be necessary for our survival, and what materials can we use to insulate those structures?

All the Emergency-Type Structures guides readers through a lyrical and incisive examination of a potential way to navigate scientifically-predicted apocalyptic visions, the destructive beauty of family, and the dense forests of our collective cultural uncertainties as we attempt to create spaces that feel like home amid rising seas, private space expeditions to Mars, births, breakups, terrifying dreams, and mass extinction events.

John James, "THE MILK HOURS" w/ Jos Charles and Jordan Nakamura

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, The Milk Hours is an elegant debut that searches widely to ask what it means to exist in a state of loss.

"We lived overlooking the walls overlooking the cemetery." So begins the title poem of this collection, whose recursive temporality is filled with living, grieving things, punctuated by an unseen world of roots, bodies, and concealed histories. These are poems of frequent swerves and transformations, which never stray far from an engagement with science, geography, art, and aesthetics, nor from the dream logic that motivates their incessant investigations.

Indeed, while John James begins with the biographical--the haunting loss of a father in childhood, the exhausted hours of early fatherhood--the questions that emerge from his poetic synthesis are both timely and universal: what is it to be human in an era where nature and culture have fused? To live in a time of political and environmental upheaval, of both personal and public loss? How do we make meaning, and to whom--or what--do we turn, when such boundaries so radically collapse?

James is in conversation with Jos Charles, author of feeld, and Jordan Nakamura, a poet and MFA candidate at Antioch University LA.

Patrick Coleman, "THE CHURCHGOER" w/ Tod Goldberg

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man—until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs. Now he’s marking time between sunny days surfing and dark nights working security at an industrial complex. His isolation is broken when Cindy, a charming twenty-two-year old drifter he sees hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway, hustles him for a breakfast and a place to crash—two cynical kindred spirits.

Then his co-worker is murdered in a robbery gone wrong and Cindy disappears on the same night. Haines knows he should let it go and return to his safe life of solitude. Instead, he’s driven to find out where Cindy went, under stranger and stranger circumstances. Soon Mark is chasing leads, each one taking him back into a world where his old life came crashing down—into the seedier side of southern California’s drug trade and ultimately into the secrets of an Evangelical megachurch where his past and his future are about to converge. What begins as an investigation becomes a haunting mystery and a psychological journey both for Mark, and for the elusive young stranger he won’t let get away.

Set in the early 2000s, The Churchgoer is a gripping noir, a quiet subversion of the genre, and a powerful meditation on belief, morality, and the nature of evil in contemporary life.

Author Patrick Coleman is in conversation with Ted Goldberg, author of the novel Gangster Nation.

Emma Steinkellner, "THE OKAY WITCH" w/ Barbra Dillon

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Thirteen-year-old Moth Hush loves all things witchy. But she’s about to discover that witches aren’t just the stuff of movies, books, and spooky stories. When some eighth-grade bullies try to ruin her Halloween, something really strange happens. It turns out that Founder’s Bluff, Massachusetts, has a centuries-old history of witch drama. And, surprise: Moth’s family is at the center of it all! When Moth’s new powers show up, things get totally out-of-control. She meets a talking cat, falls into an enchanted diary, and unlocks a hidden witch world. With that revelation, Moth’s adventure truly begins – an adventure that spans centuries, generations, and even worlds – as she unravels the legacy at the heart of her life.

The Okay Witch author Emma Steinkellner is in conversation with Barbra Dillon, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Fanbase Press, an award-winning publishing company that seeks to produce new and distinctive works that give voice to the themes, ideals, and people that make “geekdom” so exceptional.

Kimberly King Parsons, "BLACK LIGHT" w/ Leah Dieterich

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 14:22:43 -0700

With raw, poetic ferocity, Kimberly King Parsons exposes desire’s darkest hollows—those hidden places where most of us are afraid to look. In this debut collection of enormously perceptive and brutally unsentimental short stories, Parsons illuminates the ache of first love, the banality of self-loathing, the scourge of addiction, the myth of marriage, and the magic and inevitable disillusionment of childhood.

Taking us from hot Texas highways to cold family kitchens, from the freedom of pay-by-the-hour motels to the claustrophobia of private school dorms, these stories erupt off the page with a primal howl—sharp-voiced, bitter, and wise. Black Light contains the type of storytelling that resonates somewhere deep, in the well of memory that repudiates nostalgia.

Parsons is in conversation with Leach Dieterich, the author of Vanishing Twins: A Marriage.

Dora Malech, "STET" w/ Michelle Brittan Rosado

Sun, 15 Sep 2019 14:20:37 -0700

In Stet, poet Dora Malech takes constraint as her catalyst and subject, exploring what it means to make or break a vow, to create art out of a life in flux, to reckon with the body’s bounds, and to arrive at a place where one might bear and care for another life. Tapping the inventive possibilities of constrained forms, particularly the revealing limitations of the anagram, Stet is a work of serious play that brings home the connections and intimacies of language.

Malech is in conversation with Michelle Brittan Rosado, author of Why Can't It Be Tenderness.

Brandy Colbert, "THE REVOLUTION OF BIRDIE RANDOLPH" w/

Fri, 13 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Dove "Birdie" Randolph works hard to be the perfect daughter and follow the path her parents have laid out for her: She quit playing her beloved soccer, she keeps her nose buried in textbooks, and she's on track to finish high school at the top of her class. But then Birdie falls hard for Booker, a sweet boy with a troubled past...whom she knows her parents will never approve of.

When her estranged aunt Carlene returns to Chicago and moves into the family's apartment above their hair salon, Birdie notices the tension building at home. Carlene is sweet, friendly, and open-minded--she's also spent decades in and out of treatment facilities for addiction. As Birdie becomes closer to both Booker and Carlene, she yearns to spread her wings. But when long-buried secrets rise to the surface, everything she's known to be true is turned upside down.

The Revolution of Birdie Randolph author Brandy Colbert is in conversation with Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World.

Madeline Stevens, "DEVOTION"

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Ella is flat broke: wasting away on bodega coffee, barely making rent, seducing the occasional strange man who might buy her dinner. Unexpectedly, an Upper East Side couple named Lonnie and James rescue her from her empty bank account, offering her a job as a nanny and ushering her into their moneyed world. Ella’s days are now spent tending to the baby in their elegant brownstone or on extravagant excursions with the family. Both women are just 26—but unlike Ella, Lonnie has a doting husband and son, unmistakable artistic talent, and old family money.

Ella is mesmerized by Lonnie’s girlish affection and disregard for the normal boundaries of friendship and marriage. Convinced there must be a secret behind Lonnie’s seemingly effortless life, Ella begins sifting through her belongings, meticulously cataloging lipstick tubes and baby teeth and scraps of writing. All the while, Ella’s resentment grows, but so does an inexplicable and dizzying attraction. Soon Ella will be immersed so deeply in her cravings—for Lonnie’s lifestyle, her attention, her lovers—that she may never come up for air.

Devotion is inspired by the seven years Madeline Stevens spent working as a New York City nanny. Riveting, propulsive, and startling, this masterful debut novel incinerates our perceptions of femininity, lust, and privilege.

DRAG QUEEN STORYTIME w/ Sadie Pines

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

We hosted the oh-so-fabulous Sadie Pines, the woMAN behind writer/comedian H. Alan Scott. Sadie is the first and only drag queen fully inspired by The Golden Girls (it’s true, don’t bother Googling it). Sadie was born out of H. Alan’s years of interacting with Golden Girls fans through the podcast Out on the Lanai. Now she’s out living her golden life, and guess what? She’s here to make yours a little brighter too. For more, follow her at @SadiePines.

Sadie will read Mary Wears What She Wants, by Keith Negley, and lead the kiddos in some fun activities. The event is free and open to the public. Any donations will go towards the Center for Transyouth Health and Development at Children’s Hospital.

Skylight Books Staff Showcase

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Ever wonder what your favorite booksellers do when we’re not ringing sales and recommending great books?

We play in bands. We write plays, poems, and short stories. We draw and paint and sculpt. We make films, zines and podcasts. We even tell jokes.

Come and see us do the things we do at the SKYLIGHT STAFF SHOWCASE!

Rob Zubrecky, "STRANGE CURES"

Thu, 05 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Strange Cures is a turbulent, against-all-odds memoir of self-discovery, success, failure, and reinvention, told by one of LA’s most interesting natives. With an unflinching gaze, musician/magician/actor Rob Zabrecky recounts his bizarre coming-of-age tale and his quest to find a place in the arts—and the world. The author reveals a young life filled with both physical miracles and subversive role models, including an uncle who impersonated an FBI agent and, in a drunken delusion, shot and nearly killed him. He takes readers on a roller coaster ride through the nascent days of Silver Lake’s music and art community, as seen through the lens of his critically acclaimed band, Possum Dixon. We explore the left-of-center landscape of Jabberjaw, LA’s independent coffeehouse which featured the early talents of Nirvana and Beck; Zabrecky’s own struggles with drug addiction, love, and recovery; and finally, his re-emergence as a magician venturing into the sacred world of Hollywood’s Magic Castle.

Tupelo Hussman, "gods with a little g" w/ Jim Krusoe

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

A vibrant, powerful literary novel, gods with a little g is the story of Helen Dedleder, a teen trapped in politically bright red and extremely religious town, Rosary, California, with a widower father who is a true believer. Helen’s mom lost her battle with cancer when Helen was a child and her dad is mired in his grief, lost to the consolation prize of prayer, or so he seems until he finds love with the mother of the leader of Rosary’s rebels (the Dickheads), who also happens to be Helen’s secret crush. Helen tries to escape her father’s burgeoning romance and her own confusing feelings for the king of the Dickheads by focusing on her work apprenticing her aunt, the county’s lone psychic and spiritual rebel.

When Helen begins her first real friendship with Win and Rainbolene, siblings just arrived in Rosary with an urgent desire to depart—Rain in part because she’ll finally be able to get the hormones she needs to full become herself—she starts to see a future for herself for the first time outside of the tea leaves she tries and fails to read under her aunt’s tutelage, though it may be too late.

Set in a near version of the current political apocalypse, gods with a little g is about how being a teenager is an apocalypse all its own: there must be destruction for there to be hope.

Author Tupelo Hussman is in conversation with Jim Krusoe, who has published six novels and two books of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions.

A Tribute to Toni Morrison

Tue, 03 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

"The writing is — I'm free from pain. It's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing."

Join Skylight Books and friends as we celebrate the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison.

Jia Tolentino, "TRICK MIRROR" w/ Emma Carmichael

Mon, 02 Sep 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die.

Tolentino is joined in conversation with writer and editor Emma Carmichael,

Chavisa Woods, "100 TIMES" w/ Michelle Tea

Fri, 30 Aug 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Lambda-nominated and Shirley Jackson Award-winning author Chavisa Woods presents one hundred personal stories of sexism, harassment, discrimination, and assault. Recounting her experiences with gender-based discrimination, unsolicited groping, and sexual violence--beginning in childhood, through the present--Woods lays out clear and unflinching vignettes that build in intensity as the number of times grows. Individually, and especially taken as a whole, these stories amount to powerful proof that sexual violence and discrimination are never just one-time occurrences, but part of a constant battle women and non-binary people face every day.

In these extraordinary pages, sexual violence and gendered-discrimination happen to people regardless of their age, in all parts of society, in rural and urban areas alike, in the US and abroad, from the time they are very young and through adulthood. Demonstrating how often people are conditioned to endure sexism and harassment, and how thoroughly men feel entitled to women’s spaces and bodies, 100 Times challenges the common, damaging belief that sexism and misogyny are no longer problems within our society.

Woods is in conversation with michelle tea, the author of the young adult novels Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as numerous books for grown-ups.

Susan Straight, "IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN" w/ Patt Morrison

Thu, 29 Aug 2019 05:30:00 -0700

In inland Southern California, near the desert and the Mexican border, Susan Straight, a self-proclaimed book nerd, and Dwayne Sims, an African American basketball player, started dating in high school. After college, they married and drove to Amherst, Massachusetts, where Straight met her teacher and mentor, James Baldwin, who encouraged her to write. Once back in Riverside, at driveway barbecues and fish fries with the large, close-knit Sims family, Straight—and eventually her three daughters—heard for decades the stories of Dwayne’s female ancestors. Some women escaped violence in post-slavery Tennessee, some escaped murder in Jim Crow Mississippi, and some fled abusive men. Straight’s mother-in-law, Alberta Sims, is the descendant at the heart of this memoir. Susan’s family, too, reflects the hardship and resilience of women pushing onward—from Switzerland, Canada, and the Colorado Rockies to California.

A Pakistani word, biraderi, is one Straight uses to define a complex system of kinship and clan—those who become your family. An entire community helped raise her daughters. Of her three girls, now grown and working in museums and the entertainment industry, Straight writes, “The daughters of our ancestors carry in their blood at least three continents. We are not about borders. We are about love and survival.” In the Country of Women is a valuable social history and a personal narrative that reads like a love song to America and indomitable women.

Straight is in conversation with Patt Morrison, a Los Angeles Times writer and columnist with a share of two Pulitzer Prizes.

Alan Sepinwall, "THE SOPRANOS SESSIONS" w/ Justin Halpern

Wed, 28 Aug 2019 05:30:00 -0700

On January 10, 1999, a mobster walked into a psychiatrist’s office and changed TV history. By shattering preconceptions about the kinds of stories the medium should tell, The Sopranos launched our current age of prestige television, paving the way for such giants as Mad Men, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. As TV critics for Tony Soprano’s hometown paper, New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger, Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz were among the first to write about the series before it became a cultural phenomenon.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show’s debut, Sepinwall and Seitz have reunited to produce The Sopranos Sessions, a collection of recaps, conversations, and critical essays covering every episode. Featuring a series of new long-form interviews with series creator David Chase, as well as selections from the authors’ archival writing on the series, The Sopranos Sessions explores the show’s artistry, themes, and legacy, examining its portrayal of Italian Americans, its graphic depictions of violence, and its deep connections to other cinematic and television classics.

Sepinwall is joined in conversation by Justin Halpern, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Sh*t My Dad Says, inspired by his massively popular Twitter feed.

Simon Hanselmann, "BAD GATEWAY"

Tue, 27 Aug 2019 05:30:00 -0700

Perpetually drunk and high, lovable degenerates Megg and Mogg have drifted through a life full of raucous antics and free of consequences. But their heavy drug use, once a gateway to adventure, has begun to take a grim psychological toll. As her unstable lifestyle finally catches up to her, Megg must turn to her past to uncover the roots of her self-destructive habits that have led her down this dark path.

Simon Hanselmann was born in 1981 in Launceston, Tasmania. His New York Times best-selling Megg & Mogg series has been translated into thirteen languages, nominated for multiple Ignatz and Eisner awards, and won “Best Series” at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2018. He currently lives in Seattle, WA, with his wife and a rotating cast of small animals.

J. Ryan Stradal, "THE LAGER QUEEN OF MINNESOTA"

Mon, 26 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

Edith Magnusson's rhubarb pies are famous in the Twin Cities--they were named the third-best in the state of Minnesota and St. Anthony-Waterside Nursing Home has quickly becomes the hottest dinner ticket in town. Still, she lays awake wondering how her life might have been different if her father hadn't left their family farm to her sister Helen, a decision that split their family in two. With the proceeds from the farm, her sister, Helen Blotz, built her husband Orval's family soda business into the top selling brewery in Minnesota. She singlehandedly created the light beer revolution and made their corporate motto ubiquitous: "Drink lots, it's Blotz." But Helen dismisses IPAs as a fad, and the Blotz fortune begins its inevitable decline. Soon, though, she finds a potential savior that's surprisingly close to home. . .

Diana Winter earns a shot at learning the beer business from the ground up just as the IPA revolution begins. The stakes couldn't be higher: just as she's launching her own brewpub, she's due to deliver a baby girl. When the unthinkable happens, it's up to Grandma Edith--and a delightfully surprising cadre of grandmother friends--to secure the next generation's chances for a better future. Can Grandma Edith's Rhubarb Pie In A Bottle Ale save Diana's fledgling brewery, and change their hearts and fortunes forever?

The Lager Queen of Minnesota serves up a cast of lovable, quintessentially Midwestern characters eager to make their mark in a world that's often stacked against them. In this deeply affecting, humorous, emotional family saga, resolution can take generations, but when it finally comes, we're surprised, moved, and delighted.

Ed Brubaker, "BAD WEEKEND" w/ Paul Scheer and Nicholas Winding Refn

Fri, 16 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

Comics won't just break your heart. Comics will just kill you.

Hal Crane should know, he's been around since practically the beginning. Stuck at an out-of-town convention, waiting to receive a lifetime achievement award, Hal's weekend takes us on a dark ride through the secret history of a medium that's always been haunted by crooks, swindlers, and desperate dreamers. BAD WEEKEND-the story some are already calling the comic of the year from its serialization in CRIMINAL #2 and #3-has been expanded, with several new scenes added and remastered into a hardcover graphic novel, in the same format as ED BRUBAKER and PHILLIPS' ( KILL OR BE KILLED, FATALE, CRIMINAL) bestselling MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN JUNKIES. This gorgeous package is a must-have, an evergreen graphic novel every true comics fan will want to own.

Brubaker is in conversation with actor/comedian Paul Scheer and film director Nicholas Winding Refn.

Ruchika Tomar, "A PRAYER FOR TRAVELERS" w/ Xuan Juliana Wang

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

In her debut novel, A Prayer for Travelers, Ruchika Tomar melds artful prose with a haunting narrative creating an arresting and electric portrait of the dangers of girlhood in the American desert west and how small towns try–– and often fail–– to protect their own. Already hailed by Lit Hub as “an indelible portrait of love, grief, and trauma” and one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2019, A Prayer for Travelers illuminates the heat and fury of girlhood and one’s own memory.

The Nevada landscape––a sun-steamed, desert West that you can practically feel blistering off the page––serves as a harsh yet glittery, gritty yet stunning backdrop for this coming-of-age saga. Cale is our guide: a young bookish loner with a voice as markedly determined as it is vulnerable. Set adrift for the first time in her life, Cale begins waitressing at the local diner, where she reconnects with Penelope Reyes, a charismatic former classmate and all-around hustler. Penny exposes Cale to the reality that exists beyond their small town and the girls become inseparable until one terrifying act of violence shatters their world. When Penny vanishes without a trace, Cale sets off on a dangerous quest across the desert to find her friend.

Told in short, deftly interwoven chapters, the novel eases the story into a disorienting, devastating unraveling and seamlessly blends together a portrait of a memory under siege and a girl, unflinchingly, reclaiming herself. On the structure of the novel Tomar says, “I began thinking about the way I or my friends tell stories—elliptically, episodically. When you’re telling a story out loud it’s very hard to remember every detail in order. In particular, if you’ve ever had to tell a story of trauma, or hold one for one of your friends, you know just how ragged and disjointed that experience is. The nature of trauma and grief is fracturing.”

Tomar is in conversation with Xuan Juliana Wang, author of the debut short story collection, Home Remedies.

Sarah Rose Etter, "THE BOOK OF X" w/ Tommy Pico

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 16:07:00 -0700

THE BOOK OF X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday--school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents--with the surreal--rivers of thighs, men for slae, and fields of throats--Cassie's realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

Author Sarah Rose Etter is in conversation with Tommy Pico, author of the books IRL (Birds LLC), Nature Poem (Tin House Books), and Junk (Tin House Books).

INTERSECTIONALLIES

Tue, 13 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

In poetic stanzas, IntersectionAllies introduces the stories of nine kids from diverse backgrounds. Authors Carolyn Choi, LaToya Council, and Chelsea Johnson use each character’s story to explain how children’s safety concerns are shaped by their intersecting identities, such as class, sexuality, dis/ability, race, religion, and citizenship—what is known in academic and activist circles as “intersectionality."

IntersectionAllies features introductions by law professor Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, and Dr. Ange-Marie Hancock Alfaro, author of Intersectionality: An Intellectual History, and artwork by illustrator Ashley Seil Smith. The stories in IntersectionAllies also suggest ways in which friends can support one another, or be an “ally,” despite different positions in life. The authors believe that forward-looking feminism must start with children, and IntersectionAllies shows that children’s literaturecan be the gateway to educating entire households.

Clark Allen, "MY MOVIE IDEAS"

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

A handful of years ago Clark Allen had an idea for a movie. Shortly after the first idea he had a second idea. The second was followed by a third, and then fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and so on. Having little interest in the silver screen himself, he never bothered to write any scripts or take any steps toward the actual filmmaking process. He did, however, continue to add to his catalog thinking that perhaps one day a hopeful screenwriter or director in need may cross his path, that he might pass along a few of his concepts, and then maybe in time he'd be able to trot down to the local cinematheque and check one out. His new book, My Movie Ideas, collects six hundred and ninety-one top notch, copyright free, suggestions prime for development at any time.

Kristen Arnett, "MOSTLY DEAD THINGS" w/ Tommy Pico

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife— the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.

Kristen Arnett’s debut novel is a darkly funny, heart- wrenching, and eccentric look at loss and art and love.

Arnett is in conversation with Tommy Pico, author of the books IRL (Birds LLC), Nature Poem (Tin House Books), and Junk (Tin House Books).

Max Felker-Kantor, "POLICING LOS ANGELES" w/ David Stein

Thu, 08 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.

Felker-Kantor is in conversation with David Stein, a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at University of California, Los Angeles.

Mickey Rapkin, "IT'S NOT A BED, IT'S A TIME MACHINE" w/ Sara Rue

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

In this clever picture book, a young boy anxious for bedtime discovers his bed is a time machine!

Bedtime means lights out, with dark corners and spooky sounds. But it also means...

Adventure! Because it's not a bed, it's a time machine. Our hero rides it to the coolest time of all--the age of the dinosaurs. He makes a tyrannosaurus-sized friend, who helps him become the Boss of Bedtime.

While tonight's sleep will span millions of years, it'll feel like it's over in the blink of an eye.

Author Mickey Rapkin reads aloud with Sara Rue, an actor, writer and producer known for A Series of Unfortunate Events, Rules of Engagement, and Less Than Perfect.

Made in L.A., Vol. 2: Chasing the Elusive Dream

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

The Made in L.A. indie author co-op presents contributors to the latest installment of their annual fiction anthology series, Made in L.A. Vol. 2: Chasing the Elusive Dream. Join a publication party with local authors who have a passion for writing about their home.

While the first volume was rooted in Los Angeles, this second volume focuses on goals, dreams, and the distant horizon. It explores the fantasies people carry with them to L.A., as well as the dreams Angelenos dream while surrounded by this vast and evolving city.

This anthology series showcases a diverse range of voices and genres. Like the City of Angels where these stories were born, nothing is off-limits. Literary or contemporary, fantasy or science fiction, each story in this volume invites you to view this urban landscape through a different lens. The evening will include discussions about what we find inspiring about Los Angeles, how our stories came about, and a behind-the-scenes peek at indie publishing and the DIY production of hyper-local literary culture.

Lisa Taddeo, "THREE WOMEN" w/ Clarissa Cruz

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 08:30:00 -0700

Lina, a homemaker in suburban Indiana, is a decade into a passionless marriage when she embarks on an affair that quickly becomes all-consuming and transforms her life. Sloane, a glamorous entrepreneur in the northeast, is married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other men and women. Maggie, a high school student in North Dakota, begins a relationship with her English teacher that will have extraordinary consequences for them both—as well as the community in which they live.

For nearly a decade, Lisa Taddeo, an award-winning journalist and longtime contributor to New York magazine and Esquire, embedded herself with Three Women to write this deeply immersive account of their erotic lives and longings. The result—shocking, powerful, and timely—reads like George Packer’s The Unwinding, but for the state of female desire. Three Women is a major work from an exhilarating new voice.

Taddeo is in conversation with Clarissa Cruz, Features Editor at Entertainment Weekly.

Janet Fitch, "CHIMES OF A LOST CATHEDRAL"

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 03:30:00 -0700

The story of The Revolution of Marina M. continues in bestselling author Janet Fitch's sweeping epic about a young woman's coming into her own against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution.

After the events of The Revolution of Marina M., the young Marina Makarova finds herself on her own amid the devastation of the Russian Civil War---pregnant and adrift in the Russian countryside, forced onto her own resourcefulness to find a place to wait out the birth of her child. She finds new strength and self-reliance to fortify her in her sojourn, and to prepare her for the hardships and dilemmas still to come.

When she finally returns to Petrograd, the city almost unrecognizable after two years of revolution, the haunted, half-emptied, starving Capital of Once Had Been, she finds the streets teeming with homeless children, victims of war. Now fully a woman, she takes on the challenge of caring for these civil war orphans, until they become the tool of tragedy from an unexpected direction.

But despite the ordeal of war and revolution, betrayal and privation and unimaginable loss, Marina at last emerges as the poet she was always meant to be.

Chimes of a Lost Cathedral finishes the epic story of Marina's journey through some of the most dramatic events of the last century---as a woman and an artist, entering her full power, passion, and creativity just as her revolution reveals its true direction for the future.

Words Uncaged Reading

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 03:30:00 -0700

"When I first visited California State Prison, Lancaster what I saw there were not prisoners, but cages filled of hundreds of lights —lights of knowledge, wisdom, compassion, love, insight and remorse.
It was as if hundreds of candles had been locked in a distant closet, or that the stars had been hidden behind the blanket of the desert night, denying us the light that they had to shine upon the world." --Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy

Words Uncaged is a creative platform, created by the men of A-Yard California State Prison, Lancaster, and CalState LA professor Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy. Its purpose is for incarcerated artists, writers, students and poets to dialogue and critically engage with you. We invite you to experience our voices--uncaged from the prison walls. We invite you to rethink who incarcerated men are. We invite you to explore our common humanity together. We invite you to imagine alternatives to our current system of mass incarceration in the United States.

David Marlett, "AMERICAN RED"

Wed, 31 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

The men and women of American Red are among the most fascinating in American history. When, at the dawn of the 20th century, the Idaho governor is assassinated, blame falls on “Big Bill” Haywood, the all-powerful, one-eyed boss of the Western Federation of Miners in Denver. Close by, his polio-crippled wife, Neva, struggles with her wavering faith, her love for another man, and her sister’s affair with her husband. New technologies accelerate American life, but justice lags behind. Private detectives, battling socialists and unions on behalf of wealthy capitalists, will do whatever it takes to see Haywood hanged. The scene is set for bloodshed, from Denver to Boise to San Francisco. America’s most famous attorney, Clarence Darrow, leads the defense—a philandering U.S. senator leads the prosecution—while the press, gunhands, and spies pour in. Among them are two idealists, Jack Garrett and Carla Capone—he a spy for the prosecution, she for the defense. Risking all, they discover truths about their employers, about themselves and each other, and what they’ll sacrifice for justice and honor—and for love.

David Marlett is an award-winning storyteller and writer of historical fiction, primarily historical legal thrillers bringing alive the fascinating people and events leading to major historical trials.

Evening of Poetry with Red Hen Press

Tue, 30 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join Red Hen Press for an evening of poetry readings, featuring Eloise Klein Healy, Ron Koertge, Kim Dower, and Francesca Bell.

Claudia D. Hernández, "KNITTING THE FOG" w/ Josie Méndez-Negrete

Mon, 29 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Weaving together narrative essay and bilingual poetry, Knitting the Fog is the complex self-portrait of a young Chapina girl who wakes up to find her mother gone. When her mother returns three years later, they begin a month-long journey to El Norte.

Once settled in California, Claudia has trouble assimilating--she doesn't speak English, and her Spanish is "weird"--but when back in Guatemala, she is startled to find she no longer belongs there either. Claudia Hernández alternates between lyrical prose and poetry, English and Spanish, to tell the human story of one girl—her struggles, her triumphs, and her growing sense of self—as she navigates a turbulent world in the eighties and nineties. It is a story told in unforgettable vignettes, and is a vivid portrait of immigration, both specific to its time and as timely as ever.

Hernández is joined in conversation by Josie Méndez-Negrete, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

SWITCHBLADE MAGAZINE: Live Reading

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join the writers of Switchblade Magazine, a quarterly noir fiction digest-sized magazine now going into its 10th issue, for a selection of readings. Readers include A.B. Patterson, Ashley Erwin, Andrew Miller, Jon Zalazny, Rex Weiner, Renee Asher Pickup, Lisa Douglass, Richard Risemberg, and Scotch Rutherford.

Darrel McLeod, "MAMASKATCH"

Tue, 09 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

As a small boy in remote Alberta, Darrel J. McLeod is immersed in his Cree family’s history, passed down in the stories of his mother, Bertha. There he is surrounded by her tales of joy and horror—of the strong men in their family, of her love for Darrel, and of the cruelty she and her sisters endured in residential school—as well as his many siblings and cousins, and the smells of moose stew and wild peppermint tea. And there young Darrel learns to be fiercely proud of his heritage and to listen to the birds that will guide him throughout his life.

But after a series of tragic losses, Bertha turns wild and unstable, and their home life becomes chaotic. Sweet and eager to please, Darrel struggles to maintain his grades and pursue interests in music and science while changing homes, witnessing domestic violence, caring for his younger siblings, and suffering abuse at the hands of his brother-in-law. Meanwhile, he begins to question and grapple with his sexual identity—a reckoning complicated by the repercussions of his abuse and his sibling’s own gender transition.

Thrillingly written in a series of fractured vignettes, and unflinchingly honest, Mamaskatch—“It’s a wonder!” in Cree—is a heartbreaking account of how traumas are passed down from one generation to the next, and an uplifting story of one individual who overcame enormous obstacles in pursuit of a fulfilling and adventurous life.

PEN America: Emerging Voices Meet & Greet

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

PEN America presents the 2019 Emerging Voices Fellows, alumni, and mentors in conversation on the 2020 application cycle at Skylight Books.

The evening will include summer cocktails, short readings, a fellowship overview, and audience Q&A. Featuring Judy Choi, Anthony Hoang, Fajer Alexander Khansa, T.K. Lê, Dare Williams, and Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "AS LONG AS THE GRASS GROWS"

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

In As Long As Grass Grows, author and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker argues that colonization was not just an invasion of and domination over Indigenous populations by European settlers, but that a central harm of colonization was the environmental injustices it imposed. Gilio-Whitaker traces this systemic dispossession of sacred land from Indigenous peoples from early colonization through today, arguing that it represents the greatest form of environmental injustice for Indigenous populations in the United States.

Gilio-Whitaker traces how the new Red Power movement of the '70s and '80s, and other women-led movements for Indigenous environmental justice spurred cooperation between environmentalists, tribes, and the government. In 1991, the People of Color Environmental Justice Theory Leadership Summit produced the Principles of Environmental Justice with seventeen points that represented a greater level of inclusion for Indigenous concerns than the preceding studies had, framing environmental justice in terms of colonial histories and oppressive political domination.

Mona Awad, "BUNNY" w/ Anna Joy Springer

Wed, 03 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other “Bunny,” and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled “Smut Salon,” and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus “Workshop” where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is the dazzlingly original second book from an author whose work has been described as “honest, searing and necessary” (Elle).

Author Mona Awad is in conversation with cross-genre writer Anna Joy Springer.

Ariana Reines, "A SAND BOOK"

Tue, 02 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Deadpan, epic, and searingly charismatic, A Sand Book is at once relatable and out-of-this-world. In poems tracking climate change, bystanderism, state murder, sexual trauma, shopping, ghosting, love, and the transcendent shock of prophecy, A Sand Book chronicles new dimensions of consciousness for our strange and desperate times. What does the destruction of our soil have to do with the weather in the human soul? From sand in the gizzards of birds to the iridescence on the surface of spilt oil, from sand storms on Mars to our internet-addicted present, from the desertifying mountains of Haiti to Sandy Hook to Hurricane Sandy to Sandra Bland, A Sand Book is both a travelogue and a book of mourning. In her long-anticipated follow-up to Mercury, Ariana Reines has written her most ambitious, visceral, and satisfying work to date.

Ocean Vuong, "ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS" w/ Jade Chang

Mon, 01 Jul 2019 03:30:00 -0700

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

Vuong is in conversation with Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World.

James Ellroy, "THIS STORM"

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

It is January, 1942. Torrential rainstorms hit L.A. A body is unearthed in Griffith Park. The cops rate it a routine dead-man job. They're grievously wrong. It's a summons to misalliance and all the spoils of a brand-new war.

Elmer Jackson is a corrupt Vice cop. He's a flesh peddler and a bagman for the L.A. Chief of Police. Hideo Ashida is a crime-lab whiz, caught up in the maelstrom of the Japanese internment. Dudley Smith is an LAPD hardnose working Army Intelligence. He's gone rogue and gone all-the-way Fascist. Joan Conville was born rogue. She's a defrocked Navy lieutenant and a war profiteer to her core. They've signed on for the dead-man job. They've got a hot date with History. They will fight their inner wars within The War with unstoppable fury.

Alex Espinoza, "CRUISING" w/ David Francis

Wed, 26 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Combining historical research and oral history with his own personal experience, Alex Espinoza examines the political and cultural forces behind this radical pastime. From Greek antiquity to the notorious Molly houses of 18th century England, the raucous 1970s to the algorithms of Grindr, Oscar Wilde to George Michael, Cruising remains at once a reclamation of public space and the creation of its own unique locale—one in which men of all races and classes interact, even in the shadow of repressive governments. In Uganda and Russia, we meet activists for whom cruising can be a matter of life and death; while in the West he shows how cruising circumvents the inequalities and abuses of power that plague heterosexual encounters. Ultimately, Espinoza illustrates how cruising functions as a powerful rebuke to patriarchy and capitalism—unless you are cruising the department store restroom, of course.

Espinoza is in conversation with David Francis, author of The Great Inland Sea.

Sarah Gailey, "MAGIC FOR LIARS" w/ Mallory O'Meara

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Mix the sly, coming-of-age elements of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians with the noir and edge of Jessica Jones, shake well, and serve over ice to get Magic for Liars, the debut novel from Hugo Award nominee and debut author Sarah Gailey.

Magic for Liars channels the flushed, youthful intensity of Megan Abbott’s You Will Know Me with a school for mages, hidden in the hills of southern California, as its backdrop. Ivy Gamble, a disagreeable and non-magical private investigator with a slight drinking problem, works to solve a murder at a school for mages where her estranged (and very magically talented) sister teaches. The dark and fantastic secrets she uncovers not only shed a stark light on her case, but on her own family history and the life she could have had.

Gailey is in conversation with Mallory O'Meara, bestselling author of The Lady from the Black Lagoon, among with being a screenwriter and film producer.

Ted Chiang, "EXHALATION"

Mon, 24 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others—the basis for the Academy Award –nominated film Arrival—comes a groundbreaking new collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories. These are tales that tackle some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only Ted Chiang could imagine. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom,” the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.

Erik Davis, "HIGH WEIRDNESS"

Fri, 21 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality—but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?

In High Weirdness, Erik Davis—America’s leading scholar of high strangeness—examines the published and unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America’s West Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for a renewed engagement with reality.

Kathryn Scanlan, "AUG 9--FOG" w/ Amina Cain

Thu, 20 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. The diary was falling apart―water-stained and illegible in places―but magnetic to Scanlan nonetheless.

After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9―Fog (she chose the title from a note that was tucked into the diary). “Sure grand out,” the diarist writes. “That puzzle a humdinger,” she says, followed by, “A letter from Lloyd saying John died the 16th.” An entire state of mourning reveals itself in “2 canned hams.” The result of Scanlan’s collaging is an utterly compelling, deeply moving meditation on life and death.

In Aug 9―Fog, Scanlan’s spare, minimalist approach has a maximal emotional effect, remaining with the reader long after the book ends. It is an unclassifiable work from a visionary young writer and artist—a singular portrait of a life revealed by revision and restraint.

Scanlan is in conversation with Amina Cain, the author most recently of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy.

Maria Hummel, "STILL LIVES" w/ Rebecca Morse

Wed, 19 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is comprised of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women—the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others—and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women. As the city’s richest art patrons pour into the Rocque Museum’s opening night, all the staff, including editor Maggie Richter, hope the event will be enough to save the historic institution’s flailing finances.

Except Kim Lord never shows up to her own gala. Fear mounts as the hours and days drag on and Lord remains missing. Suspicion falls on the up-and-coming gallerist Greg Shaw Ferguson, who happens to be Maggie’s ex. A rogue’s gallery of eccentric art world figures could also have motive for the act, and as Maggie gets drawn into her own investigation of Lord’s disappearance, she’ll come to suspect all of those closest to her.

Set against a culture that often fetishizes violence, Still Lives is a page-turning exodus into the art world’s hall of mirrors, and one woman’s journey into the belly of an industry flooded with money and secrets.

Hummel is in conversation with Rebecca Morse, curator in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Jen Pastiloff, "ON BEING HUMAN" w/ Lidia Yuknavitch

Tue, 18 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Jennifer Pastiloff shares the transformative experiences and challenges that have shaped her into the resilient, passionate woman she is today, including losing her father at an early age, battling an eating disorder and depression, reluctantly accepting her hearing loss, discovering the healing power of yoga, writing, and human connection, and learning to believe in herself and her ability to help others. She explores how thirteen years of waitressing taught her to seek out unexpected beauty, how hearing loss taught her to listen fiercely, how being vulnerable allowed her to find love, and how imperfections can lead to a life full of wild happiness.

Through her journey, Pastiloff conveys a powerful experience that most of us are missing in our lives: being heard and being told “I got you,” a sentiment that now lies at the core of her work. Her bold yet relatable ideas have won her a loyal social media following and thousands of devotees who often travel across the globe to attend her workshops and retreats.Exuberant, beautifully written, and extraordinarily brave, On Being Human is a celebration of happiness and self-realization over darkness and doubt.

Jacqueline Suskin, "THE EDGE OF THE CONTINENT"

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

The Edge of The Continent: The City is about California. Specifically, this volume is about Southern California, the heavily populated part of the state, the sprawling metropolis, and the thirsty land that supports so many people. Jacqueline Suskin moved to Los Angeles in 2013 and still calls the city home.

This book explores her transition into city life after leaving the majesty of Northern California forests and the fulfillment of communal off-the-grid living. In this collection, we move through the struggle of finding beauty, purpose, and joy in urbanity, and in doing so discover the infinite inspiration that exists in a place as unique as Los Angeles.

Mason Funk, "THE BOOK OF PRIDE"

Fri, 14 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

The Book of Pride pays tribute to dozens of extraordinary and influential leaders who sparked the worldwide LGBTQ-rights movement. These courageous civil rights pioneers—nurses in Texas and chemists in Philadelphia; Muslims and Catholics; the loud and fearless marching in streets and the quiet and determined persevering in the face of persecution—are captured in richly detailed interviews accompanied by beautiful photographs. Mason Funk shines a spotlight on these individuals on the front lines of the fight for equality and acceptance and their stunning achievements in the 1960s and beyond.

Josh Levin, "THE QUEEN" w/ Julia Turner

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Slate editor Josh Levin's masterful account of the life and crimes of America's original "welfare queen" is "an invaluable work of nonfiction" (David Grann, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon).

On the South Side of Chicago in 1974, Linda Taylor reported a phony burglary, concocting a lie about stolen furs and jewelry. The detective who checked it out soon discovered she was a welfare cheat who drove a Cadillac to collect ill-gotten government checks. And that was just the beginning: Taylor, it turned out, was also a kidnapper, and possibly a murderer. A desperately ill teacher, a combat-traumatized Marine, an elderly woman hungry for companionship-after Taylor came into their lives, all three ended up dead under suspicious circumstances. But nobody-not the journalists who touted her story, not the police, and not presidential candidate Ronald Reagan-seemed to care about anything but her welfare thievery.

Growing up in the Jim Crow South, Taylor was made an outcast because of the color of her skin. As she rose to infamy, the press and politicians manipulated her image to demonize poor black women. Part social history, part true-crime investigation, Josh Levin's mesmerizing book, the product of six years of reporting and research, is a fascinating account of American racism, and an expose of the "welfare queen" myth, one that fueled political debates that reverberate to this day. The Queen tells, for the first time, the fascinating story of what was done to Linda Taylor, what she did to others, and what was done in her name.

Levin is in conversation with Julia Turner, the deputy managing editor for arts and entertainment at the Los Angeles Times.

Malaka Gharib, "I WAS THEIR AMERICAN DREAM" w/ Michael Nailat

Wed, 12 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

One part Mari Andrew, one part Marjane Satrapi, I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir is a triumphant tale of self-discovery, a celebration of a family's rich heritage, and a love letter to American immigrant freedom. Malaka Gharib's illustrations come alive with teenage antics and earnest questions about identity and culture, while providing thoughtful insight into the lives of modern immigrants and the generation of millennial children they raised.

Malaka's upbringing will look familiar to anyone who grew up in the pre-internet era, but her particular story is a heartfelt tribute to the American immigrants who have invested their future in the promise of the American dream. The daughter of parents with unfulfilled dream s themselves, Malaka navigates her childhood chasing her parents' ideals, learning to code-switch between her family's Filipino and Egyptian customs, adapting to white culture to fit in, crushing on skater boys, and trying to understand the tension between holding onto cultural values and trying to be an all-American kid.

Gharib is in conversation with Michael Nairat, aka Producer Mike, aka DJ waxstyles, who has zero formal training in DJing or producing, but is somehow still allowed to do both.

Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos, "ORIGINAL PLUMBING"

Tue, 11 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

When Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos first launched Original Plumbing in 2009, they created a magazine the world desperately needed: a creative and celebratory biannual publication about trans men, by trans men. For ten years, OP was an inspired response to the lack of meaningful representation of trans lives and culture. Each issue was filled with gorgeous, moving, hilarious, and sexy narratives that pushed back against marginalizing stereotypes. Taken together, these stories met mainstream media’s violence with self-love, dismissal with determination, and repression with resistance.

Collecting the best of the magazine’s entire twenty-issue run, Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture is a remarkable full-color archive that includes interviews with trailblazers like Janet Mock and Silas Howard; cutting-edge artwork and photography; meditations on love, relationships, and family; political essays and personal reflections; and much, much more.

Pat Thomas and Michael Heath, "MY WEEK BEATS YOUR YEAR"

Mon, 10 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters with Lou Reed features 30+ interviews spanning his solo career, from the golden era of print rock-journalism, to the first online blogs. The compilation is one fan’s humble attempt to move beyond the Bangs canon, and delve deeper into the distance and intimacy, cactus and mercury, that constituted Lou’s post-Velvet Underground public media image.

This anthology will be an intimate portrait of Reed who, in addition to being notoriously prickly (to put it mildly), was also intelligent, articulate, and deeply passionate about what was important to him, both as a person and as a creative artist.

Sarah Pinsker, "SOONER OR LATER EVERYTHING FALLS INTO THE SEA" w/ Rebecca Roanhorse

Fri, 07 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is one of the most anticipated SF&F collections of recent years. Sarah Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with stories multiply nominated for awards as well as Sturgeon and Nebula award wins.

The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses. They feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy.

Pinsker is in conversation with Rebecca Roanhorse, a Nebula and Hugo Award-winning speculative fiction writer and the recipient of the 2018 Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Xuan Juliana Wang, "HOME REMEDIES" w/ Justin Torres

Thu, 06 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

With evocative writing and impressive range, Xuan Juliana Wang captures the heartbeat of this generation, the Chinese millennial, in Home Remedies. Creative, ambitious, messy and often reckless, Wang’s unforgettable characters are on a quest for every kind of freedom—artistic, familial, individual, sexual, psychological. A pair of synchronized divers at the Beijing Olympics have trained together, living and moving as one body, for half their lives, only to discover themselves through divergence. A Chinese-American student in Paris unwittingly becomes the fashion world’s next “it” girl. An immigrant father attempts to understand his fully American daughter through the logic of algorithms. A group of artists drift through Beijing in search of something—meaning, their next muse, the next thrill.

These are stories of lives on the cusp of change: people who are testing the limits of who they are, who they wish they were, and who they will one day be; in a world that is as vast and changing as their ambitions. Above all, these are sharp stories about the brand new face of Chinese youth, around the world, from an exceptionally talented literary writer.

Wang is in conversation with Justin Torres, author of We the Animals.

Julie Orringer, "THE FLIGHT PORTFOLIO", w/ Sarah Manguso

Wed, 05 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

In 1940, Varian Fry--a Harvard educated American journalist--traveled to Marseille carrying three thousand dollars and a list of imperiled artists and writers he hoped to rescue within a few weeks. Instead, he ended up staying in France for thirteen months, working under the veil of a legitimate relief organization to procure false documents, amass emergency funds, and set up an underground railroad that led over the Pyrenees, into Spain, and finally to Lisbon, where the refugees embarked for safer ports. Among his many clients were Hannah Arendt, Franz Werfel, André Breton, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Marc Chagall.

The Flight Portfolio opens at the Chagalls' ancient stone house in Gordes, France, as the novel's hero desperately tries to persuade them of the barbarism and tragedy descending on Europe. Masterfully crafted, exquisitely written, impossible to put down, this is historical fiction of the very first order, and resounding confirmation of Julie Orringer's gifts as a novelist.

Orringer is in conversation with Sarah Manguso, the author, most recently, of 300 Arguments (2017), a work of aphoristic autobiography.

Sean Carswell, "DEAD EXTRA" w/ Steph Cha

Tue, 04 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

The early forties have been a tough time for Jack Chesley. His plane was shot down over Germany and he spent two years in a brutal POW camp. During that time, his wife fell in the tub and died.

Prior to her death, the early forties were even tougher for Jack’s wife, Wilma. After Jack was mistakenly presumed dead, she went on a bender that ended with her wrongful commitment to the Camarillo State Psychiatric Hospital. While there, she took up with an alcoholic socialite, a junkie pianist, and a shady hospital employee who promised her a way out. Only that way out set her on the path to the end of her road.

Now Jack’s back in Los Angeles. His sister-in-law and Wilma’s twin, Gertie, hunts him down to tell him Wilma’s death was no accident: she was murdered. Gertie’s first efforts to find the truth earned her a bullet to the collarbone. But that doesn’t mean Gertie is ready to give up. She knows the right places to look and the right people to ask. She needs Jack, who was a cop for a short time before the war, to stick his nose into these places and ask these questions so that, together, they can figure out who killed Wilma, and why.

Dead Extra follows the parallel storylines of Wilma in the months before her murder in 1944 and Jack and Gertie’s search for the killer in 1946. Their adventures carry them through Hollywood’s second-tier studios, the Camarillo psychiatric hospital, Pasadena mansions, downtown jazz clubs, and one seriously sleazy motor court in Oxnard.

Author Sean Carswell is in conversation with Steph Cha, author of Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and Dead Soon Enough.

Chia-Chia Lin, "THE UNPASSING" w/ Jamel Brinkley

Mon, 03 Jun 2019 03:30:00 -0700

A searing debut novel that explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through an immigrant family in Alaska

In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman, while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When ten-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.

Routine takes over for the grieving family: the siblings care for each other as they befriend a neighboring family and explore the woods; distance grows between the parents as they deal with their loss separately. But things spiral when the father, increasingly guilt ridden after Ruby’s death, is sued for not properly installing a septic tank, which results in grave harm to a little boy. In the ensuing chaos, what really happened to Ruby finally emerges.

With flowing prose that evokes the terrifying beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, Lin explores the fallout after the loss of a child and the way in which a family is forced to grieve in a place that doesn’t yet feel like home. Emotionally raw and subtly suspenseful, The Unpassing is a deeply felt family saga that dismisses the American dream for a harsher, but ultimately more profound, reality.

Lin is in conversation with Jamel Brinkley, author of A Lucky Man: Stories.

Judith Teitelman, "GUESTHOUSE FOR GANESHA"

Fri, 31 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

In 1923, seventeen-year-old “Esther Grünspan arrives in Köln with a hardened heart as her sole luggage.” Thus, she begins a twenty-two-year journey, woven against the backdrops of the European Holocaust and the Hindu Kali Yuga (the “Age of Darkness” when human civilization degenerates spiritually), in search of a place of sanctuary. Throughout her travails, using cunning and shrewdness, Esther relies on her masterful tailoring skills to help mask her Jewish heritage, navigate war-torn Europe, and emigrate to India.

Esther’s traveling companion and the novel’s narrator is Ganesha, the elephant-headed Hindu God worshiped by millions for his abilities to destroy obstacles, bestow wishes, and avenge evils. Impressed by Esther’s fortitude and relentless determination, born of her deep―though unconscious―understanding of the meaning and purpose of love, Ganesha, with compassion, insight, and poetry, chooses to highlight her story because he recognizes it is all of our stories―for truth resides at the essence of its telling.

Weaving Eastern beliefs and perspectives with Western realities and pragmatism, Guesthouse for Ganesha is a tale of love, loss, and spirit reclaimed.

Julie Buxbaum, "HOPE AND OTHER PUNCHLINES" w/ Kayla Cagan

Thu, 30 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: in the picture, Abbi (aka "Baby Hope") wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing.

Now, fifteen years later, Abbi is desperate for anonymity and decides to spend the summer before her seventeenth birthday incognito as a counselor at Knights Day Camp two towns away. She's psyched for eight weeks in the company of four-year-olds, none of whom have ever heard of Baby Hope.

Too bad Noah Stern, whose own world was irrevocably shattered on that terrible day, has a similar summer plan. Noah believes his meeting Baby Hope is fate. Abbi is sure it's a disaster. Soon, though, the two team up to ask difficult questions about the history behind the Baby Hope photo. But is either of them ready to hear the answers?

Hope and Other Punchlines author Julie Buxbaum is in conversation with novelist and playright Kayla Cagan.

Antonio Gonzalez, "ARCHITECTS WHO BUILT SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA"

Wed, 29 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

In the early 1900s, the population of Southern California exploded, and the cities grew at such a rapid pace that builders could hardly keep up. Among those who settled in the area were ten architects looking to make their marks on the world. Claud Beelman, a man who never received a college degree, would go on to design the Elks Lodge in Los Angeles. Albert C. Martin, architect of Grauman's Million Dollar Theater, founded a company that is still going strong more than one hundred years later, and Julia Morgan, the first woman architect licensed in California, was hired by William Randolph Hearst to design the Examiner Building. Join author Antonio Gonzalez as he tells the stories of the Architects Who Built Southern California.

Exposition Review Vol IV: "WONDER" Launch Party & Reading

Tue, 28 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join the Exposition Review editors as we celebrate our latest issue, Vol. IV: "Wonder" with our Launch Party & Reading!

Readers include Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick, Mia Nakaji Monnier, Tim McAdams, Charles Duffie, and mentee alumni from Writegirl!

Seth, "CLYDE FANS" w/ Scott Timberg

Mon, 27 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join acclaimed cartoonist Seth for a discussion and book signing to launch Clyde Fans, his highly-anticipated masterpiece. Clyde Fans follows Abe and Simon Matchcard, two brothers whose lives are defined by their doomed family business, selling oscillating fans in a world switching to air conditioning. Seth’s incisive storytelling and gorgeous urban landscapes are showcased in this epic yet intimate time capsule of the mid-century capitalist dream.

Seth is in conversation with Scott Timberg, a Los Angeles-based arts and culture journalist who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The New York Times and The Guardian.

Jaime Hernandez, "IS THIS HOW YOU SEE ME?" w/ Nina Gregory

Fri, 17 May 2019 04:30:00 -0700

In Love and Rockets, Jaime Hernandez has followed the lives of his queer, Chicano cast of characters for over 30 years of romance, heartbreak, and the self-awareness that comes with age. Is This How You See Me? hones in on Jaime’s two most beloved characters, Maggie and Hopey, flashing backward and forward in time to reveal how the passage of time has molded these young LA punks into complex, middle-aged women. An intimate look at how people change and drift apart, yet remain deeply affected by their formative years, this graphic novel brings Hernandez’s L&R series full circle.

Hernandez is in conversation with Nina Gregory, senior editor for NPR's Arts Desk.

Grace Talusan, "THE BODY PAPERS" w/ Noel Alumit

Thu, 16 May 2019 04:30:00 -0700

Born in the Philippines, young Grace Talusan moves with her family to a New England suburb in the 1970s. At school, she confronts racism as one of the few kids with a brown face. At home, the confusion is worse: her grandfather's nightly visits to her room leave her hurt and terrified, and she learns to build a protective wall of silence that maps onto the larger silence practiced by her Catholic Filipino family. Talusan learns as a teenager that her family's legal status in the country has always hung by a thread--for a time, they were "illegal." Family, she's told, must be put first.

The abuse and trauma Talusan suffers as a child affects all her relationships, her mental health, and her relationship with her own body. Later, she learns that her family history is threaded with violence and abuse. And she discovers another devastating family thread: cancer. In her thirties, Talusan must decide whether to undergo preventive surgeries to remove her breasts and ovaries. Despite all this, she finds love, and success as a teacher. On a fellowship, Talusan and her husband return to the Philippines, where she revisits her family's ancestral home and tries to reclaim a lost piece of herself.

Not every family legacy is destructive. From her parents, Talusan has learned to tell stories in order to continue. The generosity of spirit and literary acuity of this debut memoir are a testament to her determination and resilience. In excavating such abuse and trauma, and supplementing her story with government documents, medical records, and family photos, Talusan gives voice to unspeakable experience, and shines a light of hope into the darkness.

Talusan is in conversation with Noel Alumit, author of novels Letters to Montgomery Clift and Talking to the Moon.

Sehba Sarwar, "BLACK WINGS"

Wed, 15 May 2019 04:30:00 -0700

Spanning two continents, Sehba Sarwar's Black Wings is the story of Laila and Yasmeen, a mother and daughter, struggling to meet across the generations, cultures, and secrets that separate them. Their shared grief, as well as the common bond of unhappiness in their marriages, allows them to reconnect after seventeen years of frustration, anger and misunderstandings.

Laila Lalami, "THE OTHER AMERICANS" w/ Charles Finch

Tue, 14 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami comes The Other Americans, a timely and powerful new novel about the suspicious death of a Moroccan immigrant--at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story, informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture.

Late one spring night, as Driss Guerraoui is walking across a darkened intersection in California, he's killed by a speeding car. The repercussions of his death bring together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui's daughter Nora, a jazz composer who returns to the small town in the Mojave she thought she'd left for good; his widow, Maryam, who still pines after her life in the old country; Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward; Jeremy, an old friend of Nora's and an Iraqi War veteran; Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son's secrets; Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family; and the murdered man himself.

As the characters--deeply divided by race, religion, and class--tell their stories, connections among them emerge, even as Driss's family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love--messy and unpredictable--is born.

Lalami is in conversation with Charles Finch, bestselling author of the Charles Lenox mysteries.

Nathaniel Rich, "LOSING EARTH" w/ Jane Smiley

Mon, 13 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change--including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story, and ours.

Nathaniel Rich reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil fuel industry's coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The book carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves. Like John Hersey's Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, Losing Earth is the rarest of achievements: a riveting work of dramatic history that articulates a moral framework for understanding how we got here, and how we must go forward.

Rich is in conversation with Jane Smiley, author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, Golden Age, the concluding volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy.

Sally Rooney, "NORMAL PEOPLE" w/ Karolina Waclawiak

Thu, 02 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Sally Rooney’s award-winning and critically lauded debut novel, Conversations with Friends, introduced her as a fiercely intelligent new voice in literary fiction and set the book world buzzing. Praised by the likes of Zadie Smith, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Celeste Ng, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award–winning author has been hailed as “the first great millennial novelist for her stories of love and late capitalism.” Now, Rooney brings her remarkable psychological acuity and sharp, exacting prose to her highly anticipated second novel, Normal People.

Marianne and Connell grow up in the same small town in Ireland, but they live in different worlds. Connell is the school’s top football player, a star student, popular and admired. Marianne is a stubborn outcast, uninterested in winning the affection of her peers. Unbeknown to their classmates, Marianne’s family employs Connell’s mother as a cleaner. Despite the gulf separating their social and economic lives, the teenagers share an undeniable connection, and the two embark on a relationship that will test the limits of what they know about each other—and themselves. When Connell and Marianne are both accepted to study at Trinity College, their dynamic is turned upside down. Marianne thrives in the rarefied social life she finds on campus, while Connell hovers on the periphery, fumbling to find his footing. As they confront the power and danger of intimacy throughout their years in college, they are forced to find out how far they will go to save each other.

Rooney is in conversation with Karolina Waclawiak, author of How to Get Into the Twin Palms and THE INVADERS.

Kenji C. Liu and Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

Wed, 01 May 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Using an invented poetry method called frankenpo (frankenstein poetry), Kenji C. Liu takes existing texts and remixes them, creating multi-faceted poems that investigate the relationship between toxic masculinity and forms of violence plaguing our modern society. In Monsters I Have Been, Liu also explores the male-male erotic and marginalized masculinities that are urgently needed as a counterweight to today’s dominant hypermasculinity. By challenging perceived gender norms with his playful, yet poignant, new form, the reader is directed toward a wider, more inclusive definition ofwhat it means to be a "man."

Winner of the 2018 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, The Inheritance of Haunting, by Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes, is a collection of poems contending with historical memory and its losses and gains carried within the body, wrought through colonization and its generations of violence, war, and survival.

The driving forces behind Rhodes’s work include a decolonizing ethos; a queer sensibility that extends beyond sexual and gender identities to include a politics of deviance; errantry; ramshackled bodies; and forms of loving and living that persist in their wild difference. Invoking individual and collective ghosts inherited across diverse geographies, this collection queers the space between past, present, and future. In these poems, haunting is a kind of memory weaving that can bestow a freedom from the attenuations of the so-called American dream, which, according to Rhodes, is a nightmare of assimilation, conquest, and genocide. How love unfolds is also a Big Bang emergence into life—a way to, again and again, cut the future open, open up the opening, undertake it, begin.

These poems are written for immigrants, queer and transgender people of color, women, Latin Americans, diasporic communities, and the many impacted by war.

Johanna Fateman and Amy Scholder, "LAST DAYS AT HOT SLIT"

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Radical feminist author Andrea Dworkin was a caricature of misandrist extremism in the popular imagination and a polarizing figure within the women's movement, infamous for her antipornography stance and her role in the feminist sex wars of the 1980s. She still looms large in feminist demands for sexual freedom, evoked as a censorial demagogue, more than a decade after her death. Among the very first writers to use her own experiences of rape and battery in a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy, Dworkin was a philosopher outside and against the academy who wrote with a singular, apocalyptic urgency.

Last Days at Hot Slit brings together selections from Dworkin's work, both fiction and nonfiction, with the aim of putting the contentious positions she's best known for in dialogue with her literary oeuvre. The collection charts her path from the militant primer Woman Hating (1974), to the formally complex polemics of Pornography (1979) and Intercourse (1987) and the raw experimentalism of her final novel Mercy (1990). It also includes "Goodbye to All This" (1983), a scathing chapter from an unpublished manuscript that calls out her feminist adversaries, and "My Suicide" (1999), a despairing long-form essay found on her hard drive after her death in 2005.

Michael DeForge, "LEAVING RICHARD'S VALLEY"

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

When a group of outcasts have to leave the valley, how will they survive the toxicity of the big city?

Richard is a benevolent but tough leader. He oversees everything that happens in the valley, and everyone loves him for it. When Lyle the Raccoon becomes sick, his friends—Omar the Spider, Neville the Dog, and Ellie Squirrel—take matters into their own hands, breaking Richard’s strict rules. Caroline Frog rats them out to Richard and they are immediately exiled from the only world they’ve ever known.

Michael DeForge’s Leaving Richard’s Valley expands from a bizarre hero’s quest into something more. As this ragtag group makes their way out of the valley, and then out of the park and into the big city, we see them coming to terms with different kinds of community: noise-rockers, gentrification protesters, squatters, and more. DeForge is idiosyncratically funny but also deeply insightful about community, cults of personality, and the condo-ization of cities. These eye-catching and sometimes absurd comics coalesce into a book that questions who our cities are for and how we make community in a capitalist society.

Poetry Month Celebration

Fri, 26 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join us for an evening of poetry with readings from Hannah Dow, Mike Sonksen, F. Douglas Brown, and the poets from Poets at Work.

Six Years of Unnamed Press w/ Mukherjee, Nemett, & Decker

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Join us for a celebration of Los Angeles's own Unnamed Press featuring their two most recent releases: The Body Myth by Rheea Mukherjee and We Can Save Us All by Adam Nemett.

Mukherjee and Nemett are in conversation with actress and director Josephine Decker.

T. Kira Madden, "LONG LIVE THE TRIBE OF FATHERLESS GIRLS" w/ Allie Rowbottom

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden’s raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.

As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.

With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai’i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It’s a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.

Madden is in conversation with Allie Rowbottom, author of Jell-O Girls.

Lydia Fitzpatrick, "LIGHTS ALL NIGHT LONG" w/ Aja Gabel

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Fifteen-year-old Ilya arrives in Louisiana from his native Russia for what should be the adventure of his life: a year in America as an exchange student. The abundance of his new world--the Super Walmarts and heated pools and enormous televisions--is as hard to fathom as the relentless cheerfulness of his host parents. And Sadie, their beautiful and enigmatic daughter, has miraculously taken an interest in him.

But all is not right in Ilya's world: he's consumed by the fate of his older brother Vladimir, the magnetic rebel to Ilya's dutiful wunderkind, back in their tiny Russian hometown. The two have always been close, spending their days dreaming of escaping to America. But when Ilya was tapped for the exchange, Vladimir disappeared into their town's seedy, drug-plagued underworld. Just before Ilya left, the murders of three young women rocked the town's usual calm, and Vladimir found himself in prison.

With the help of Sadie, who has secrets of her own, Ilya embarks on a mission to prove Vladimir's innocence. Piecing together the timeline of the murders and Vladimir's descent into addiction, Ilya discovers the radical lengths to which Vladimir has gone to protect him--a truth he could only have learned by leaving him behind.

A rich tale of belonging and the pull of homes both native and adopted, Lydia Fitzpatrick's Lights All Night Long is a spellbinding story of the fierce bond between brothers determined to find a way back to each other.

Fitzpatrick is in conversation with Aja Gabel, author of The Ensemble.

G. Willow Wilson, "THE BIRD KING"

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 15:42:00 -0700

It’s 1491 and a party representing the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrives to negotiate the terms of the sultan’s surrender, but Hassan has a secret—he can make maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality with his pen and paper. His magical gift, which has proven useful to the sultan’s armies in wartime and entertained a bored Fatima who has never stepped foot outside the palace walls, could now be seen as sorcery and a threat to the Christian Spanish rule. Fatima befriends one of the women, little realizing that her new friend Luz represents the Inquisition and soon Fatima must risk everything to save Hassan, and taste the freedom she has never known.

As Fatima and Hassan flee the forces of the Inquistion in search of safe harbor, they are helped along the way by a jinn who has taken a liking to them—Vikram the Vampire, who readers may remember from Alif the Unseen.

The Bird King is an epic adventure from an essential voice in American fiction. It is a jubilant story that challenges us to consider what true love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.

William E. Jones, "I'M OPEN TO ANYTHING"

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 03:30:00 -0700

A perverse and explicit new take on the coming of age novel, William E. Jones’s I’m Open to Anything explores bohemian Southern California of the late 1980s and early 90s, before gentrification ruined everything. The book’s narrator flees a crumbling industrial wasteland in the Midwest and finds himself in sunny Los Angeles without a car, working in a neighborhood video store and spending many hours watching films. He explores his adopted city and befriends a number of men, most of them immigrants, who teach him the finer points of sex. He acquires the skill of fisting, giving his partners intense pleasure, and at the same time hearing the stories of their lives. They too have fled their hometowns: one to escape torture at the hands of a Salvadoran death squad; another to study anthropology after years of wandering and religious questioning.

Alternating between explicit scenes of kinky sex and intimate conversations about matters of life and death, I’m Open to Anything is a porno novel of rare ambition and humor.

Samira Ahmed, "INTERNMENT" w/ Brandy Colbert

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 04:30:00 -0700

Set in a horrifying “fifteen minutes in the future” United States, spitfire main character Layla Amin is forced into an internment camp for Muslim citizens with her family. With the help of newly-made friends also trapped within the internment camp, and her boyfriend on the outside, Layla manages to start a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against Islamophobia and complicit silence against the internment camp's Director and his guards. Samira Ahmed can recall incidents of Islamophobia in her own life as early as age eight. But rather than be deterred, she let it fuel her writing and she is a vocal proponent for changes that need to be made in our society to fight against bigotry. With recent marches and protests led by teen activists, Internment also has the potential to resonate strongly with teen leaders who fight to make the change they want to see in their own communities.

Ahmed is in conversation with Pointe author Brandy Colbert.

Aatif Rashid, "Portrait of Sebastian Khan"

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 04:30:00 -0700

For art-loving (and lady-loving) Sebastian Khan, does college really have to end?

Sebastian Khan is 380 days away from the end of college. An art history major with a fondness for the Pre-Raphaelites and a dislike of long-term commitments (romantic and otherwise), Sebastian starts dating Fatima, who’s determined to transition smoothly from campus life to a stable white-collar professional career. Sebastian’s membership in Model United Nations, though, takes him to colleges across North America, foisting upon him all manner of temptations and testing his commitment to Fatima and his readiness for adulthood.

Part satire of college life circa 2011 and part serious exploration of art’s fundamental unreality, Portrait of Sebastian Khan is a humorous coming-of-age novel about a charismatic but emotionally stunted Muslim American Don Draper, who wins as many hearts as he breaks.

Christopher Cantwell, "SHE COULD FLY" w/ Nick Dazé

Thu, 28 Mar 2019 04:30:00 -0700

No one knows who she was, how she flew, or why.

An unknown woman flying at fantastic speeds and spectacular heights suddenly explodes mid-air. Luna Brewster, a disturbed 15-year-old girl becomes obsessed with learning everything about her while rumors and conspiracy theories roil. But will cracking the secrets of the Flying Woman’s inner life lead to the liberation from her own troubled mind—or will it take her to the point of no return?

Author Christopher Cantwell discusses his graphic novel She Could Fly with author, technologist, and entrepreneur Nick Dazé.

Mark Doten, "TRUMP SKY ALPHA" w/ Nathan Deuel

Wed, 27 Mar 2019 04:30:00 -0700

Twice a week, the president pilots his ultraluxury airship Trump Sky Alpha between DC, NYC, and Mar-a-Lago, delivering a streaming YouTube address to the nation. In this speech he trumpets his successes and blasts his enemies, until one day his words plunge the world into nuclear war. One year later, with 90 percent of the world’s population destroyed, a journalist named Rachel has taken refuge in the Twin Cities Metro Containment Zone. Rachel accepts an assignment to document the final throes of humor on the internet in those moments before the war, hoping along the way to discover the final resting place of her wife and daughter.

What she uncovers in an archive of the internet’s remnants, hidden amid spiraling memes and Twitter jokes, are references to a little-known book that inspired a shadowy hacktivist group called the Aviary. Their role in the downfall of the internet, and the enigmatic presence of a figure known only as Birdcrash, take on immense and terrifying dimensions as Rachel ventures further into the ruins of the internet. Mark Doten, author of The Infernal, brilliantly details how the internet has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, laying the groundwork for the tumult of our current political moment and for the future headed our way.

Doten is in conversation with Nathan Deuel, author of Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East.

Don Winslow, "The Border"

Tue, 26 Mar 2019 04:30:00 -0700

In Don Winslow’s explosive new novel, The Border, the highly anticipated conclusion to the epic Cartel trilogy (The Power of the Dog, 2005; The Cartel, 2015), the war has come home.

For over forty years, Art Keller has been on the front lines of America’s longest conflict: The War on Drugs. His obsession to defeat the world’s most powerful, wealthy, and lethal kingpin―the godfather of the Sinaloa Cartel, Adán Barrera―has left him bloody and scarred, cost him the people he loves, even taken a piece of his soul.

Now Keller is elevated to the highest ranks of the DEA, only to find that in destroying one monster he has created thirty more that are wreaking even more chaos and suffering in his beloved Mexico. But not just there.

Barrera’s final legacy is the heroin epidemic scourging America. Throwing himself into the gap to stem the deadly flow, Keller finds himself surrounded by enemies―men who want to kill him, politicians who want to destroy him, and worse, the unimaginable―an incoming administration that’s in bed with the very drug traffickers that Keller is trying to bring down. Art Keller is at war with not only the cartels, but with his own government. And the long fight has taught him more than he ever imagined. Now, he learns the final lesson―there are no borders.

Ali Liebegott, "THE SUMMER OF DEAD THINGS"

Mon, 25 Mar 2019 04:30:00 -0700

how does a person dislodge the scenes
that burn inside them like arsoned cars?

Ali Liebegott is reeling from a fresh, painful divorce. She wallows in grief and overassigns meaning to everyday circumstance, clinging to an aging Dalmatian and obsessing over dead birds. Going through the motions of teaching and walking her dog, she eventually decides to hit the road: Ali and Rorschach at the Center of the World.

This autobiographical novel-in-verse, The Summer of Dead Things, is a chronicle of mourning and survival, documenting depression and picking apart failed intimacy. But Ali Liebegott’s poetry is laced with compassion, for herself and the reader and the world, as she learns to balance the sting of death with the tender strangeness of life.

Liebegott is joined in conversation by Michelle Tea, the author of the young adult novels Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as numerous books for grown-ups.

Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen, "CIRCLE"

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 03:30:00 -0700

This book is about Circle. This book is also about Circle’s friends, Triangle and Square. Also it is about a rule that Circle makes, and how she has to rescue Triangle when he breaks that rule. With their usual pitch-perfect pacing and subtle, sharp wit, Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen come full circle in the third and final chapter of their clever shape trilogy.

Geoff Dyer, "BROADSWORD CALLING DANNY BOY"

Thu, 14 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0700

Geoff Dyer has loved Where Eagles Dare since childhood. It is both a thrillingly realized Alpine World War II adventure with tough, compelling acting from its two great stars, Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and a flippant travesty, reducing the central disaster in Europe’s modern history to a series of huge explosions and peopled by campy SS officers.

As he did in Zona–which took on Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker–in Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, Dyer gives us a scene-by-scene reaction to and reading of the film. And perhaps as only he can, the author both extols and denigrates–lovingly and entertainingly no matter which way he falls–this acme of the late ’60s action movie.

Dyer is in discussion with Joanathan Lethem, author of eleven novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Girl in Landscape.

Chris Cander, "THE WEIGHT OF A PIANO"

Wed, 13 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0700

In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband's frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle.

In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, which is complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, shortly before he and her mother died in a fire that burned their house down: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Orphaned, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who in his car-repair shop trained her to become a first-rate mechanic, much to the surprise of her subsequent customers. But this work, her true mainstay in a scattered life, is put on hold when her hand gets broken while the piano's being moved--and in sudden frustration she chooses to sell it. And what becomes crucial is who the most interested party turns out to be...

Hillary Frank, "WEIRD PARENTING WINS" w/ Jane Marie

Tue, 12 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0700

The best parenting advice that Hillary Frank receives doesn’t come from parenting gurus, but from friends and podcast listeners who use their creativity to flee moments of desperation. In Hillary’s book, one mother threatens to sing in public anytime her daughters argue. Another mom allows her daughter to play with tampons to get a few minutes on the toilet alone.

These are just a few of the gems available in Weird Parenting Wins: Bathtub Dining, Family Screams, and Other Hacks from the Parenting Trenches, a collection of unusual techniques parents use in stressful situations to calm their children and themselves. These “weird parenting wins” work for parents with children of all ages. From using The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song to lull a colicky infant to convincing her kids that Toys ‘R’ Us is a membership only club, parents in Hillary’s book are as ingenious as they are eccentric. They use their tricks to foster fun, inspire their kids to diversify their appetites, stop sibling rivalry, cultivate independence, develop manners, and open up. Not only does Hillary focus on kids’ needs, she also intersperses anecdotes to help moms and dads keep their cool, find time for intimacy, and enjoy the insane, heartwarming journey.

Frank is in conversation with Jane Marie, a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning journalist and former producer of This American Life.

UC Irvine MFA Student Reading 2019

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 03:30:00 -0700

Please join us for an evening with UC Irvine MFA students Mason Boyles, Justine Yan, Katherine Damm, and Daniel Levin as they read from their work.

Elizabeth McCracken, "BOWLAWAY" w/ Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident.

When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

McCracken is joined in conversation by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest.

Marlon James, "BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF"

Thu, 07 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.

Charlie Jane Anders, "THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT"

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

From Hugo and Nebula-Award winning author of the critically-acclaimed All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, comes an all-new work of thought-provoking and entertaining speculative fiction set on a distant planet, divided into permanent day and night. The City in the Middle of the Night will satisfy Anders’ many fans as well as expand her audience as she crafts a wondrous new world in a hauntingly strange future.

January is a dying planet—divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk.

But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.

Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.

But fate has other plans—and Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world.

Chloe Aridjis, "SEA MONSTERS" w/ Merritt Tierce

Tue, 05 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

One autumn afternoon in Mexico City, seventeen-year-old Luisa does not return home from school. Instead, she boards a bus to the Pacific coast with Tomás, a boy she barely knows. He seems to represent everything her life is lacking--recklessness, impulse, independence.

Tomás may also help Luisa fulfill an unusual obsession: she wants to track down a traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs. According to newspaper reports, the dwarfs recently escaped a Soviet circus touring Mexico. The imagined fates of these performers fill Luisa's surreal dreams as she settles in a beach community in Oaxaca. Surrounded by hippies, nudists, beachcombers, and eccentric storytellers, Luisa searches for someone, anyone, who will "promise, no matter what, to remain a mystery." It is a quest more easily envisioned than accomplished. As she wanders the shoreline and visits the local bar, Luisa begins to disappear dangerously into the lives of strangers on Zipolite, the "Beach of the Dead."

Meanwhile, her father has set out to find his missing daughter. A mesmeric portrait of transgression and disenchantment unfolds. Chloe Aridjis's Sea Monsters is a brilliantly playful and supple novel about the moments and mysteries that shape us.

Aridjis is joined by Merritt Tierce, author of Love Me Back and writer for Netflix's Orange is the New Black.

Sophia Shalmiyev, "MOTHER WINTER" w/ Sara Benincasa

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

From Laurels Award Fellowship recipient Sophia Shalmiyev comes the exquisite Mother Winter, a haunting and deeply personal story of fleeing the Soviet Union, where Shalmiyev was forced to abandon her mother, and her subsequent years of searching for surrogate mothers—whether in books, art, lovers, or other lost souls.

Mother Winter is the story of Sophia’s emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a motherless woman now raising children of her own. Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev grew up in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad. When her father packed up for a new life in America, he took Sophia with him but left behind her estranged and alcoholic mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her.

The book depicts in urgent vignettes Sophia’s subsequent years of travel, searching, and forging meaningful connections. She describes her tumultuous childhood in the USSR; her experiences as a refugee; the life she built for herself in the Pacific Northwest; and her cathartic journey back to Russia as an adult to search for the mother she never knew.

Shalmiyev is in conversation with Sara Benincasa, a stand-up comedian, actress, and the author of Real Artists Have Day Jobs.

Sally Wen Mao, "OCULUS" w/ Muriel Leung

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Sally Wen Mao’s Oculus explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement, but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. The title poem follows a girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence speaks in the voice of international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.

Mao is in conversation with Muriel Leung, author of Bone Confetti.

Rachelle Cruz, "EXPERIENCING COMICS" w/ Nilah Magruder and Yumi Sakugawa

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing, and Creating Comics shows students how to critically examine the craft and storytelling elements found inside a graphic novel or comic and spotlights groundbreaking work by comics creators and scholars from underrepresented and diverse backgrounds.

This accessible, introductory guide to comics discusses how a comic is made and introduces students to the unique form and structure of comics, demonstrating how panels, splash pages, and word balloons are used to tell a story. It encourages students to apply literary theory and social politics to the world of comics to encourage discussions of comics within a larger cultural context. Rachelle Cruz introduces students to significant movements and moments in comics history in the United States. Users are provided with comic-making activities so they can practice the craft and storytelling elements discussed throughout the book. Students will gain first-hand insight from comics professionals and practitioners through interviews with creators, artists, writers, anthology editors, scholars, and comics enthusiasts.

Cruz is in conversation with comic artsits Nilah Magruder and Yumi Sakugawa.

Jacob Kramer & K-Fai Steele, "NOODLEPHANT"

Wed, 27 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Famous for her pasta parties, Noodlephant is shocked when the law-loving kangaroos decide noodles are only for them!

Noodlephant won’t let this stand—Noodlephants can’t survive on sticks and branches, after all. Determined to do something to push back against an unjust law, she and her friends invent a machine that transforms pens into penne, pillows into ravioli, and radiators into radiatori. With that, the pasta parties are back! But that very night, the kangaroos come bounding through the door… ready to enforce their unjust laws.

A zany tale full of pasta puns, friendship, and one Phantastic Noodler, Noodlephant, written by Jacob Kramer and illustrated by K-Fai Steele, explores a community’s response to injustice.

Nikki Darling, "FADE INTO YOU"

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

In this debut work of autofiction, high school junior Nikki Darling roams the uncanny suburban sprawl of the San Gabriel Valley. Nikki is ambivalent about her grades and even about showing up for class, instead flitting between a series of irresponsible and nominally illegal adolescent experiences. Left to her own devices by absent parents, she flings herself into punk music and counterculture, hoping to evade the intergenerational silence passed down through the women in her family. Fade Into You is a poignant reminder of how it feels to be a young girl both trapped and set free by looming future expectations, and a tribute to the discomfort and joy of growing up in the in-between—between Mexican and white, earnest and unruly, street smart and vulnerable.

Johannes Lichtman, "SUCH GOOD WORK"

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

The year is 2015. Jonas might be an excellent teacher if he weren’t addicted to drugs. Instead, at age twenty-eight, he’s been fired from yet another creative writing position after assigning homework like, visit a stranger’s funeral and write about it. Jonas needs to do something drastic and, as a dual American-Swedish citizen, he knows Sweden is an easy place to be a graduate student—and a difficult place to be a drug addict.

He goes to Malmö, a city trying to cope with the arrival of tens of thousands of Middle Eastern refugees. Driven by an existential need to “do good,” Jonas volunteers with an organization that teaches Swedish to the desperate and idling young refugees. But a friendship with one young refugee, Aziz, will force Jonas to question whether “doing good” can actually help another person.

A resplendent work of autofiction, Johannes Lichtman's Such Good Work uses dark humor and pathos to consider the complexity of being a good person in our modern world, as well as the effects of nationalism and identity politics in a time when conversations around migrant policies are vital and omnipresent.

Brontez Purnell, "THE NIGHTLIFE OF JACUZZI GASKET" w/ Beth Pickens

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Whiting Award-winning author Brontez Purnell’s first children’s book tells the story of a child charged with caring for his baby brother when his mom is out at night.

In The Nightlife of Jacuzzi Gaskett, 11-year-old Jacuzzi is an introspective and imaginative child who loves taking care of his 11-month-old baby brother. When their mom goes out for a date with her boyfriend, he watches his sibling and entertains himself. Readers are taken inside Jacuzzi Gaskett’s precocious mind, where he thinks about the classmates who don’t get him, all the books that have taken him to faraway places, and “sometimes misses his dad.”

Purnell is in conversation with Beth Pickens, an artist, writer, and mother living in Brooklyn.

Michelle Tea,

Thu, 21 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

When Sophie Swankowski surfaces from the freezing waters in Michelle Tea's Castle on the River Vistula, she finds herself in an ancient castle in Poland—and in the center of an ages-old battle. Even with her magic powers, the strength and wisdom she learns from her companions in Warsaw, and the help of her gruff mermaid guardian, Syrena, how can one thirteen-year-old from scrappy Chelsea Massachusetts, really save the world?

Luckily, Sophie won’t be alone. As she connects to other girls around the globe who have been training, just like her, for this very fight, she begins to think she just may become the hero she’s meant to be. But when she has to face the pure source of evil alone, using all the strength she has to keep it from destroying everything, how easy it would be to simply give up and join the other side...

Tea is in discussion with actor, writer, and comic Brendan Scannell.

Emily Jungmin Yoon, "A CRUELTY SPECIAL TO OUR SPECIES" w/ Muriel Leung & Morgan Parker

Wed, 20 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

In Emily Jungmin Yoon's arresting and urgently relevant debut collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species, she confronts the histories of sexual violence against women, focusing in particular on so-called “comfort women,” the majority of whom were Korean and who were forced into sexual labor to serve the Japanese Imperial Army in the Pacific theater of World War II.

In wrenching language, A Cruelty Special to Our Species unforgettably describes the brutalities of war and the fear and sorrow of those whose lives and bodies were swept up by a colonizing power, bringing powerful voice to an oppressed group of people whose histories have often been erased and overlooked. “What is a body in a stolen country?” Yoon asks. “What is right in war?”

In an author's note, Yoon explains that her poetry “does not exist to answer, but rather to continue asking, questions about my immigrant, ESL, Korean, and womanly experiences, or the violent history of twentieth-century Korea.” In taking on poetry about the comfort women,” she writes that "I'd like my poetry to serve to amplify and speak these women's stories, not speak for them.”

Yoon is joined in conversation by Muriel Leung and Morgan Parker.

Sam Lipsyte, "HARK"

Tue, 19 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

In an America convulsed by political upheaval, cultural discord, environmental collapse, and spiritual confusion, many folks are searching for peace, salvation, and—perhaps most immediately—just a little damn focus. Enter Hark Morner, an unwitting guru whose technique of “Mental Archery”—a combination of mindfulness, mythology, fake history, yoga, and, well, archery—is set to captivate the masses and raise him to near-messiah status. It’s a role he never asked for, and one he is woefully underprepared to take on. But his inner-circle of modern pilgrims have other plans, as do some suddenly powerful fringe players, including a renegade Ivy League ethicist, a gentle Swedish kidnapper, a crossbow-hunting veteran of jungle drug wars, a social media tycoon with an empire on the skids, and a mysteriously influential (but undeniably slimy) catfish.

In this social satire of the highest order, Sam Lipsyte, the New York Times bestseller and master of the form, reaches new peaks of daring in a novel that revels in contemporary absurdity and the wild poetry of everyday language while exploring the emotional truths of his characters. Hark is a smart, incisive look at men, women, and children seeking meaning and dignity in a chaotic, ridiculous, and often dangerous world.

Madhuri Vijay, "THE FAR FIELD"

Mon, 18 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

An elegant, epic debut from a tremendous new talent and Pushcart Prize-winner, Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field follows one young woman’s search for a lost figure from her childhood, a journey that carries her from cosmopolitan Bangalore in Southern India to the mountains of Kashmir and to the brink of a devastating political and personal reckoning.

In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But as soon as Shalini arrives, she is brought face to face with Kashmir’s dark politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.

With rare acumen and evocative prose, Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion.

Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson, "AMPARO DAVILA'S THE HOUSEGUEST"

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

Like those of Kafka, Poe, Leonora Carrington, or Shirley Jackson, Amparo Dávila’s stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted—you’ll finish reading each one gasping for air. With acute psychological insight, Dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, loneliness, and fear. She is a writer obsessed with obsession who makes nightmares come to life through the everyday: loneliness sinks in easily like a razor-sharp knife, some sort of evil lurks in every shadow, delusion takes the form of strange and very real creatures. After reading The Houseguest—her debut collection in English—you’ll wonder how this secret was kept for so long.

Robert Inman, "AN ARCHITECTURAL GUIDEBOOK TO LOS ANGELES"

Thu, 14 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

The map may not be the territory, and the word may not be the thing, but An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles is as close as it gets. Originally authored over fifty years ago by renowned architectural historians Robert Winter—described by Los Angeles Magazine as both the “spiritual godfather” and “father” of L.A. architecture—and the late, great David Gebhard, this seminal vade mecum of Los Angeles architecture explores every rich potency of the often relentless, but sometimes—as captured here—relenting L.A. cityscape.

From its first publication by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1965, this veritable “Bible” of built L.A. has been revised and edited extensively for a sixth edition by award-winning L.A. urban walker and Winter’s trusted collaborator Robert Inman. Nathan Masters, historian and Emmy award-winning host, producer, and managing editor of KCET’s Lost L.A., writes the foreword.

More than an effort of exploration, the guide is an outfit of discovery. The much-anticipated revision, long since a classic standard of the Los Angeles architecture, has been updated rigorously with more than 200 new entries cataloging every crease, region, and style of Los Angeles County’s metropolitan sheath, from the missions of Spanish California to present day.

Johanna Hedva, "ON HELL" w/ Asher Hartman

Wed, 13 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

On Hell transcribes a body broken by American empire, that of ex-con Rafael Luis Estrada Requena, hacking itself away from contemporary society. Johanna Hedva, author of Sick Woman Theory, takes the ferocious compulsion to escape (from capitalism, from the limits of the body-machine, from Earth) and channels it into an evisceration of oppression and authority. Equal parts tender and brutal, romantic and furious, On Hell is a novel about myths that trick and resist totalitarianism.

Hedva is joined in conversation by Asher Hartman, an interdisciplinary artist, writer, director, and intuitive practitioner.

Rabeah Ghaffari, "TO KEEP THE SUN ALIVE"

Tue, 12 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

The year is 1979. The Iranian Revolution is just around the corner, as is a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse. Meanwhile, in the northeastern city of Naishapur, a retired judge and his wife, Bibi, run an ancient orchard, growing apples, plums, peaches, and sour cherries, and looking after several generations of family members. The days here are marked by long, elaborate lunches on the terrace and arguments about government corruption and the rise of religious fundamentalism, peppered with tales of ancient Persia that foreshadow the seismic political changes to come.

And yet life continues. Bibi, the matriarch, struggles to keep her family together. Her young nephew goes to university, hoping to lead the fight for a new Iran and marry his childhood sweetheart. Another nephew surrenders to opium, while his father longs for a life in Europe. Her brother-in-law evolves into a powerful Islamic cleric while her husband retreats into intellectual reflection. Told through a host of vivid, unforgettable characters, ranging from children to servants to friends of the family, Rabeah Ghaffari's To Keep the Sun Alive is the kind of compelling, rich story that not only informs the past, but also reminds us of the human aspirations that animate historical events.

Tosh Berman, "TOSH" w/ Jason Schwartzman

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 02:30:00 -0800

TOSH is a memoir of growing up as the son of an enigmatic, much-admired, hermetic, and ruthlessly bohemian artist during the waning years of the Beat Generation and the heyday of hippie counterculture. A critical figure in the history of postwar American culture, Tosh Berman's father, Wallace Berman, was known as the "father of assemblage art," and was the creator of the legendary mail-art publication Semina. Wallace Berman and his wife, famed beauty and artist's muse Shirley Berman, raised Tosh between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and their home life was a heady atmosphere of art, music, and literature, with local and international luminaries regularly passing through.

Tosh's unconventional childhood and peculiar journey to adulthood features an array of famous characters, from George Herms and Marcel Duchamp, to Michael McClure and William S. Burroughs, to Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell, to the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, and Toni Basil.

Tosh is joined by actor, screenwriter, and musician Jason Schwartzman.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras, "FRUIT OF THE DRUNKEN TREE" w/ Lilliam Rivera

Fri, 25 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation.

When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal.

Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricably linked coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Ingrid Rojas Contreras has written a powerful testament to the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.

Rojas Contreras is in conversation with Lilliam Rivera, an award-winning writer and author of The Education of Margot Sanchez and the upcoming YA novel Dealing in Dreams.

Tommy Pico, "JUNK" w/ Joseph Osmundson

Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0800

The third book in Tommy Pico’s Teebs trilogy, Junk is a breakup poem in couplets: ice floe and hot lava, a tribute to Janet Jackson and nacho cheese. In the static that follows the loss of a job or an apartment or a boyfriend, what can you grab onto for orientation? The narrator wonders what happens to the sense of self when the illusion of security has been stripped away. And for an indigenous person, how do these lost markers of identity echo larger cultural losses and erasures in a changing political landscape? In part taking its cue from A.R. Ammons’s Garbage, Teebs names this liminal space “Junk,” in the sense that a junk shop is full of old things waiting for their next use; different items that collectively become indistinct. But can there be a comfort outside the anxiety of utility? An appreciation of “being” for the sake of being? And will there be Chili Cheese Fritos?

Pico is in conversation with Joseph Osmundson, a scientist and writer based in New York City.

Brittany Ackerman, "THE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE" w/ Davy Rothbart

Wed, 23 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0800

When my brother was in high school he attempted to build a perpetual motion machine to save the world. That machine was my brother's experiment; this book is mine. It is in the text where I dissect our relationship and try to understand myself. In undertaking this project, I had to research, which meant looking at photo albums, interviewing my brother and parents, asking friends and family what I was like when I was little, etc. Like my brother once said after reading my work, "We color these memories differently," I knew that in order to methodically calculate the moments I had to meticulously plot out what it was I was trying to say. In this way, the collection is like a science project. This book is how I will try to save my brother, or more largely how I will attempt to save the world by making people understand the pain we've all been through, the visceral pain that accompanies longing for some past impossibility. My preparation has been "in the field" and living through it, gathering notes, experiences, and findings; it has all been one giant experiment--to see if we could make it out alive.

Ackerman is in conversation with Davy Rothbart, a bestselling author, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, creator of Found Magazine, and contributor to public radio's This American Life.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, "SKETCHTASY"

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 00:00:00 -0800

Sketchtasy takes place in that late-night moment when everything comes together, and everything falls apart: it's an urgent, glittering, devastating novel about the perils of queer world-making in the mid-'90s.

This is Boston in 1995, a city defined by a rabid fear of difference. Alexa, an incisive twenty-one-year-old queen, faces everyday brutality with determined nonchalance. Rejecting middle-class pretensions, she negotiates past and present traumas with a scathing critique of the world. Drawn to the ecstasy of drugged-out escapades, Alexa searches for nourishment in a gay culture bonded by clubs and conformity, willful apathy, and the spectre of AIDS. Is there any hope for communal care?

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore brings 1990s gay culture startlingly back to life, as Alexa and her friends grapple with the impact of growing up at a time when desire and death are intertwined. With an intoxicating voice and unruly cadence, this is a shattering, incandescent novel that conjures the pain and pageantry of struggling to imagine a future.

Randy Shaw, "GENERATION PRICED OUT"

Tue, 04 Dec 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Generation Priced Out calls for action on one of the most talked-about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing the working and middle classes out of urban America. Telling the stories of tenants, developers, politicians, homeowner groups, and housing activists from over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis, Generation Priced Out criticizes cities for advancing policies that increase economic and racial inequality. Shaw also exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials’ access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Defying conventional wisdom, Randy Shaw demonstrates that neighborhood gentrification is not inevitable and presents proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Generation Priced Out is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of urban America.

Yesika Salgado, "TESORO"

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Tesoro is a story of family, survival, and the formative power of the women in Yesika Salgado’s life. It is a telling of the balance between love and perseverance. Tesoro is an unearthing of the sacred connections that make a person whole; the treasure we forever keep with us when we learn from those we love, when we mourn those we’ve lost, and what grows in between.

Barry Glassner, "THE CULTURE OF FEAR"

Fri, 30 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

In the age of Trump, our society is defined by fear. Indeed, three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today than they did only a couple decades ago. But are we living in exceptionally perilous times? In his bestselling book The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. Glassner exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears: politicians who win elections by heightening concerns about crime and drug use even as rates for both are declining; advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the prevalence of particular diseases; TV shows that create a new scare every week to garner ratings. Glassner spells out the prices we pay for social panics: the huge sums of money that go to waste on unnecessary programs and products as well as time and energy spent worrying about our fears.

All the while, we are distracted from the true threats, from climate change to worsening inequality. In this updated edition of a modern classic, Glassner examines the current panics over vaccination and "political correctness" and reveals why Donald Trump's fearmongering is so dangerously effective.

Jackie MacMullan and Rafe Bartholomew, "BASKETBALL: A LOVE STORY" w/ Bill Plaschke

Thu, 29 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

In an effort to tell the comprehensive story of basketball in all its fascinating dimensions, two of the most well-respected basketball journalists working today, Jackie MacMullan and Rafe Bartholomew, collaborated with award-winning director, Dan Klores, to produce a groundbreaking book based on interviews with more than 170 of the sport’s all-time greats. The interviews, conducted by Klores and his team of producers for a multi-part ESPN Films series to be released in fall 2018, include legendary players, such as Bill Russell, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Magic Johnson; renowned coaches like Phil Jackson and Coach K; and numerous executives, commissioners, and journalists.

Combing through nearly a thousand hours of conversations, MacMullan and Bartholomew compiled the candid stories and shaped them into what may become one of the most important basketball books ever written, Basketball: A Love Story. The book, which shares its title with the forthcoming ESPN Films series, surpasses other compilations in sheer volume and depth.

With a narrative that is raw and intimate and digging deep into the vast web of basketball mystique, this engrossing portrait weaves together diverse tales of the sport’s remarkable rise from humble roots and sheds light on its unparalleled growth, transforming our understanding of the game.

MacMullan and Bartholomew are in conversation with Bill Plaschke, sports columnist for The Los Angeles Times.

Karina Longworth, "SEDUCTION" w/ Mark Olsen

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes--the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.

His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood's most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes--perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era--commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes's grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.

Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, Seduction is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age--a legacy that endures nearly a century later.

Longworth is in conversation with Mark Olsen, who writes about all kinds of movies for the Los Angeles Times.

Elliott Kalan, "HORSE MEETS DOG"

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

From television comedy writer Elliott Kalan (The Daily Show) and acclaimed illustrator Tim Miller comes a clever and fast-paced comedy of mistaken species identity: Horse Meets Dog.

According to Dog, Horse is just an oversize dog…with funny paws. And Dog… just a tiny, baby horse with a weird tail. That’s what Horse thinks, anyway. Will Dog take a bottle of hay? Why does Horse have such weird paws? Here is what ensues when a Horse and a Dog meet and attempt to figure what the other is all about. The hijinks of these two whimsical characters will have both children and their parents in stitches, and the book’s inherent message of accepting others, differences and all, will resonate long after the last page is turned.

Andrea Portes, "HENRY & EVA AND THE CASTLE ON THE CLIFF"

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

The Graveyard Book meets The Goonies in author Andrea Portes’s spooky, timeless middle grade debut .

Prominent Environmentalist and Oceanographer Die in Boating Accident

This is the headline that changes Henry’s and Eva’s lives. Their parents, prominent environmentalist William Billings (age 43) and his oceanographer wife, Margo Billings (age 39), disappear mysteriously at sea.

That day is a very, very bad day indeed.

But for Henry and Eva, things are about to go from bad to worse. Their jerk-face uncle (nickname Claude the Clod) and his awful girlfriend (Terri the Terrible) have moved into their big house on the cliff to “take care of them,” but Eva has her doubts about their intentions. All she wants is to put a smile back on Henry’s face, but with Claude skulking around, she can barely come up with a halfway decent joke or song to cheer Henry up (even though that’s her particular specialty).

What Henry and Eva don’t know yet is that they aren’t the only ones in their house who want Claude out of the picture—and when some spooky visitors appear with a message, they realize that their parents’ deaths might not have been as cut-and-dried as everyone thinks.

It’s up to Henry and Eva to discover the truth—but can they do it before the Clod catches them in the act?

Wayétu Moore, "SHE WOULD BE KING" w/ Allison Noelle Conner

Fri, 23 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

In She Would Be King, Wayétu Moore reimagines the dramatic story of the formation of Liberia through the eyes of three unforgettable characters. Gbessa, exiled on suspicion of being a witch from the West African village of Lai, is bitten by a viper and left for dead, but miraculously survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon is the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, and can fade from sight at will, just as his mother could. When they meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes. Their storylines are brilliantly intertwined by the all-seeing spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom.

A spectacular blend of history and magical realism, She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a rich, unexpected canvas. Moore illuminates with radiant prose the tumultuous roots of a unique African country—one whose history is inextricably bound to the United States.

Moore is in conversation with Allison Noelle Conner, whose writing has appeared in Bitch, Jacket2, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Kristen Tracy, "HALF_HAZARD" w/ Thomas Sadoski

Thu, 22 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Half-Hazard is a book of near misses, would-be tragedies, and luck. As Kristen Tracy writes in the title poem, “Dangers here. Perils there. It’ll go how it goes.” The collection follows Tracy’s wide curiosity, from her growing up in a small Mormon farming community to her exodus out into the forbidden world, where she finds snakes, car accidents, adulterers, meteors, and death-marked mice. These wry, observant narratives are accompanied by a ringing lyricism and Tracy’s own knack at noticing what’s so funny about trouble and her natural impulse to want to put all the broken things back together. Full of wrong turns, false loves, quashed beliefs, and a menagerie of animals, Half-Hazard introduces a vibrant new voice in American poetry. One of reslience, faith and joy.

Tracy is in conversation with Thomas Sadoski, an actor who has acted in a variety of television, film, Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, including Life in Pieces, The Newsroom, and The Slap.

Ezra Claytan Daniels and Ben Passmore

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

For their 45th anniversary, Hank and Molly Nonnar decide to undergo an experimental rejuvenation procedure, but their hopes for youth are dashed when the couple is faced with the results: severely disfigured yet intellectually and physically superior duplicates of themselves. Can the original Hank and Molly coexist in the same world as their clones? In Upgrade Soul, McDuffie Award-winning creator Ezra Claytan Daniels asks probing questions about what shapes our identity. Is it the capability of our minds or the physicality of our bodies? Is a newer, better version of yourself still you? This pageturning graphic novel follows Hank and Molly as they discover the harsh truth that only one version of themselves is fated to survive.

In Your Black Friend and Other Strangers, Ben Passmore masterfully tackles comics about race, gentrification, the prison system, online dating, gross punks, bad street art, kung fu movie references, beating up God, and lots of other grown-up stuff with refreshing doses of humor and lived relatability. The title comic earned Passmore an Eisner nomination, Ignatz Award for “Outstanding Comic”, and a coveted spot on NPR’s 100 Favorite Graphic Novelists. The comics in this 120 page collection include works previously published by The Nib, VICE, and the As You Were anthology, along with brand new and unreleased material.These comics are essential, humorous, and accessible, told through Passmore’s surreal lens in the vibrant full color hues of New Orleans.

Nicole Seymour, "BAD ENVIRONMENTALISM"

Tue, 20 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Activists today strive to educate the public about climate change, but sociologists have found that the more we know about alarming issues, the less likely we are to act. Meanwhile, environmentalists have acquired a reputation as gloom-and-doom killjoys. Bad Environmentalism identifies contemporary texts that respond to these absurdities and ironies through absurdity and irony—as well as camp, frivolity, irreverence, perversity, and playfulness.

Nicole Seymour develops the concept of “bad environmentalism”: cultural thought that employs dissident affects and sensibilities to reflect critically on our current moment and on mainstream environmental activism. From the television show Wildboyz to the short film series Green Porno, Seymour shows that this tradition of thought is widespread—spanning animation, documentary, fiction film, performance art, poetry, prose fiction, social media, and stand-up comedy since at least 1975. Seymour argues that these texts reject self-righteousness and sentimentality, undercutting public negativity toward activism and questioning basic environmentalist assumptions: that love and reverence are required for ethical relationships with the nonhuman and that knowledge is key to addressing problems like climate change.

Éric Vuillard, "THE ORDER OF THE DAY" w/ Tom Lutz & Laurie Winer

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

At a time marked by an ever-widening inequality gap, promulgating the interests of a few at the expense of many, and a rising wave of nationalism, spurred on by assaults to democratic freedoms and propaganda bubbles intended to distort truth, Éric Vuillard’s 2017 Prix Goncourt Winner, The Order of the Day offers a distilled and imaginative retelling of a similarly pivotal moment in history. What emerges is a timely warning about the fragility of the present moment. The annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany has long been seen as one of history’s most foreboding moments. Now, through a host of letters, historical documents, and photographs, Vuillard masterfully reconstructs and looks anew at the extraordinary sequence of events that opened a gateway to one of the greatest humanitarian horrors in our history. The Order of the Day exhumes a well-known history with fresh eyes, warning of the timeless threat to freedom exacted by self-interest, willful ignorance and the consolidation of power in the hands of the few.

Dan Lyons, "LAB RATS" w/ Karen Grigsby Bates

Sat, 10 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

At a time of soaring corporate profits and plenty of HR lip service about "wellness." millions of workers—in virtually every industry—are deeply unhappy. Why did work become so miserable? Who is responsible? And does any company have a model for doing it right? For two years, Dan Lyons ventured in search of answers. From the innovation-crazed headquarters of the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, to a cult-like "Holocracy" workshop in San Francisco, and to corporate trainers who specialize in ... Legos, Lyons immersed himself in the often half-baked and frequently lucrative world of what passes for management science today. In Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us, he shows how new tools, workplace practices, and business models championed by empathy-impaired power brokers in Silicon Valley have shattered the social contract that once existed between companies and their employees. These new, dystopian beliefs, which are now seeping into virtually every industry, are often masked by pithy slogans like "We're a Team, Not a Family." And they have dire consequences: millions of workers who are subject to constant change, dehumanizing technologies—even health risks.

A few companies do get it right. Dan Lyons makes an impassioned plea for business leaders to look at how they are running their companies and employees (into the ground) and a case for a new “approach to work and business that puts people first, profitability serves customers, and makes the world a little bit better in the process” (Tom Peters, New York Times bestselling author of In Search of Excellence).

Lyons is in conversation with Karen Grigsby Bates, the Los Angeles-based correspondent for NPR News.

Tracy Daugherty, "LEAVING THE GAY PLACE"

Tue, 06 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Leaving the Gay Place tells a sweeping story of American popular culture and politics through the life and work of a writer who tragically exemplifies the highs and lows of the country at mid-century. Tracy Daugherty follows Brammer from the halls of power in Washington, DC, where he worked for Senate majority leader Johnson, to rock-and-roll venues where he tripped out with Janis Joplin, and ultimately to back alleys of self-indulgence and self-destruction. Constantly driven to experiment with new ways of being and creating—often fueled by psychedelics—Brammer became a cult figure for an America on the cusp of monumental change, as the counterculture percolated through the Eisenhower years and burst out in the sixties. In Daugherty’s masterful recounting, Brammer’s story is a quintessential American story, and Billy Lee is our wayward American son.

Micah Perks, "TRUE LOVE AND OTHER DREAMS OF MIRACULOUS ESCAPE" w/ Ben Loory

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 06:30:00 -0800

Magical and funny, profound and seductive, the linked stories in True Love and Other Dreams of Miraculous Escape explore the life-bending power of love. In these interwoven lives, ardent desire meets a keen sense of reality deep in the heart of progressive California. When Sadie opens a funky bookstore in Santa Cruz, she is swept off her feet by Daniel, a true-blue romantic—athletic, bookish, from Santiago, Chile. Their connection is heady and erotic, and it echoes through the love lives around them: from Harry Houdini’s first encounter with the widow Winchester to the threatening intimacy between a wife and her brother to a grumpy teenager who inspires her divorced parents. Years later, when Sadie and Daniel take an overdue trip to Paris, their blended family doesn't blend so well, sending them back to rediscover their roots. In these interconnected lives, the desire for passion is as strong as the desire to escape, and the terror of claustrophobic connection competes with the deepest human yearning. An intoxicating look at the complexity and simplicity of embracing and running from love. By the award-winning author of What Becomes Us, Micah Perks.

Perks is in conversation with Ben Loory, author of the collections Tales of Falling and Flying and Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day.

Danielle Krysa, "A BIG IMPORTANT ART BOOK (NOW WITH WOMEN)"

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Walk into any museum, or open any art book, and you'll probably be left wondering: where are all the women artists? A Big Important Art Book (Now with Women) offers an exciting alternative to this male-dominated art world, showcasing the work of dozens of contemporary women artists alongside creative prompts that will bring out the artist in anyone!

This beautiful book energizes and empowers women, both artists and amateurs alike, by providing them with projects and galvanizing stories to ignite their creative fires. Each chapter leads with an assignment that taps into the inner artist, pushing the reader to make exciting new work and blaze her own artistic trail. Interviews, images, and stories from contemporary women artists at the top of their game provide added inspiration, and historical spotlights on art "herstory" tie in the work of pioneering women from the past. With a stunning, gift-forward package and just the right amount of pop culture-infused feminism, Danielle Krysa is sure to capture the imaginations of aspiring women artists.

Nick Zinner/Zachary Lipez/Stacy Wakefield, "131 DIFFERENT THINGS"

Thu, 01 Nov 2018 07:30:00 -0700

When Sam, a bartender in New York, hears that his ex, Vicki, his one true love, has quit AA and is out drinking again, he embarks on a quest to find her. Sam and his sidekick Francis trek from dive bars to gay bars to rocker bars—encountering skinheads, party promoters, underage drug dealers, and dominatrixes—but they are always one step behind Vicki. It begins to seem like 131 Different Things are keeping the lovers apart. Before the night is over, Sam will have to wrestle with what he is really looking for.

Nick Zinner—who plays guitar in the three-time Grammy-nominated band Yeah Yeah Yeahs—provides the visual framework for this inventive novella with his intimate photography. Known for his essays and music writing for Noisey, Vice, and Penthouse, Zachary Lipez brings his pithy, multilayered, and self-deprecating voice to this debut work of fiction. The prose and photography are tied together in a playful taxonomic scheme by editor and art director Stacy Wakefield, the author of the novel The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory. The three artists have collaborated on four previous books, most recently Please Take Me Off the Guest List.

Jeff Jackson, "DESTROY ALL MONSTERS"

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

An epidemic of violence is sweeping the country: musicians are being murdered onstage in the middle of their sets by members of their audience. Are these random copycat killings, or is something more sinister at work? Has music itself become corrupted in a culture where everything is available, everybody is a "creative," and attention spans have dwindled to nothing? With its cast of ambitious bands, yearning fans, and enigmatic killers, Destroy All Monsters tells a haunted and romantic story of overdue endings and unlikely beginnings that will resonate with anybody who's ever loved rock and roll.

Like a classic vinyl single, Jeff Jackson's novel has two sides, which can be read in either order. At the heart of Side A, "My Dark Ages," is Xenie, a young woman who is repulsed by the violence of the epidemic but who still finds herself drawn deeper into the mystery. Side B, "Kill City," follows an alternate history, featuring familiar characters in surprising roles, and burrows deeper into the methods and motivations of the murderers.

Nadya Tolokonnikova, "READ & RIOT" w/ Shepard Fairey

Tue, 30 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Feminist artist, political activist, and Pussy Riot founder Nadya Tolokonnikova has written a timely guide to radical protest and provides the words, actions, and inspiration to ignite the power of individuals to passionately resist and proactively plan our way to the change we want to see. In Read & Riot: A Pussy Riot Guide to Activism, the revered international activist draws upon her own hard-won wisdom to share her core principles for opposing leaders and governments that threaten to suppress individual rights and freedoms. Cutting through the pessimism, fear, uncertainty, and hopelessness, Read & Riot is an empowering tool for civil disobedience that encourages us to question the status quo, reject the litany of injustices and refuse to let apathy take hold, and above all, to make political action exciting, to be approached with a sense of humor, and an ultimately make it an integral part of our daily lives. Fusing punk and positivity to create a culture of protest that inspires and connects us, Read & Riot includes actions, suggestions, and resources for creating an empowered movement of resistance.

Tolokonnikova is in conversation with fellow artist-activist Shepard Fairey.

WHAT BOOKS presents Paul Lieber and Bill Mohr

Mon, 29 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Join us for an evening with two authors from What Books Press. Paul Lieber discusses poetry with fellow writer Bill Mohr.

Eileen Truax, "WE BUILT THE WALL"

Thu, 25 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A Mexican-American lawyer exposes corruption in the US asylum procedure and despotism in the Mexican government.

From a storefront law office in the US border city of El Paso, Texas, one man set out to tear down the great wall of indifference raised between the US and Mexico. Carlos Spector has filed hundreds of political asylum cases on behalf of human rights defenders, journalists, and political dissidents. Though his legal activism has only inched the process forward--98 percent of refugees from Mexico are still denied asylum--his myriad legal cases and the resultant media fallout has increasingly put US immigration policy, the corrupt state of Mexico, and the political basis of immigration, asylum, and deportation decisions on the spot.

Eileen Truax's We Built the Wall is an immersive, engrossing look at the new front in the immigration wars. It follows the gripping stories of people like Saúl Reyes, forced to flee his home after a drug cartel murdered several members of his family, and Delmy Calderón, a forty-two-year-old woman leading an eight-woman hunger strike in an El Paso detention center. Truax tracks the heart-wrenching trials of refugees like Yamil, the husband and father who chose a prison cell over deportation to Mexico, and Rocío Hernández, a nineteen-year-old who spent nearly her entire life in Texas and is now forced to live in a city where narcotraffickers operate with absolute impunity.

Reyna Grande, "A DREAM CALLED HOME" w/ Kirin Khan

Wed, 24 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

When Reyna Grande was nine-years-old, she walked across the US–Mexico border in search of a home, desperate to be reunited with the parents who had left her behind years before for a better life in the City of Angels. What she found instead was an indifferent mother, an abusive, alcoholic father, and a school system that belittled her heritage. With so few resources at her disposal, Reyna finds refuge in words, and it is her love of reading and writing that propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Although her acceptance is a triumph, the actual experience of American college life is intimidating and unfamiliar for someone like Reyna, who is now once again estranged from her family and support system. Again, she finds solace in words, holding fast to her vision of becoming a writer, only to discover she knows nothing about what it takes to make a career out of a dream.

Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to “a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer” (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild); a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist “speak[ing] for millions of immigrants whose voices have gone unheard” (Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street); and a proud mother of two beautiful children who will never have to know the pain of poverty and neglect. Told in Reyna’s exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure.

Grande is in conversation with fellow writer Kirin Khan.

Kwame Alexander, "SWING" w/ Nikki Giovanni & Wendy Calhoun

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

When America is not so beautiful, or right, or just, it can be hard to know what to do. In Kwame Alexander's Swing, best friends Walt and Noah decide to use their voices to grow more good in the world, but first they've got to find cool.

Walt is convinced junior year is their year, and he has a plan to help them woo the girls of their dreams and become amazing athletes. Never mind that he and Noah failed to make the high school baseball team yet again, and Noah's love interest since third grade, Sam, has him firmly in the friend zone. Noah soon finds himself navigating the worlds of jazz, batting cages, the strange advice of Walt's Dairy Queen-employed cousin, as well as Walt's own perceptions of what is actually cool. Status quo seems inevitable until Noah stumbles on a stash of old love letters. Each page contains the words he's always wanted to say to Sam, and he begins secretly creating artwork using the lines that speak his heart. But when his private artwork becomes public, Noah has a decision to make: continue his life in the dugout and possibly lose the girl forever, or take a swing and make his voice heard?

At the same time, numerous American flags are being left around town. While some think it's a harmless prank and others see it as a form of peaceful protest, Noah can't shake the feeling something bigger is happening to his community. Especially after he witnesses events that hint divides and prejudices run deeper than he realized. As the personal and social tensions increase around them, Noah and Walt must decide what is really true when it comes to love, friendship, sacrifice, and fate.

Alexander is in conversation with poet, activist, mother, and professor Nikki Giovanni alongside writer/producer Wendy Calhoun.

Walter Mosley, "JOHN WOMAN"

Mon, 22 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor—while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows.

At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father’s job at a silent film theater in New York’s East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate. After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself—as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman’s teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman, and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.

Lydia Kiesling, "THE GOLDEN STATE" w/ Edan Lepucki

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 15:13:52 -0700

In Lydia Kiesling's razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent--her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a "processing error"--Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.

But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.

Kiesling is in conversation with Edan Lepucki, the bestselling author of novels California and Woman No. 17.

Shabnam Samuel, "A FRACTURED LIFE"

Sat, 20 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Abandoned by her parents as a three-year-old, and ultimately leaving her home country India for a new life in America as a young mother of a three-year-old son, this is not only an immigrant's story, but a poignant and powerful memoir that is at first, one of sadness and continuing adversity, but ultimately one of strength, purpose, and the universal triumph of hope. It is a story of dislocation, disruption, and despair, and brings focus to the silencing of girlhood and womanhood and how with time, love, and support we can work our way out of that silence. Shabnam Samuel was twenty seven when she moved to the US, carrying with her a troubled marriage, an almost estranged husband, and a three-year-old son. Hoping to create a fresh start from everything that was holding her down, it took Shabnam twenty-five years of trials and tribulations to finally find her voice, her strength, and her place in this world. A Fractured Life is her story.

Peter Gadol, "THE STRANGER GAME"

Fri, 19 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The word ‘follow’ seems to have lost its meaning in the digital age. Now, when someone is following you on Instagram or Twitter, it’s hardly cause for alarm. But Peter Gadol begs an eerie question in his sixth novel, The Stranger Game: What if those ‘following’ you on social media brought back the literal meaning of the word… What if they started following you in real life?

In the age of social media, humanity is, at large, lonely. This includes Rebecca and her boyfriend, Ezra, a fan of the viral sensation “the stranger game"; The games, in which players literally follow strangers in their day-to-day lives has swept the nation and disappearances – including Ezra’s – are reported as players drift aimlessly from subject to subject. Hoping to find him, Rebecca tried the game and meets Carey. As their relationship and game play deepen, Rebecca uncovers an unsettling subculture that has infiltrated her world. Playing the stranger game may lead her closer to Ezra, but also further from the life she once lived.

Riddled with Patricia Highsmith-like anxiety and the alienation of Paul Auster, The Stranger Game is a haunting tale of literary suspense about a viral game spinning perilously – and criminally – out of control.

WNBA/LA: National Reading Group Month

Thu, 18 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

WNBA/LA celebrates National Reading Group Month with a special Women in Media panel, featuring Gretchen Bonaduce (Surviving Agent Orange), Laura Dave (Hello Sunshin), and Robinne Lee (The Idea of You), with moderator Ezina Le Blanc.

Heather Havrilesky, "WHAT IF THIS WERE ENOUGH?" w/ Ann Friedman

Wed, 17 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Why do our modern lives feel more difficult despite the world’s promises of limitless opportunity? When things go wrong, why do we always blame ourselves? We live in a time of extreme delusion, disorientation, and dishonestly — yet despite our uncertainties, anxieties, and resentments, we’re nevertheless instructed to sweep all hesitations or doubts under the rug and continue to fearlessly conquer the future.

How did we get here? And more importantly — can we imagine a different way of living?

In What if this Were Enough?, Heather Havrilesky examines just how we’ve landed in this bewildering spot in our collective history — how traditions of forced cheer and optimism, along with our fixation on success and constant improvement have been ingested and metabolized to become a warped filter through which we see ourselves and others.

Havrilesky is in conversation with journalist and cultural critic Ann Friedman.

Anne-Marie Kinney, "COLDWATER CANYON" w/ Anthony Miller

Tue, 16 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Shep has been dealt a bad hand in life. Halfheartedly raised by a cold grandmother and chronically ill following his deployment in Desert Storm, he self-medicates with alcohol and daydreams of salvation at the hands of women—ultimately landing on one woman in particular: Lila, the young actress he believes is his daughter despite all evidence to the contrary. As Shep navigates the mystically rendered streets and strip malls of the San Fernando Valley with his only companion, his dog Lionel, he takes increasingly desperate measures to insinuate himself into her life. Anne-Marie Kinney’s precise and considered prose examines the insistence on reshaping the past through the lens of one’s own trauma and conceived desires as a means of moving forward. Why do we so often look for solace and redemption through others, pushing ourselves to do anything for them, even when it harms everyone involved?

Kinney is in conversation with writer, critic, and independent scholar Anthony Miller.

LAMBDA Litfest: "Queer Writing"

Mon, 15 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Young queer writers yearn for queer teachers for a variety of reasons: to be seen and acknowledged, to find role models, to work in spaces that include their voices. On this panel, queer writing teachers from UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program will read excerpts from their recent work, and then discuss how queerness factors into their teaching of both straight and queer students.

The teachers included in the panel: Noel Alumit, Antonia Crane, Seth Fischer, Charles Jensen, and Mathew Rodriguez.

LAMBDA Litfest: "Trumpocalypse"

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Four writers and a renowned book editor discuss the role of books and those who write them in such desperate times as these. Is it worth writing books? If so, what kinds of books? If not, what shall we writers do with ourselves for the duration?

Panelists include: Melissa Chadburn, Dan Smentanka, Cindy Chupack, Natashia Deon, moderated by Meredith Maran.

Juan Gabriel Vasquez, "THE SHAPE OF THE RUINS"

Sat, 13 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The Shape of the Ruins is Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s highly anticipated, deeply personal masterpiece that is being heralded as the most ambitious novel of his career. For the first time Vásquez puts himself at the center of the story—the narrator is a novelist also named Juan Gabriel Vásquez—one that unspools a tangled mystery of political conspiracy, brutal assassinations, and dangerous secrets lost to memory.

Diana Arterian and Allie Rowbottom

Fri, 12 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Playing Monster :: Seiche is a book-length poem by Diana Arterian that incessantly dodges between two narratives: the speaker's childhood experiences with an abusive father and, as an adult, increasingly aggressive acts made toward her mother by strange men. It is a piece of noir poetics. It is also memoir and documentary. Through tight, spare poems, Arterian's unflinching descriptions of difficult life experiences fight aestheticization, engaging directly with the events as through the poetry of witness.

In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of the most profitable business deals in American history, and the generations that followed enjoyed immense privilege - but they were also haunted by suicides, cancer, alcoholism, and mysterious ailments. More than 100 years after that deal was struck, Allie's mother Mary was diagnosed with the same incurable cancer, a disease that had also claimed her own mother's life. Determined to combat what she had come to consider the "Jell-O curse" and her looming mortality, Mary began obsessively researching her family's past, determined to understand the origins of her illness and the impact on her life of Jell-O and the traditional American values the company championed. Before she died in 2015, Mary began to send Allie boxes of her research and notes, in the hope that her daughter might write what she could not. Jell-O Girls is the liberation of that story.

Bonnie Chau, "ALL ROADS LEAD TO BLOOD"

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Unflinching and compelling portrayals of desire fill All Roads Lead to Blood, an award-winning story collection by Bonnie Chau. Chau explores the lives of young women, focusing on love, heritage, and memory, presenting fresh perspectives of second-generation Chinese-Americans.

Moving back and forth between California and New York, and ranging as far away as Paris, Chau’s exquisitely written stories are bold, highly imaginative, and haunting, featuring unique characters who defiantly exert their individuality.

Grady Chambers, "NORTH AMERICAN STADIUMS" w/ Elizabeth Metzger

Wed, 10 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Max Ritvo Poetry Prize winner Grady Chambers brings us North American Stadiums, an assured debut collection about grace—the places we search for it, and the disjunction between what we seek and where we arrive.

“You were supposed to find God here / the signs said.” In these poems, hinterlands demand our close attention; overlooked places of industry become sites for pilgrimage; and history large and small—of a city, of a family, of a shirt—is unearthed. Here is a factory emptying for the day, a snowy road just past border patrol, a baseball game at dusk. Mile signs point us toward Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Salt Lake City, Chicago. And god is not the God expected, but the still moment amid movement: a field “lit like the heart / of the night,” black stars stitched to the yellow sweatshirts of men in a crowd.

A map “bleached / pale by time and weather,” North American Stadiums is a collection at once resolutely unsentimental yet deeply tender, illuminating the historical forces that shape the places we inhabit and how those places, in turn, shape us.

Chambers is joined in conversation by Elizabeth Metzger, Poetry Editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal.

Jessica Hopper, "NIGHT MOVES" w/ Josh Kun

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Written in taut, mesmerizing, often hilarious scenes drawn from 2004 through 2009, Night Moves captures the fierce friendships and small moments that form us all. Drawing on her personal journals from the aughts, Jessica Hopper chronicles her time as a DJ, living in decrepit punk houses, biking to bad loft parties with her friends, exploring Chicago deep into the night. And, along the way, she creates an homage to vibrant corners of the city that have been muted by sleek development. A book birthed in the amber glow of Chicago streetlamps, Night Moves is about a transformative moment of cultural history—and how a raw, rebellious writer found her voice.

Hopper is joined in conversation by Josh Kun, author and winner of a 2018 Berlin Prize.

Jeanne McCulloch, "ALL HAPPY FAMILIES" w/ Laurie Winer

Mon, 08 Oct 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A lifetime in the making, All Happy Families is Jeanne McCulloch’s entry into the other side of the literary process. As a former managing editor of the Paris Review and an editor at Tin House, she’s nurtured the early careers of an all-star roster of writers including David Foster Wallace, Ann Patchett, Jeffrey Eugenides, among others. Now she is ready to share her clear-eyed account of her struggle to find her own voice and finally tell her own story. Impressionistic, lyrical, at turns both witty and poignant, All Happy Families is an unforgettable look at a world where all that glitters on the surface is not gold, and each unhappy family is ultimately unhappy in its own unique way.

McCulloch is in conversation Laurie Winer, founding editor of the L.A. Review of Books.

Yumi Sakugawa, "FASHION FORECAST"

Sun, 07 Oct 2018 13:57:37 -0700

Yumi Sakugawa explores the possibilities of a not-so-distant future where fashion can be intergenerational, Asian American, divine feminine, environmentally conscious, community building, ancestor worshipping, and possibly bring you closer to enlightenment. Originally printed as a limited edition zine for an art installation of the same name at CrossLines, a culture lab curated by the Smithsonian Asian Pacific Center in the historical Smithsonian Arts & Industries building in 2016, Fashion Forecasts also includes photographs from the exhibition, new fashion forecast drawings, fashion advice, and a comic essay on the cosmic meaning of fashion in the cycle of birth and death.

Aminder Dhaliwal, "WOMAN WORLD" W/ Megan Nicole Dong

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Join internet sensation and Disney TV animator Aminder Dhaliwal as she launches her debut graphic novel Woman World. The book, first serialized on Instagram to an audience of over 150,000, is a delightful imagining of a world where men have gone extinct. With incomparable wit, Woman World is an entertaining read for people of all genders and one of 2018’s most anticipated releases.

Dhaliwal is joined in conversation by Megan Nicole Dong, known for her Sketchshark comics.

Katya Apekina, "THE DEEPER THE WATER THE UGLIER THE FISH" w/ Michelle Huneven

Tue, 25 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish is a bold epistolary novel tracking two teenage girls in the wake of their mother’s failed suicide attempt, when they are sent to live with their estranged father, a celebrated writer, in New York City. With a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of Edie and Mae as they each crave the attention of a parent they can’t—and shouldn’t—have to themselves.

Moving from the Louisiana countryside to the sidewalks of New York City, the Civil Rights era to the trendy art scene of the ’90s, Katya Apekina crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession, and in so doing heralds her arrival as a fierce and fresh new literary talent.

Apekina is joined in conversation by Michelle Huneven, author of four novels, including Blame and Off Course.

Rebecca Serle, "THE DINNER LIST" w/ Gabrielle Zevin

Mon, 24 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Pick five people - dead or alive - to have dinner with for just one night. For Sabrina Nielsen, the five people she chose years ago for such a game just happen to show up at her birthday dinner.

Sabrina’s ex-boyfriend, estranged father, best friend, favorite college professor and Audrey Heburn are all guests on The Dinner List.

Through Rebecca Serle’s enchanting writing, this delicious novel combines the whimsy of first love with an exploration into what it takes to make a relationship work. With a romance impossible to resist and a vivid group of dining guests, Serle’s novel asks what really matters when it comes to love.

Serle is joined in conversation by Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Young Jane Young, as well as the screenwriter of Conversations with Other Women.

Zenobia Neil, "THE JINNI'S LAST WISH"

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In Zenobia Neil's The Jinni's Last Wish, a eunuch in the Ottoman Imperial Harem has already lost his home, his freedom, and his manhood. His only wish is for a painless death, until he meets Dark Star, a beautiful odalisque who promises to give him his deepest desire. He refuses to believe her claim to possess a jinni in a bottle. But when Dark Star is accused of witchcraft, Olin rubs the bottle in desperation and discovers she’s told the truth. Olin becomes the jinni’s master to save Dark Star, but it's not enough. In the complex world of the Topkapi Palace, where silk pillows conceal knives, sherbets contain poison, and jewels buy loyalty, no one is safe. With each wish, Olin must choose between becoming like the masters he detests or risk his life, his body, and his sanity to break the bonds that tie them all.

Gabriella Herstick, "INNER WITCH"

Tue, 18 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

This isn’t your great-great-great-great grandmother’s guide to witchcraft. Inner Witch: A Modern Guide to the Ancient Craft, by Nylon’s Ask A Witch columnist Gabriela Herstik, invites everyone into the coven, modernizing the ancient craft and creating a space for all to come and express their sacred self.

As uncertainty rages across the globe, many have a turned to the sacred, ancient crafts—witchcraft, astrology, crystals, and similar practices—to find balance, especially young women. Inner Witch grants practitioners from all walks of the life the freedom to assume their place in the universe while connecting with a force far greater than themselves.

Clementine Ford, "FIGHT LIKE A GIRL" w/ Alexandra Tweten

Mon, 17 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Through a mixture of memoir, opinion and investigative journalism, Clementine Ford exposes just how unequal the world continues to be for women. An incendiary debut taking the world by storm, Fight Like a Girl will make you laugh, cry and scream — but above all it will open your eyes to a way forward, a brighter future, and a society where both men and women can flourish equally– something worth fighting for.

Claudia Dey, "HEARTBREAKER"

Sun, 16 Sep 2018 14:00:08 -0700

Pony Darlene Fontaine is 15 years old, on the phone with her best friend watching Teen Psychic when her mother, Billie Jean Fontaine, leaves her bedroom for the first time in months. Billie Jean walks out of the front door, gets in her truck, and vanishes. The Territory, population 400, is a settlement founded decades ago by a charismatic cult leader, and it has been cut off from the world ever since. The residents of this strange town think the year is 1985. They crimp their hair, wear shoulder pads, listen to Whitesnake on their Walkmans, and have no contact with anyone from the outside world. Except for Billie Jean, the first stranger they took in as their own. And now, Pony fears, Billie Jean has become the first resident to leave.

Heartbreaker is a novel about the deeply moving relationship between a mother and a daughter—and about the dark secrets they kept from one another. When Billie Jean disappears, Pony and her father frantically try to piece together memories from the months leading up to her disappearance and make sense of her actions. The search for Billie Jean takes us on a high-voltage ride through the complex impulses of the human heart.

Told through three unforgettable points of view––Billie Jean’s daughter, her killer dog, and her mysterious friend––Claudia Day's novel is as devastating as it is touching and funny. With electrifying prose, it gradually reveals a portrait of a woman who must keep secrets and reinvent herself in order to survive, and a daughter who will do whatever it takes to untangle those mysteries to find her beloved mother.

Elaine Mokhtefi, "THIRD WORLD CAPITAL"

Thu, 13 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Following the Algerian war for independence and the defeat of France in 1962, Algiers became the liberation capital of the Third World. Here, Elaine Mokhtefi, who as a young American woman had worked with leaders of the Algerian Revolution, including Frantz Fanon, found a home. As a journalist and translator, she lived among guerrillas, revolutionaries, exiles and visionaries and was even present in the making of the groundbreaking film The Battle of Algiers.

Mokhtefi crossed paths with some of the era’s brightest stars: Stokely Carmichael, Timothy Leary, Ahmed Ben Bella, Jomo Kenyatta and Eldridge Cleaver. She was instrumental in the establishment of the International Section of the Black Panther Party in Algiers and was close at hand as the group became involved in intrigue, murder and international hijackings. She traveled with the Panthers and organised Cleaver’s clandestine departure for France. Algiers, Third World Capital is an unforgettable story of an era of passion and promise.

Leah Dieterich, "VANISHING TWINS"

Wed, 12 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

“It’s like we’re the same person. We finish each other’s sentences. This is what we’ve been taught to desire and expect of love. But there’s a question underneath that’s never addressed: once you find someone to finish your sentences, do you stop finishing them for yourself?”

As long as she can remember, Leah Dieterich has had the mysterious feeling that she’s been searching for a twin—that she belongs as one of an intimate pair. It begins with friends, dance partners, and her own reflection in the mirror as she studies ballet growing up; continues with physical and emotional attractions to girlfriends in college; and leads her, finally, to Eric, whom she moves across the country for, and marries. But her steadfast, monogamous relationship leaves her with questions she can’t answer about her sexuality and her identity, so she and her husband decide to try an open marriage.

How does a young couple make room for their individual desires, their evolving selfhoods, and their artistic ambitions while building a life together? Can they pursue other sexual partners, even live in separate cities, and keep their original passionate bond alive? Vanishing Twins looks for answers in psychology, science, pop culture, art, architecture, Greek mythology, dance, and language to create a lucid, suspenseful portrait of a woman testing the limits and fluidities of love.

Dieterich is joined in conversation by Sarah Manguso, author of seven books, including 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay.

Ben Marcus, "NOTES FROM THE FOG"

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

With the thirteen transfixing stories of Notes From the Fog, Ben Marcus gives us timely dystopian visions of alienation in a modern world--cosmically and comically apt. Never has existential catastrophe been so much fun.

In "The Grow-Light Blues," a hapless, corporate drone finds love after being disfigured testing his employer's newest nutrition supplement--the enhanced glow from his computer monitor. A father finds himself outcast from his family when he starts to suspect that his son's precocity has turned sinister in the chilling "Cold Little Bird." In "Blueprints for St. Louis," two architects in a flailing marriage consider the ethics of artificially inciting emotion in mourners at their latest assignment--a memorial to a terrorist attack.

In the bizarre but instantly recognizable universe of Ben Marcus's fiction, characters encounter both surreal new illnesses and equally surreal new cures. Marcus writes beautifully, hilariously, and obsessively, about sex and death, lust and shame, the indignities of the body, and the full parade of human folly. A heartbreaking collection of stories that showcases the author's compassion, tenderness, and mordant humor. Blistering, beautiful work from a modern master.

David Ulin, "THE LOST ART OF READING"

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The new introduction and afterword bring fresh relevance to this insightful rumination on the act of reading--as a path to critical thinking, individual and political identity, civic engagement, and resistance.

Former LA Times book critic David Ulin expands his short book The Lost Art of Reading, rich in ideas, on the consequence of reading to include the considerations of fake news, siloed information, and the connections between critical thinking as the key component of engaged citizenship and resistance. Here is the case for reading as a political act in both public and private gestures, and for the ways it enlarges the world and our frames of reference, all the while keeping us engaged.

Thomas Page McBee, "AMATEUR" w/ Ann Friedman

Sun, 09 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man, Thomas Page McBee, the first transgender man to ever box in Madison Square Garden, explores his relationship to violence as experienced in a man’s body, while wrestling with the larger issue of what healthy masculinity might look like in our society.

From every incident of gun violence, to every instance of publicized sexual harassment and assault, to the conversation around our most recent presidential election, it’s clear that we are at a potential turning point in our understanding of men’s roles in the world. In 2015, while training for a charity boxing match, McBee embarked on a mission to uncover how to live as a man while remaining conscious of his privilege, supportive of the women in his life, and aligned with his most authentic self. Interweaving research and analysis with the story of his training, McBee traces the relationship between masculinity and violence and explores how we can move, together, toward a healthier idea of what it means to be a man.

McBee is in conversation with Ann Friedman, a freelance journalist who writes about gender, media, technology, and culture. She also co-hosts a podcast, Call Your Girlfriend, with Aminatou Sow.

Adam Cayton-Holland, "TRAGEDY PLUS TIME"

Sat, 08 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

From Adam Cayton-Holland, one of Variety’s “10 Comics to Watch,” comes a “heartfelt and brilliant” (Patton Oswalt) memoir—Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir about the author’s beautiful, funny, and heartbreaking relationship with his younger sister and the depression that took her life.

Both a moving tribute to a lost sibling and an inspiring meditation on mental illness, grief, and recovery, Tragedy Plus Time is an unsentimental, unexpectedly funny, and incredibly honest love letter to every family that has ever felt messy, complicated, or (even momentarily) magnificent. In the tradition of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Truth & Beauty, this memoir offers a tender look at the bonds that hold a family together and the difficult truth that you can’t always save the person you love.

Laura van den Berg, "THE THIRD HOTEL" w/ Aja Gabel

Fri, 07 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In Havana, Cuba, a widow tries to come to terms with her husband’s death—and the truth about their marriage—in Laura van den Berg’s surreal, mystifying story of psychological reflection and metaphysical mystery.

Shortly after Clare arrives in Havana, Cuba, to attend the annual Festival of New Latin American Cinema, she finds her husband, Richard, standing outside a museum. He’s wearing a white linen suit she’s never seen before, and he’s supposed to be dead. Grief-stricken and baffled, Clare tails Richard, a horror film scholar, through the newly tourist-filled streets of Havana, clocking his every move. As the distinction between reality and fantasy blurs, Clare finds grounding in memories of her childhood in Florida and of her marriage to Richard, revealing her role in his death and reappearance along the way. The Third Hotel is a propulsive, brilliantly shape-shifting novel from an inventive author at the height of her narrative powers.

Van den Berg is joined in conversation by Aja Gabel, whose writing has appeared in BOMB, The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, and elsewhere.

Katie Ford, "IF YOU HAVE TO GO"

Thu, 06 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The poems in Katie Ford’s fourth collection implore their audience—the divine and the human—for attention, for revelation, and, perhaps above all, for companionship. The extraordinary sequence at the heart of this book taps into the radical power of the sonnet form, bending it into a kind of metaphysical and psychological outcry. Beginning in the cramped space of selfhood—in the bedroom, cluttered with doubts, and in the throes of marital loss—these poems edge toward the clarity of “what I can know and admit to knowing.” In song and in silence, Ford inhabits the rooms of anguish and redemption with scouring exactness. This is poetry that “can break open, // it can break your life, it will break you // until you remain.” If You Have to Go is Ford’s most luminous and moving collection.

Lisa Hannawalt, "COYOTE DOGGIRL" w/ Molly Lambert

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 13:30:00 -0700

BoJack Horseman producer / production designer and award-winning cartoonist Lisa Hanawalt presents Coyote Doggirl. The graphic novel is a playful homage to and send-up of classic Westerns, presenting the story of the goofy, dramatic, and fiercely independent Coyote as she journeys through the desert on horseback. With Coyote Doggirl, Hanawalt documents the harsh realities of sexism, her insatiable admiration of horses, and the indispensability of a good crop top. Hanawalt will be in conversation with journalist Molly Lambert.

Hanawalt is in conversation with Molly Lambert, a writer in and from LA who has worked for websites like Grantland and MTV News.

Genevieve Hudson, "PRETEND WE LIVE HERE" w/ Henry Hoke and Myriam Gurba

Wed, 05 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Future Tense Books is thrilled to be publishing Pretend We Live Here by international writer Genevieve Hudson. In this debut collection of stories, Genevieve explores the idea of home and what it means to find one: in the body, in the world, in other people. Her characters are seekers, whose actions are influenced by their slippery identities and by the strange landscapes that surround them.

In “Boy Box,” a young woman yearns to test her luck with a wild punk girl crush. In “God Hospital,” a character journeys deep into the woods of Alabama in search of an infamous religious healer, hoping he can fix her teeth. In “Adorno,” someone in need of forgiveness crosses paths with a band of radical vegan activists and gets subsumed into their world. In “Dance!,” a recluse writes a breakthrough song for her pink dolphin, but the song’s success only drives her further away from society. Set in Amsterdam, the Pacific Northwest, and the Deep South, these stories hum with sexual tension, queerness, displacement, longing, humor, and dark nostalgia.

Hudson is joined in conversation by Henry Hoke (The Book of Endless Sleepovers) and Myriam Gurba, a writer, artist, and teacher based in Long Beach, California.

Fatimah Asghar, "IF THEY COME FOR US" w/ Morgan Parker and Sam Bailey

Tue, 04 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Orphaned as a child, Fatimah Asghar grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. These poems at once bear anguish, joy, vulnerability, and compassion, while also exploring the many facets of violence: how it persists within us, how it is inherited across generations, and how it manifests itself in our relationships. In experimental forms and language both lyrical and raw, Asghar seamlessly braids together marginalized people’s histories with her own understanding of identity, place, and belonging.

Fatimah is joined in conversation by Morgan Parker (There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé) and Sam Bailey, a writer and director from Chicago.

Virgie Tovar, "YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO REMAIN FAT" w/ Sarai Walker

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 13:30:00 -0700

A manifesto for the fat revolution: You Have the Right to Remain Fat.

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it—and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again. Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same.

Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and rejecting diet culture’s greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives.

Tovar is joined in conversation by Sarai Walker, author of the novel Dietland.

Lisa Locascio, "OPEN ME" w/ Karolina Waclawiak

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Roxana Olsen has always dreamed of going to Paris, and after high school graduation finally plans to travel there on a study abroad program—a welcome reprieve from the bruising fallout of her parents’ divorce. But a logistical mix-up brings Roxana to Copenhagen instead, where she’s picked up at the airport by Søren, a twenty-eight-year-old guide who is meant to be her steward. Instantly drawn to one another, Roxana and Søren’s relationship turns romantic, and when he asks Roxana to accompany him to a small town in the north of Denmark for the rest of the summer, she doesn’t hesitate to accept. There, Roxana’s world narrows and opens as she experiences fantasy, ritual, and the pleasures of her body, a thrilling realm of erotic and domestic bliss. She is so enamored by her cohabitation and intense connection with Søren that at first, she almost doesn’t notice that he does not give her a key to the apartment, leaving her locked in each day while he works in the library on his African-American
literature thesis.

As their relationship deepens, Søren’s temperament darkens, revealing his depression, anxiety and prejudices. Roxana finds herself increasingly drawn to a local outsider, in many ways Søren’s polar opposite, whom she learns is a Bosnian Muslim refugee from the Balkan War. When she decides to sneak out to find him her experiences open in a way she could never have imagined.

An erotic coming-of-age like no other, Lisa Locascio's Open Me is a daringly original and darkly compelling portrait of a young woman discovering her power, her sex, and her voice; and an incisive examination of xenophobia, migration, and what it means to belong.

Locascio is joined in conversation by Karolina Waclawiak, a screenwriter and author of two critically acclaimed novels, How to Get into the Twin Palms and The Invaders.

Joshua Mattson, "A SHORT FILM ABOUT DISAPPOINTMENT"

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 13:30:00 -0700

Set in a wildly imaginative and uncannily familiar world of nanny states and extreme rationing, Safe Zones and New Koreas, A Short Film About Disappointment is an uproarious story of trying to keep it together in turbulent times. Told in the form of 81 movie reviews, this is an ingenious novel about art and revenge, insisting on your dreams and hitting on your doctor, written by a Joshua Mattson, a debut novelist with a rotten wit and the imagination of a hyperactive child.

Jos Charles, "FEELD"

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

"i care so much abot the whord i cant reed." In feeld, Jos Charles stakes her claim on the language available to speak about trans experience, reckoning with the narratives that have come before by reclaiming the language of the past. In Charles's electrifying transliteration of English--Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect--what is old is made new again. "gendre is not the tran organe / gendre is yes a hemorage." "did u kno not a monthe goes bye / a tran i kno doesnt dye." The world of feeld is our own, but off-kilter, distinctly queer--making visible what was formerly and forcefully hidden: trauma, liberation, strength, and joy.

Urgent and vital, feeld composes a new and highly inventive lyrical narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.

Onnesha Rouychouduri, "THE MARGINALIZED MAJORITY" w/ Jenny Yang

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 13:30:00 -0700

The Marginalized Majority is an empowering take on living in the United States under the Trump administration, recounting each epic moment in the last year and reworking it to show the power of minority and grassroots organizations—both in our nation’s history and today—despite the clamoring of dissenting pundits. For Onnesha Roychoudhuri it is evident: to be a true ally, to see true change, we must fight for the rights of our most disenfranchised and never have we been more awake to their needs than now.

Rouychoudhuri is joined in conversation by Jenny Yang, former labor organizer turned standup comedian, writer and actor.

R.O. Kwon, "THE INCENDIARIES" w/ Jade Chang

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe.

Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is increasingly drawn into a religious group--a secretive extremist cult--founded by a charismatic former student, John Leal. He has an enigmatic past that involves North Korea and Phoebe's Korean American family. Meanwhile, Will struggles to confront the fundamentalism he's tried to escape, and the obsession consuming the one he loves. When the group bombs several buildings in the name of faith, killing five people, Phoebe disappears. Will devotes himself to finding her, tilting into obsession himself, seeking answers to what happened to Phoebe and if she could have been responsible for this violent act.

R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries is a fractured love story and a brilliant examination of the minds of extremist terrorists, and of what can happen to people who lose what they love most.

Kwon is joined by Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World.

Derek Milman, "SCREAM ALL NIGHT" w/ Naomi Grossman

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 13:30:00 -0700

Dario Heyward knows one thing: He’s never going back to Moldavia Studios, the iconic castle that served as the set, studio, and home to the cast and crew of dozens of cult classic B-horror movies. It’s been three years since Dario’s even seen the place, after getting legally emancipated from his father, the infamous director of Moldavia’s creature features.

But then Dario’s brother invites him home to a mysterious ceremony involving his father and a tribute to his first film—The Curse of the Mummy’s Tongue. Dario swears his homecoming will be a one-time visit. A way for him to get closure on his past—and reunite with Hayley, his first love and costar of Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun, a production fraught with real-life tragedy—and say good-bye for good. But the unthinkable happens—Dario gets sucked back into the twisted world of Moldavia and the horrors, both real and imagined, he’s left there.

With only months to rescue the sinking studio and everyone who has built their lives there, Dario must confront the demons of his past—and the uncertainties of his future. But can he escape the place that’s haunted him his whole life?

Derek Milman's Scream All Night is a darkly hilarious romp about growing up and finding your place in the world.

Milman is joined in conversation by Naomi Grossman, star of American Horror Story.

Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl, "RAD GIRLS CAN"

Fri, 31 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In Rad Girls Can, you'll learn about a diverse group of young women who are living rad lives, whether excelling in male-dominated sports like boxing, rock climbing, or skateboarding; speaking out against injustice and discrimination; expressing themselves through dance, writing, and music; or advocating for girls around the world. Each profile is paired with the dynamic paper-cut art that made the authors' first two books New York Times best sellers. Featuring both contemporary and historical figures, Rad Girls Can offers hope, inspiration, and motivation to readers of all ages and genders.

This episode features a conversation between authors Kate Schatz and Miriam Klein Stahl.

Megan Abbott, "GIVE ME YOUR HAND" w/ Tom Perrotta

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 13:30:00 -0700

Kit Owens harbored only modest ambitions for herself when the mysterious Diane Fleming appeared in her high school chemistry class. But Diane's academic brilliance lit a fire in Kit, and the two developed an unlikely friendship. Until Diane shared a secret that changed everything between them.

More than a decade later, Kit thinks she's put Diane behind her forever and she's begun to fulfill the scientific dreams Diane awakened in her. But the past comes roaring back when she discovers that Diane is her competition for a position both women covet, taking part in groundbreaking new research led by their idol. Soon enough, the two former friends find themselves locked in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse that threatens to destroy them both.

The author of Give Me Your Hand, Megan Abbott, is joined in conversation by Tom Perrotta, bestselling author of Election, Little Children, and The Leftovers.

Marina Shifrin, "30 BEFORE 30"

Thu, 30 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Something was nagging Marina Shifrin. As a freshly minted adult with student loan payments, a barely hospitable New York apartment, a “real” job she hated that paid her enough to get by if she also worked two other jobs, something needed to change. Over a few bottles of Two Buck Chuck, Marina and her friend each made lists of thirty things they’d do before the age of thirty. The first thing on Marina’s list was, “Quit My Shitty Job.” So she did, and just like that the List powered her through her twenties.

In 30 Before 30, Marina takes readers through her list and shares personal stories about achieving those goals. Ranging in scope from the simple (Ride A Bike Over the Brooklyn Bridge, Donate Hair) to the life-changing (Move to A Different Country, Become internet Famous), each story shows readers that we don’t all have it figured out, and that’s okay. But for Marina, she did become internet famous (a viral video of her quitting her job after moving to Asia has nearly 19 million views on You Tube) and now writes for Comedy Central’s hit show @Midnight, is also an in-demand stand up, and had a very popular Modern Love column published in the New York Times. None of that would have happened if she didn’t start her list that night. Thank you, Two Buck Chuck.

Laurie Kilmartin, "DEAD PEOPLE SUCK"

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

When stand-up comedian Laurie Kilmartin learned her dad was dying, she responded in the only way she knew how: with humor. In 2014, she made headlines by live tweeting her father’s time in hospice, bringing a touch of lightness to the devastating experience of losing her dad. Picked up by outlets like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and Today.com, Kilmartin’s hilarious tweets took the world by storm, and revealed the need for a comic interpretation of grief.

Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed, is an honest, irreverent, laugh-out- loud guide to coping with death and dying. Filled with relatable anecdotes and practical advice, Kilmartin voices all of the insensitive things you may have thought about your dying loved one, or wanted to scream at a well-meaning friend, but didn’t. She also brings heart and humor to a topic that is too often met with solemnity and silence, despite being as complicated, messy, and emotional as any other part of our human experience.

Chelsea Hodson, "TONIGHT I'M SOMEONE ELSE"

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 01:30:00 -0700

From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. In Tonight I'm Someone Else, she asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.

Starting with Hodson’s own work experience, which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre—including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission— Hodson expands outward, looking at the ways in which the human will submits, whether in the marketplace or in a relationship. Both tender and jarring, this collection is relevant to anyone who’s ever searched for what the self is worth.

Hodson is joined by Wendy C. Ortiz, author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook, and the dreamoir Bruja.

Ted Scheinman, "CAMP AUSTEN"

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:30:00 -0700

In a haze of morning crumpets and restrictive tights, Ted Scheinman delivers a hilarious and poignant survey of one of the most enduring and passionate literary coteries in history. Combining clandestine journalism with frank memoir, academic savvy with insider knowledge, Camp Austen is perhaps the most comprehensive study of Jane Austen that can also be read in a single sitting. Brimming with stockings, culinary etiquette, and scandalous dance partners, this is summer camp like you've never seen it before.

Maggie Nelson, "SOMETHING NICE, THEN HOLES" w/ Ali Liebegegott

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

These days / the world seems to split up / into those who need to dredge / and those who shrug their shoulders / and say, It’s just something / that happened.

While Maggie Nelson refers here to a polluted urban waterway, the Gowanus Canal, these words could just as easily describe Nelson’s incisive approach to desire, heartbreak, and emotional excavation in Something Bright, Then Holes. Whether writing from the debris-strewn shores of a contaminated canal or from the hospital room of a friend, Nelson charts each emotional landscape she encounters with unparalleled precision and empathy. Since its publication in 2007, the collection has proven itself to be both a record of a singular vision in the making as well as a timeless meditation on love, loss, and—perhaps most frightening of all—freedom.

Nelson is joined by Ali Liebegott, author of three books: The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, and Cha-Ching!

George Rodriguez, "DOUBLE VISION" w/ Josh Kun

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 15:00:00 -0700

Culled from a sprawling personal and professional archive of thousands, Double Vision marks the first time that George Rodriguez’s two lives, his career of double exposures, have been gathered into a single volume. Until now, only his images of Chicana/o protest and politics have ever appeared in published volumes, gallery, or museum exhibitions.

A student of Sid Avery and a contemporary of Dennis Hopper, but born in South Los Angeles and often working as the first Latino photographer in the room at a time when his own rights were on the line, Rodriguez is one of the great visual documentarians of Los Angeles and of the cultural complexities of Mexican-American life.

Rodriguez is joined in conversation with Josh Kun, a 2016 MacArthur Fellow and the winner of a 2018 Berlin Prize and a 2006 American Book Award.

"THE ANNOTATED BIG SLEEP" w/ Annotators

Mon, 27 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A masterpiece of noir, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep helped to define a genre and remains one of the most celebrated and stylish novels of the twentieth century. Now, this comprehensive, annotated edition offers a fascinating look behind the scenes of the novel, bringing the gritty and seductive world of Chandler’s iconic private eye Philip Marlowe into full color. Notes on the historical context of Chandler’s Los Angeles; excerpts from the author’s personal letters and source texts; explorations of the issues of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity that permeate the story; and important interpretations and clarifications enrich the reader’s understanding and situate the novel within the tradition of crime fiction that Chandler both built upon and made new.

The annotators have asked a group of LA authors to read favorite passages from the novel, followed by a talk by the annotators. Readers include Judith Freeman, David Ulin, Steph Cha, Kim Cooper and Gary Phillips.

Glynnis MacNicol, "NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS" w/ Ann Friedman

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 13:37:14 -0700

Over the course of her fortieth year, which this memoir chronicles, Glynnis MacNicol embarks on a revealing journey of self-discovery that continually contradicts everything she'd been led to expect. Through the trials of family illness and turmoil, and the thrills of far-flung travel and adventures with men, young and old (and sometimes wearing cowboy hats), she is forced to wrestle with her biggest hopes and fears about love, death, sex, friendship, and loneliness. In doing so, she discovers that holding the power to determine her own fate requires a resilience and courage that no one talks about, and is more rewarding than anyone imagines.

Intimate and timely, No One Tells You This is a fearless reckoning with modern womanhood and an exhilarating adventure that will resonate with anyone determined to live by their own rules.

MacNicol is joined by journalist and cultural critic Ann Friedman.

James Pogue, "CHOSEN COUNTRY" w/ David Garrett Byars

Sun, 26 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In a remote corner of Oregon, James Pogue found himself at the heart of a rebellion. Granted unmatched access by Ammon Bundy to the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Pogue met ranchers and militiamen ready to die fighting the federal government.

He witnessed the fallout of communities riven by politics and the danger (and allure) of uncompromising religious belief. The occupation ended in the shooting death of one rancher, the imprisonment of dozens more, and a firestorm over the role of government that engulfed national headlines.

In a raw and restless narrative that roams the same wild terrain as his literary forebears Edward Abbey and Hunter S. Thompson, Pogue's Chosen Country examines the underpinnings of this rural uprising and struggles to reconcile diverging ideas of freedom, tracing a cultural fault line that spans the nation.

Pogue is joined by David Garrett Byars, who made his directorial debut at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival with No Man's Land, a documentary about the 2016 occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Leslie Schwartz, "THE LOST CHAPTERS" w/ Bernadette Murphy

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

In 2014, Leslie Schwartz was sentenced to 90 days in Los Angeles County Jail for a DUI and battery of an officer. She served her time at the tail end of a 414-day relapse into alcohol addiction after more than a decade of sobriety. During that year and seven weeks, she was in what she describes as a “chronic state of blackout”--The Lost Chapters.

Incarceration might have ruined her, if not for the stories that comforted her while she was locked up-- both the artful tales in the books she read while there, and, more immediately, the stories of her fellow inmates. With classics like Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to contemporary accounts like Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, Schwartz's reading list is woven together with visceral recollections of her daily humiliations faced in the county jail system. Through the stories of others—whether rendered on the page or whispered in a jail cell—she learned powerful lessons about how to banish shame, use guilt for good, level her grief, and find the lost joy and magic of her astonishing life.

Schwartz is joined in conversation by Bernadette Murphy, author of Harley and Me: Embracing Risk on the Road to a More Authentic Life.

Amber Tamblyn, "ANY MAN" w/ Janet Fitch

Fri, 24 Aug 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Ambler Tamblyn's Any Man follows six men: an English teacher, an unsuccessful standup comedian, a bi-racial web designer; a high school student, an alt-right media personality, and a transgender man. While one man’s experience launches him into the spotlight as an unlikely activist and voice for justice, another’s trauma is told through every voice but his own, a damning commentary on how we abuse and erase the stories and experiences of survivors.

In Any Man, the serial rapes act as a mirror, reflecting prejudices from the media and society back towards each victim as they grapple with guilt, shame, fear, PTSD, anger, and confusion about their attack. Journalists and people on social media hound and harass the victims, some going so far as to question whether it is even physically possible for a woman to rape a man.

Soon the culture feels equally as complicit and violent as the actual predator herself. The power of this novel comes from the victims’ resistance of the narrative thrust upon them, refusing to be plot devices, but actual agents of action, central, and ever-present as they summon the strength and courage to speak out.

Tamblyn is joined in conversation by Janet Fitch, author of the novels White Oleander, an Oprah Book Club selection, Paint It Black, and most recently The Revolution of Marina M.

Zoé Samudzi, "BLACK AS RESISTANCE"

Thu, 23 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Over the course of United States history, resistance against oppression and the gains made from various struggles for everyone's equality have often been Black led. However, liberal politics and the lack of strong leftist political power are two problems impeding the continued progress of Black America. Expanding on their original essay "The Anarchism Of Blackness," Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson make the case for a new program of transformative politics for Black Americans, one rooted in an anarchistic framework likened to the Black experience itself. This is not a compromising book that negotiates with intolerance. As Black as Resistance is a declaration for everyone who is ready to continue progressing towards liberation for all people.

Ottessa Moshfegh, "MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION"

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 10:30:00 -0700

To say Ottessa Moshfegh's star is on the rise is an understatement—and not quite accurate. She is most definitely already in the constellation. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, is the story of a young woman’s efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on a pharmaceutical-fueled extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists.

It’s the year 2000 in New York City, our narrator is a model-beautiful Columbia graduate living off her inheritance in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? In Moshfegh’s universe, plenty. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful year-long trip spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, the novel is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

Jim Pascoe and Heidi Arnhold, "COTTONS" w/ Cecil Castellucci

Tue, 21 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

To her neighbors in the Vale of Industry, Bridgebelle is an ordinary rabbit. All day long, she toils at the carrot factory. After a hard day, she returns home to care for her ailing auntie. And whenever she's out, she's watchful of the murderous foxes who prey on her kind.

But Bridgebelle is not ordinary—she's a rabbit with talents beyond her own understanding. Using cha, the mysterious fuel that powers her world, she can change everyday objects into thokchas—magical, transforming works of art. Bridgebelle makes thokchas because they're beautiful. But there are those in her world who want to harness her powers and turn her art into a weapon.

Cottons authors Jim Pascoe and Heidi Arnhold are joined in conversation by Cecil Castellucci, author of Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, The Year of the Beasts, Tin Star, and the Eisner nominated Odd Duck.

Paddy Hirsch, "THE DEVIL'S HALF MILE"

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Paddy Hirsch began researching the history of the stock market and beginnings of its regulation—but ended up swept into the fascinating time period he discovered. Hirsch turned his research into a page-turning and atmospheric new novel of suspense. The Devil's Half Mile brings together the actual historic settings and people of 1799 New York, including Alexander Hamilton, William Duer, and more—along with a twisty murder mystery.

Nick Dybek, "THE VERDUN AFFAIR" w/ Julia Fierro

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A sweeping, romantic, and profoundly moving novel, set in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and Los Angeles in the 1950s, about a lonely young man, a beautiful widow, and the amnesiac soldier whose puzzling case binds them together even as it tears them apart.

From the bone-strewn fields of Verdun to the bombed-out cafés of Paris, from the riot-torn streets of Bologna to the riotous parties of 1950s Hollywood, Nick Dybek's The Verdun Affair is a riveting tale of romance, grief, and the far-reaching consequences of a single lie.

Dybek is in conversation with Julia Fierro, author of the novels The Gypsy Moth Summer and Cutting Teeth.

Glen David Gold, "I WILL BE COMPLETE"

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 15:30:00 -0700

Glen David Gold was raised rich, briefly, in southern California at the end of the go-go 1960s. But his father's fortune disappears, his parents divorce, and Glen falls out of his well-curated life and into San Francisco at the epicenter of the Me Decade: the inimitable '70s. Gold grows up with his mother, among con men and get-rich schemes. Then, one afternoon when he's twelve, she moves to New York without telling him, leaving him to fend for himself. I Will Be Complete is the story of how Gold copes, honing a keen wit and learning how to fill in the emotional gap.

Recorded 6/28/18.

Lydia Millet, "FIGHT NO MORE" w/ Zandy Hartig

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 13:38:44 -0700

In her first story collection since Love in Infant Monkeys, which became a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Lydia Millet explores what it means to be home. Nina, a lonely real-estate broker estranged from her only relative, is at the center of a web of stories connecting fractured communities and families. She moves through the houses of L.A.’s wealthy elite and finds men and women both crass and tender, vicious and desperate. With wit and intellect, Millet offers profound insight into human behavior from the ordinary to the bizarre: strong-minded girls are beset by the helpless, myopic executives are tormented by their employees, and beastly men do beastly things.

Millet is in conversation with Zandy Hartig, an actress known for her roles in Children's Hospital, Wanderlust, Role Models, and The Ten.

Pat Morrison, "DON'T STOP THE PRESSES!"

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Real News on real paper. Newspapers—a free press—were the cornerstone of the Founding Fathers’ working model of democracy. And they remain so. Whether read at the kitchen table, in the boardroom, or on a laptop on the subway, newspapers—as has been said of them for more than a half century—are “the first draft of history.” Veteran journalist Pat Morrison proves it, and then some, in the pages of Don’t Stop the Presses! Truth, Justice, and the American Newspaper.

Bryan Lee O'Malley and Leslie Hung, "SNOTGIRL"

Tue, 14 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Fashion! Murder! Allergies?! Snotgirl, the acclaimed comic book and graphic novel series from co-creators Bryan Lee O'Malley (Scott Pilgrim) and acclaimed artist Leslie Hung returns with Snotgirl Volume 2: California Screaming. Snotgirl features the adventures of an LA-based fashion blogger whose glamorous life unravels due to severe allergies (and, to be fair, a possible murder for which she may be responsible).

O'Malley and Hung are joined by Jen Wang, a cartoonist, author and illustrator living in Los Angeles.

Clarice Lispector's "THE CHANDELIER" w/ Magdalena Edwards

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Fresh from the enormous success of her debut novel Near to the Wild Heart, Clarice Lispector let loose something stormier with The Chandelier. In a body of work renowned for its potent idiosyncratic genius, The Chandelier in many ways has pride of place. While on one level simply the story of a woman’s life, The Chandelier’s real drama lies in Lispector’s attempt “to find the nucleus made of a single instant … the tenuous triumph and the defeat, perhaps nothing more than breathing.” The Chandelier pushes Lispector’s lifelong quest for that nucleus into deeper territories than any of her other amazing works.

Translator Magdalena Edwards stopped by Skylight to discuss Lispector's seminal work.

Porochista Khakpour, "SICK"

Mon, 13 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Sick is Porochista Khakpour’s arduous, emotional journey—as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems—through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman’s life.

Khakpour is in conversation with Mira Gonzalez, a writer and illustrator from Los Angeles.

"SANTA CRUZ NOIR" Contributors

Sun, 12 Aug 2018 15:00:00 -0700

Akashic Books continues its groundbreaking series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each story is set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book.

Joining us are editor Susie Bright, Jon Bailiff, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Seana Graham, Naomi Hirahara, Lou Mathews, Liza Monroy, and Tommy Moore.

PEN AMERICA MEET AND GREET

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

PEN America presents the 2018 Emerging Voices Fellows, alumni, and mentors in conversation for the 2019 application cycle at Skylight Books.

The evening will include summer cocktails, short readings, a fellowship overview, and audience Q&A. Featuring Jubi Arriola-Headley, Ron Dowell, Natalie Mislang Mann, Angela M. Sanchez, Francisco Uribe, and more!

TINY CRIMES: Contributors

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Tiny Crimes gathers leading and emerging literary voices to tell tales of villainy and intrigue in only a few hundred words. From the most hard-boiled of noirs to the coziest of mysteries, with diminutive double crosses, miniature murders, and crimes both real and imagined, Tiny Crimes rounds up all the usual suspects, and some unusual suspects, too. With illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook and flash fiction by Carmen Maria Machado, Benjamin Percy, Amelia Gray, Adam Sternbergh, Yuri Herrera, Julia Elliott, Elizabeth Hand, Brian Evenson, Charles Yu, Laura van den Berg, and more, Tiny Crimes scours the underbelly of modern life to expose the criminal, the illegal, and the depraved.

Joining us are contributors: Brian Evenson, Adam Hirsch, and Amelia Gray

Lucas Mann, "CAPTIVE AUDIENCE"

Sat, 04 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In Lucas Mann's trademark vein—fiercely intelligent, self-deprecating, brilliantly observed, idiosyncratic, personal, funny, and infuriating—Captive Audience is an appreciation of reality television wrapped inside a love letter to his wife, with whom he shares the guilty pleasure of watching "real" people bare their souls in search of celebrity. Captive Audience resides at the intersection of popular culture with the personal; the exhibitionist impulse, with the schadenfreude of the vicarious, and in confronting some of our most suspect impulses achieves a heightened sense of what it means to live an authentic life and what it means to love a person.

Mann is in conversation with television critic Joy Press.

Marisha Pessl, "NEVERWORLD WAKE"

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Once upon a time, back at Darrow-Harker School, Beatrice Hartley and her five best friends were the cool kids, the beautiful ones. Then the shocking death of Jim--their creative genius and Beatrice's boyfriend--changed everything.

One year after graduation, Beatrice is returning to Wincroft--the seaside estate where they spent so many nights sharing secrets, crushes, plans to change the world--hoping she'll get to the bottom of the dark questions gnawing at her about Jim's death. But as the night plays out in a haze of stilted jokes and unfathomable silence, Beatrice senses she's never going to know what really happened.

Then a mysterious man knocks on the door. Blithely, he announces the impossible: time for them has become stuck, snagged on a splinter that can only be removed if the former friends make the harshest of decisions. Now Beatrice has one last shot at answers...and at life.

And so begins Marisha Pessl's Neverworld Wake.

Elizabeth Gorcey, "READ, READ AND READ"

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Read, Read and Read is the third book in the Liv On Life (LOL) Series. Liv’s love of books proves that a book can be a friend and make a friend! In Going to the Park (the first book in the series) Liv and Bowie (her Boxer doggie) convince their Mom and Dad to put down the technology and head out together for a fun day at the park! And in Green is Good (the second book) Liv and Bowie go on an adventure to an organic farm where they discover the best way to grow Liv’s favorite veggies, and the healthy benefits of eating ‘green’!

The Liv On Life Book Series was inspired by Elizabeth Gorcey’s daughter, Olivia, and the joy she has brought to the lives of her mother and others. In encouraging Olivia to embrace, cherish and use her authentic voice, Elizabeth has realized how much parents can, and must, learn from the purity and honesty of a child's perspective.

Joshua Wheeler, "ACID WEST"

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Acid West is a rollicking trip through the muck of American myths that have settled in our country’s underbelly. Following the footsteps of John Jeremiah Sullivan and Eula Biss, yet displaying an antic energy and freewheeling imagination entirely his own, Joshua Wheeler is a nonfiction virtuoso with a preternatural talent for dissecting the uncanniness of our cultural moment. The first collection of his sui generis essays, Acid West, is an outstanding debut that’s sure to become a cult classic.

Wheeler is in conversation with Brian Phillips, former staff writer for Grantland and a former senior writer for MTV News.

Aja Gabel, "THE ENSEMBLE"

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Aja Gabel is a literary star on the rise. She holds both an MFA and Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing and was a Writing Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Center. Her essay, “The Sparrows in France,” earned her an honorable mention in Best American Essays 2015 and her short story “Necessary Animals” was named a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2017, edited by Meg Wolitzer.

Adding to this list of literary accomplishments, Gabel is a trained classical cellist who has performed with competitive quartets and chamber groups across the country. Gabel brilliantly marries her two artistic passions in The Ensemble, an entrancing debut novel about the enduring relationship between four extraordinary young musicians.

Joining Gabel in conversation is Maggie Shipstead, author of the novels Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements.

Michelle Tea, "AGAINST MEMOIR"

Wed, 01 Aug 2018 04:30:00 -0700

The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas, a doomed lesbian gang, recovering alcoholics, and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human, figures populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we often try to forget. In the process of excavating and documenting these lives, Michelle Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways.

Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, Tea blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own in Against Memoir. She turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the extent to which art preys on life.

Tea is in conversation with Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts.

UC RIVERSIDE: Students and Professors

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Join us as professors and students from UC Riverside’s Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts MFA read from their work. Readers include: Allison Benis White, Steve Erickson, Nora Woolley, Aleksandra Krzywicka, Kate Burns, Carissa Atallah, Carley Besl.

Jeff Sweat, "MAYFLY"

Tue, 31 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Jemma has spent her life scavenging tools and supplies for her tribe in the their small enclave outside what used to be a big city. Now she’s a teen, and old enough to become a Mama. Making babies is how her people survive—in Jemma’s world, life ends at age seventeen.

Survival has eclipsed love ever since the Parents died of a mysterious plague. But Jemma’s connection to a boy named Apple is stronger than her duty as a Mama. Forced to leave, Jemma and Apple are joined in exile by a mysterious boy who claims to know what is causing them to die. The world is crumbling around them, and their time is running out. Life is short. Can they outlive it?

Mayfly author James Sweat is joined in conversation by Story Worthy Media producer Christine Blackburn.

Francisca Lia Block, "THE THORN NECKLACE"

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In this long-anticipated guide to the craft of writing, Francisca Lia Block offers an intimate glimpse of an artist at work and a detailed guide to help readers channel their own experiences and creative energy. Sharing visceral insights and powerful exercises, she gently guides us down the write-to-heal path, revealing at each turn the intrinsic value of channeling our experiences onto the page.

Named for the painting by Frida Kahlo, who famously transformed her own personal suffering into art, The Thorn Necklace offers lessons on life, love, and the creative process.

Block is in conversation with Elgin James,a writer and director best known for the film Little Birds.

Sheila Heti, "MOTHERHOOD"

Sun, 29 Jul 2018 13:09:27 -0700

In Motherhood, Sheila Heti asks what is gained and what is lost when a woman becomes a mother, treating the most consequential decision of early adulthood with the candor, originality, and humor that have won Heti international acclaim and made How Should A Person Be? required reading for a generation.

In her late thirties, when her friends are asking when they will become mothers, the narrator of Heti’s intimate and urgent novel considers whether she will do so at all. In a narrative spanning several years, casting among the influence of her peers, partner, and her duties to her forbearers, she struggles to make a wise and moral choice. After seeking guidance from philosophy, her body, mysticism, and chance, she discovers her answer much closer to home.

Heti is in conversation with Sarah Manguso, author of four book-length essays, a story collection, and two poetry collections.

Hallie Bateman and Suzy Hopkins, "WHAT TO DO WHEN I'M GONE"

Sat, 28 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

What to Do when I'm Gone is an instruction manual for getting through life without a mom. The death of one’s mother, is one of life’s key turning points. Combining Suzy Hopkin's wit and heartfelt advice with Hallie Bateman's quirky and colorful style, What to Do when I'm Gone is the illustrated instruction manual for getting through life without one's mom. It's also a poignant look at loss, love, and taking things one moment at a time. By turns whimsical, funny, touching, and above all pragmatic, it will leave readers laughing and teary-eyed. And it will spur conversations that enrich family members' understanding of one another.

MariNaomi, "LOSING THE GIRL"

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In Losing the Girl, the first book in the Life on Earth trilogy, Eisner-nominated cartoonist MariNaomi looks at life through the eyes of four suburban teenagers: early romance, fraying friendships, and the traces of a mysterious—maybe otherworldly—disappearance. Different chapters focus on different characters, each with a unique visual approach.

Jamel Brinkley, "A LUCKY MAN"

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In the nine expansive, searching stories of A Lucky Man, fathers and sons attempt to salvage relationships with friends and family members, and confront mistakes made in the past. An imaginative young boy from the Bronx goes swimming with his group from day camp at a backyard pool in the suburbs, and faces the effects of power and privilege in ways he can barely grasp. A teen intent on proving himself a man through the all-night revel of J’Ouvert can’t help but look out for his impressionable younger brother. And at a capoeira conference, two brothers grapple with how to tell the story of their family, caught in the dance of their painful, fractured history. This stunning debut by Jamel Brinkley reflects the tenderness and vulnerability of black men and boys whose hopes sometimes betray them, especially in a world shaped by race, gender, and class—where luck may be the greatest fiction of all.

Brinkley is in conversation with Justin Torres, author of We the Animals.

Melissa Broder, "THE PISCES"

Wed, 25 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

The Pisces is a story about falling in obsessive love with a merman: a figure of Sirenic fantasy whose very existence pushes Lucy to question everything she thought she knew about love, lust, and meaning in the one life we have. With The Pisces, Melissa Broder combines hilarious frankness with pulse-racing eroticism, emotional complexity, and stark vulnerability. Underneath her addictively wry and unpretentious voice hums the unexpected truth of womanhood, bodies, trauma, and heartbreak in a debut that swells with grace, levity, and humanity.

Broder is in conversation with Mish Barber-Way, a writer and musician based in Los Angeles, CA.

Poets at Work, NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Tue, 24 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Members of Poets At Work read new and enticing poems and will discuss the formal structures that shape them.

Independent Bookstore Day, featuring THE EXPOSITION REVIEW

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The Exposition Review editors celebrate the launch of Vol. III: “Orbit” to help commemorate Independent Bookstore Day.

Robert Gordon, "MEMPHIS RENT PARTY"

Sat, 21 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Memphis: the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll, soul music capital, and home of the blues, this fabled city has played a major role in American music history. In his new book Memphis Rent Party: The Blues, Rock & Soul in Music’s Hometown, celebrated writer and documentary filmmaker Robert Gordon taps into the lesser-known characters of Memphis who have inspired and influenced popular music, from the 1970s into the present.

With interwoven stories and profiles, Memphis Rent Party begins where the greatest hits end. Gordon charts his own musical coming-of-age as he befriends blues legend Furry Lewis, Rolling Stones’ accompanist Jim Dickinson, and the high priest of indie rock, Alex Chilton. He mulls the tragedy of Jeff Buckley’s fatal swim, chronicles the power struggle to profit off singer-songwriter Robert Johnson’s legacy after his mysterious early death, and sips homemade whiskey at revolutionary blues guitarist Junior Kimbrough’s churning house parties. Gordon’s march through the city’s famed recording studios and juke joints captures the spirit of Memphis and illuminates its musical legacy that lives on today.

As with the rent parties from which the book takes its name—people gathering to hear live music, dance, and chip in to help a friend in hard times—Memphis Rent Party offers moments of celebration in the face of tragedy, optimism when the wolf is at the door. Gordon finds inspiration in life’s bleakness, art in the shadows of society, and revels in the individualism of these music legends.

Alex S. Vitale, "THE END OF POLICING"

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Recent years have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression--most dramatically in Ferguson, Missouri, where longheld grievances erupted in violent demonstrations following the police killing of Michael Brown. Among activists, journalists, and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself. "Broken windows" practices, the militarization of law enforcement, and the dramatic expansion of the police's role over the last forty years have created a mandate for officers that must be rolled back.

The End of Policing attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice--even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.

Sloane Crosley, "LOOK ALIVE OUT THERE"

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Exactly ten years after her debut essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, introduced a strikingly original, genre-resuscitating voice to the world, the bestselling author Sloane Crosley returns to the personal essay right when we need her most. Look Alive Out There is a collection of sixteen new essays, each one brimming with Crosley’s trademark wit and observation.

Leslie Jamison, "THE RECOVERING"

Wed, 18 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and journalistic reportage, The Recovering turns our understanding of the traditional addiction narrative on its head, demonstrating that the story of recovery can be every bit as electrifying as the train wreck itself. Leslie Jamison deftly excavates the stories we tell about addiction--both her own and others'--and examines what we want these stories to do, and what happens when they fail us.
All the while, she offers a fascinating look at the larger history of the recovery movement, and at the literary and artistic geniuses whose lives and works were shaped by alcoholism and substance dependence, including John Berryman, Jean Rhys, Raymond Carver, Billie Holiday, David Foster Wallace, and Denis Johnson, as well as brilliant figures lost to obscurity but newly illuminated here.

For the power of her striking language and the sharpness of her piercing observations, Leslie Jamison has been compared to such iconic writers as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. Yet her utterly singular voice also offers something new. With enormous empathy and wisdom, Jamison has given us nothing less than the story of addiction and recovery in America writ large, a definitive and revelatory account that will resonate for years to come.

Michelle Dean, "SHARP"

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Women in media must still, unfortunately, fight for their due and today they call out mansplainers on Twitter, wield power on the opinion pages, and start a movement with a single hashtag. But before that, there were women writers who shouted down the prevailing narrative of sexism and nepotism by taking to the printed page alone. Acclaimed literary and cultural critic Michelle Dean has expertly rendered a portrait of ten such revolutionary writers from the 1920s to the 1990s in her debut work, Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion. We all know their names: Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, Janet Malcolm. These women are united by what Dean terms as “sharpness,” the ability to cut to the quick with precision of thought and wit, a claiming of power through writing rather than position.

Sharp is a vibrant and rich depiction of the intellectual beau monde of twentieth-century New York, where gossip-filled parties at night gave out to literary slanging-matches in the pages of the Partisan Review or the New York Review of Books as well as a considered portrayal of how these women came to be so influential in a climate where women were treated with derision by the critical establishment. Dean traces the lives of these extraordinary women as they intertwine and cut through the cultural and intellectual history of America, recounting friendships and rivalries, absent fathers and fractured families, professional triumphs and personal disappointments. Dean notes the essays and books that made their names, how their styles changed over the course of their careers, and how their work was received by their contemporaries.

Dean is joined in conversation by Carina Chocano, frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Elle.

Jonathan Ames, "YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE"

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Joe has witnessed things that cannot be erased. A former FBI agent and Marine, his abusive childhood has left him damaged beyond repair. He has completely withdrawn from the world and earns his living rescuing girls who have been kidnapped into the sex trade.

When he's hired to save the daughter of a corrupt New York senator held captive at a Manhattan brothel, he stumbles into a dangerous web of conspiracy, and he pays the price. As Joe's small web of associates are picked off one by one, he realizes that he has no choice but to take the fight to the men who want him dead.

Brutal and redemptive in equal measure, You Were Never Really Here is a toxic shot of a thriller, laced with corruption, revenge and the darkest of inner demons.

Joe Donnelly, "L.A. MAN"

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

During his many years writing for publications such as LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Slake, Surfer's Journal and more, Joe Donnelly has driven to Texas with Wes Anderson, shot pool with Sean Penn, surfed with Chris Malloy, sparred (verbally) with Christian Bale, gone on a date with Carmen Electra, and listened to tall tales told by Werner Herzog. These profiles, which also include encounters with Drew Barrymore, Lou Reed, Craig Stecyk, the wolf OR7, the Z-boys and others who have indelibly stamped the cultural landscape, drill through the facade of fame to get at the core humanity behind the myth-making. L.A. Man manages to show Los Angeles' biggest export in a light in which it is rarely seen.

Mark Sarvas, "MEMENTO PARK"

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

After receiving an unexpected call from the Australian consulate, Matt Santos becomes aware of a painting that he believes was looted from his family in Hungary during the Second World War. To recover the painting, he must repair his strained relationship with his harshly judgmental father, uncover his family history, and restore his connection to his own Judaism. Along the way to illuminating the mysteries of his past, Matt is torn between his doting girlfriend, Tracy, and his alluring attorney, Rachel, with whom he travels to Budapest to unearth the truth about the painting and, in turn, his family.

As his journey progresses, Matt’s revelations are accompanied by equally consuming and imaginative meditations on the painting and the painter at the center of his personal drama, Budapest Street Scene by Ervin Kálmán. By the time Memento Park reaches its conclusion, Matt’s narrative is as much about family history and father-son dynamics as it is about the nature of art itself, and the infinite ways we come to understand ourselves through it.

Of all the questions asked by Mark Sarvas’s Memento Park—about family and identity, about art and history—a central, unanswerable predicament lingers: How do we move forward when the past looms unreasonably large?

Joining Sarvas in conversation with Janet Fitch, author of the novels White Oleander, an Oprah Book Club selection, Paint It Black, and most recently The Revolution of Marina M.

Beth Pickens, "ART WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE"

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

As a teenager visiting the Andy Warhol Museum, Beth Pickens realized the importance of making art. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to empowering working artists. Intimate yet practical, Your Art Will Save Your Life helps artists build a sustainable practice while navigating the world of MFAs, residencies, and institutional funding.

Pickens is joined in conversation by Ali Liebegott (The Beautifully Worthless, The IHOP Papers, Cha-Ching!) and Michelle Tea (Valencia, How to Grow Up, Black Wave).

OTIS COLLEGE MFA WRITING PROGRAM

Mon, 16 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Join us for a special evening as students from Otis College or Art and Design's MFA Writing Program share their poetry and prose.

Sarah Andersen, "HERDING CATS"

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 16:30:00 -0700

Sarah Andersen’s hilarious third collection, Herding Cats, features the two time Goodreads Choice Award favorite continuing to poke fun at herself and her insecurities, her cat obsession, and the inherent humor in the daily life of a young woman.

Sarah’s imaginative and right-on-target comics explore the complexities of being an introvert, a millennial, a young woman, and an artisit with a distinctive, quirky, and honest style. Readers will relish her latest installment with a warm feeling of solidarity and familiar recognition, as she depicts the challenges in navigating real life and the Internet-infused world of today in a humorous, refreshingly candid, and poignant manner.

Amy Spalding, "THE SUMMER OF JORDI PEREZ"

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 14:41:45 -0700

A hilarious, nuanced LGBTQ+ young adult novel about a teen trying to make waves in the fashion industry by running a plus-size fashion blog and rocking her dream internship—until she falls for her competition, Jordi.

Seventeen, fashion-obsessed, and gay, Abby Ives has always been content playing the sidekick in other people’s lives. While her friends and sister have plunged headfirst into the world of dating and romances, Abby’s been happy to focus on her plus-size style blog and her dreams of taking the fashion industry by storm. When she lands a great internship at her favorite boutique, she’s thrilled to take the first step toward her dream career. Then she falls for her fellow intern, Jordi Perez. Hard. And now she’s competing against the girl she’s kissing to win the coveted paid job at the end of the internship.

Bruce Holbert, "WHISKEY"

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Whiskey is the story of two brothers, their parents, and three wrecked marriages, a searching book about family life at its most distressed—about kinship, failure, enough liquor to get through it all, and ultimately a dark and hard-earned grace. With the gruff humor of Cormac McCarthy and a dash of the madcap irony of Charles Portis, and a strong, authentic literary voice all his own, Bruce Holbert traverses the harsh landscape of America’s northwestern border and finds a family unlike any you’ve met before.

Holbert is joined by Elizabeth McCracken, author of five books: the story collections Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry and Thunderstruck & Other Stories, the novels The Giant’s House and Niagara Falls All Over Again, and the memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination.

A.G. Lombardo, "GRAFFITI PALACE"

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

It’s August 1965 and Los Angeles is scorching. Americo Monk, a street-haunting aficionado of graffiti, is frantically trying to return home to the makeshift harbor community (assembled from old shipping containers) where he lives with his girlfriend, Karmann. But this is during the Watts Riots, and although his status as a chronicler of all things underground garners him free passage through the territories fiercely controlled by gangs, his trek is nevertheless diverted.

Embarking on an exhilarating, dangerous, and at times paranormal journey, Monk crosses paths with a dizzying array of representatives from Los Angeles subcultures, including Chinese gangsters, graffiti bombers, witches, the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, and others. Graffiti Palace is the story of a city transmogrified by the upsurge of its citizens, and Monk is our tour guide, cataloging and preserving the communities that, though surreptitious and unseen, nevertheless formed the backbone of 1960s Los Angeles.

With an astounding generosity of imagery and imagination, Graffiti Palace heralds the birth of a major voice in fiction. A. G. Lombardo sees the writings on our walls, and with Graffiti Palace he has provided an allegorical paean to a city in revolt.

David Correia and Tyler Wall, "POLICE: A FIELD GUIDE"

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Join author/activists David Correia and Tyler Wall for an in-depth discussion on the language that we use to talk about policing and police reform in the hopes that understanding the historical context of these terms will help us move beyond the limits of police reform and toward a society free from police violence and free from police entirely.

Police: A Field Guide is an illustrated handbook to the methods, mythologies, and history that animate today’s police. It is a survival manual for encounters with cops and police logic, whether it arrives in the shape of officer friendly, Tasers, curfews, non-compliance, or reformist discourses about so-called bad apples. In a series of short chapters, each focusing on a single term, such as the beat, order, badge, throw-down weapon, and much more, authors David Correia and Tyler Wall present a guide that reinvents and demystifies the language of policing in order to better prepare activists—and anyone with an open mind—on one of the key issues of our time: police brutality. In doing so, they begin to chart a future free of this violence—and of police.

Junot Diaz, "ISLANDBORN"

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

From New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Díaz comes a debut picture book about the magic of memory and the infinite power of the imagination. “Every kid in Lola's school was from somewhere else. Hers was a school of faraway places.” So when Lola's teacher asks the students to draw a picture of where their families immigrated from, all the kids are excited. Except Lola. She can't remember The Island—she left when she was just a baby. But with the help of her family and friends, and their memories—joyous, fantastical, heartbreaking, and frightening—Lola's imagination takes her on an extraordinary journey back to The Island. As she draws closer to the heart of her family's story, Lola comes to understand the truth of her abuela's words: “Just because you don't remember a place doesn't mean it's not in you.” Gloriously illustrated and lyrically written, Islandborn is a celebration of creativity, diversity, and our imagination's boundless ability to connect us—to our families, to our past and to ourselves.

Lynell George, "AFTER/IMAGE"

Sat, 14 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame by Lynell George is the result of this award-winning journalist’s years of contemplating and writing about the arts, culture, and social issues of Los Angeles, always with an emphasis on place and the identity of the people who live in—or leave—L.A. As a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly, Lynell George explored place after place that makes the city tick, met person after person, and encountered the cumulative heart of the city.

George’s contemplations about Los Angeles are deeply in sync with the Angel City Press mantra: no one book can capture the scope of the city—a place with many stories to tell. And yet, with After/Image: Los Angeles Outside the Frame, Lynell George proves every mantra can be re-examined.

Planaria Price, "CLAIMING MY PLACE"

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Claiming My Place is the true story of a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by escaping to Nazi Germany and hiding in plain sight.

Meet Barbara Reichmann, once known as Gucia Gomolinska: smart, determined, independent, and steadfast in the face of injustice. A Jew growing up in predominantly Catholic Poland during the 1920s and '30s, Gucia studies hard, makes friends, falls in love, and dreams of a bright future. Her world is turned upside down when Nazis invade Poland and establish the first Jewish ghetto of World War II in her town of Piotrkow Trybunalski. As the war escalates, Gucia and her family, friends, and neighbors suffer starvation, disease, and worse. She knows her blond hair and fair skin give her an advantage, and eventually she faces a harrowing choice: risk either the uncertain horrors of deportation to a concentration camp, or certain death if she is caught resisting. She decides to hide her identity as a Jew and adopts the gentile name Danuta Barbara Tanska. Barbara, nicknamed Basia, leaves behind everything and everyone she has ever known in order to claim a new life for herself.

Ramona Ausubel and Michael Andreasen

Fri, 13 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Awayland

Some of them previously published in The New Yorker and The Paris Review, this collection of eleven delightfully idiosyncratic and elegantly structured stories spans the globe and showcases Ramona Ausubel’s unique ability to tackle the “frustrations and fantasies of being alive” (Publishers Weekly). Her subtle touch of magic used to confront the mysteries of death, love and longing make the stories “weird and wonderful” (New York Times) and perfect for fans of Kelly Link, Karen Russell and Helen Oyeyemi. Ausubel, however, continues to occupy a space as a writer that is all her own—delivering stories that manage to be both “highly imaginative and philosophical in scope” (Refinery29), wildly unconventional yet universally resonant, darkly comic yet tender and soulful. Ausubel’s uncanny ability to simultaneously amuse, mesmerize, move and inspire, makes Awayland a deeply satisfying read that will linger with you in powerful ways.

The Seabeast Takes a Lover

Observe: the Fiction of the Future. See it carry our elders away to the ocean. Note how it pulls wires from our alien brains. Watch as a ship is slowly pulled under determined by an amorous kraken. Meet the happy, headless girl. Visit the funhouse that is Michael Andreasen's wild, brilliant mind. Find out how surprisingly familiar these bizarre scenarios feel; how true to life; and how delighted you are to find that the carnival barker's voice has drawn you into a ride you didn't realize you wanted to go on. Squeeze the guard rails, and whoop your way through the curves. Then, get back in line and go again.

Cheston Knapp, "UP UP, DOWN DOWN"

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

The subjects Cheston Knapp, the managing editor of Tin House and an exceptional new voice in the literary community, examines in Up Up, Down Down are wildly different and equally engaging: From skateboarding camp to local professional wrestling to UFO enthusiasts, beer pong in fraternity basements, a neighbor’s murder, fathers, community and nostalgia. Taken together, these sharp, observant essays chronicle Knapp’s coming of age and tackle the Big Questions of life. Knapp deftly explores the hazards of becoming who you are.

Knapp’s remarkable essays will simultaneously make you cry from laughter and from an earth-shattering realization about what it means to be human. His sentences can soar into lyricism and descend into the most commonplace absurdities in the same breath. Much like David Foster Wallace’s collection Consider the Lobster, these essays are for the everyday reader and for the literati alike.

Farrah Penn, "TWELVE STEPS TO NORMAL"

Thu, 12 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

Eight months ago, Kira's father was sent to rehab for alcoholism and she was forced to move in with her aunt across the country. She left behind everything--her best friends, her boyfriend, her dance team, and the life she'd known and loved. Now her father's done with rehab and wants her back home. But the normal life she once knew proves elusive--her friends are distant, one of them is dating her ex, and her dad brought home three strangers from rehab to live with them.

Is there any way to get back the life she once had? Kira embarks on her own twelve-step program to try to find some normalcy. But somewhere along the way, she learns that while some broken things can't be put back exactly the way they were, they can be repaired, and sometimes made even stronger.

Life, love, and loss come crashing together in this achingly authentic debut by Farrah Penn that will catch you and hold you close till the very end.

Penn is in conversation with Nicola Yoon, the author of The Sun Is Also a Star and Everything, Everything.

Mallory Ortberg, "THE MERRY SPINSTER"

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Sinister and inviting, familiar and alien all at the same time, The Merry Spinster updates traditional children's stories and fairy tales with elements of psychological horror, emotional clarity, and a keen sense of feminist mischief. Unfalteringly faithful to its beloved source material, The Merry Spinster also illuminates the unsuspected, and frequently, alarming emotional complexities at play in the stories we tell ourselves, and each other, as we tuck ourselves in for the night.

Author Mallory Ortberg is joined in conversation by Michelle Dean, a journalist, critic, and the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle’s 2016 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

Mr. Fish, "AND THEN THE WORLD BLEW UP"

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

What do you get when you cross a fistful of pens and an enormous stack of blank paper with somebody who resents the sweet-smelling muzzle of good manners and polite conversation, will go to his grave insisting that phuck is not a four-letter word, has never been able to hold a 9 to 5 job for more than a handful of meager months, who regularly permits himself the crude grace of giving a shit about absolutely everything, and who delights in always saying the wrong thing at the right time in contempt of every expectation that the naked truth is at all obscene?

You get And Then the World Blew Up, a collection of cartoons, illustrations, personal essays and culture-war correspondence from an author who's just trying to defuse the apocalyptic bomb that is the miracle of our Creation. Drawn, painted, and collaged in Mr. Fish’s many virtuosic styles, And Then the World Blew Up is an eloquent take-no- prisoners response to American political life.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, "WRESTLING WITH THE DEVIL"

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Written in the early 1980s and never before published in America, this compelling prison memoir gives readers a rare glimpse into the hidden story behind one of Ngũgĩ’ wa Thiong'o's most famous novels. Beginning literally half an hour before Ngũgĩ’s release on December 12, 1978, Wrestling with the Devil: A Prison Memoir recounts both the intense drama and painful challenges of writing fiction under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

Joy Press, "STEALING THE SHOW"

Tue, 10 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In Stealing the Show: How Women are Revolutionizing Television, journalist and television critic Joy Press celebrates the women who broke through male-dominated Hollywood and helped change the face of television forever.

Drawing on scores of interviews with key participants in this revolution, Stealing the Show is a revelatory story about the women who changed not just what we see on television but the culture in which we live.

Wallace Shawn, "NIGHT THOUGHTS"

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Writer and actor Wallace Shawn's probing, honest, and self-critical take on civilization and its discontents.

Although he is guided and inspired by the people he respects, and despite the insufficiency of his knowledge and experience—an insufficiency shared by most (or all) other humans, Wallace Shawn can’t see any real alternative to trying to figure out his own answers to the most essential questions about the world he lives in.

Having recently passed the age of seventy, before which he found it difficult to piece together more than a few fragments of understanding, Shawn would like to pass on anything he's learned before death or dementia close down the brief window available to him, but he may not be ready yet.

Elizabeth Flock, "THE HEART IS A SHIFTING SEA"

Mon, 09 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

We may view India as a country steeped in, and perhaps constrained by, tradition, yet in the twenty-first century the pervasive influence of Western culture touches the lives of all ethnicities, classes, and religions. In her enveloping work of narrative nonfiction, The Heart is a Shifting Sea, journalist Elizabeth Flock, a reporter for PBS NewsHour, offers a penetrating look into three contemporary Mumbai marriages that reveals the surprising diversity and complexity of marital life in the largest metropolis of that evolving nation.

Alec Byrne, "LONDON ROCK"

Sun, 08 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

What happened on the music scene in 1960s and 1970s London was nothing short of a cultural revolution. At the center of this heyday was photographer and teenager Alec Byrne, who, because of his talent and tenacity, landed a job capturing rock and roll’s greatest legends for various British media outlets. After ten years, Byrne packed up his archive and moved to Los Angeles where these photos remained in Byrne’s garage, sequestered from the public for close to forty years.

Now, Insight Editions will publish London Rock: The Unseen Archive, a striking compilation of Byrne’s never-before-seen images documenting an unprecedented time in music history. From The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and David Bowie to Jimi Hendrix, The Who and The Doors, Byrne’s unique portraits, rare concert performance shots, and intimate candids, offer a distinct perspective of rock stars celebrated and known around the world. With a signature style that fuses artistry and a documentarian’s eye, Byrne’s collection is a coveted back-stage pass to many rock stars’ rise to stardom. Containing more than 250 pages of untouched and uncompromised high-quality photos, this recently unearthed collection of rock and roll history brings the era into stunning focus, painting an evocative picture of an inimitable time and place.

Kim Purcell, "THIS IS NOT A LOVE LETTER"

Sun, 08 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

This Is Not a Love Letter, by award-winning author Kim Purcell, is a both intimate and immediate love story examining race, loss, and mental health in small town America.

Every Friday since they started dating, Chris has written Jessie a love letter. Then, days before graduation, popular, attractive, college-bound Chris vanishes. Now Jessie is writing Chris a letter of her own to tell him everything that’s happening while he’s gone. Jessie searches for answers. The police think he's run away, but she doesn't believe it. He disappeared while going for a run along the river—the same place where some boys beat him up just three weeks ago. Chris is one of the only black kids in a depressed paper mill town, and Jessie is terrified of what might have happened.

As the police investigate, Jessie and others speak up about the harassment Chris experienced and the danger he could be in. There are people in Jessie's town who are infuriated by the suggestion that a boy like Chris would be a target of violence. They threaten Jessie, and smear Chris’s character. As tensions escalate, Jessie must face her own fear and guilt. What really happened to Chris?

Tender and unflinching, This Is Not a Love Letter is an emotionally devastating examination of love, life, and the ties that bind, and what happens to those left behind when they break.

"CULPRITS" Anthology Reading

Sun, 08 Jul 2018 00:30:00 -0700

A hard-bitten crew of professional thieves pull off the score of their lives, coming away with seven million in cash. Like any heist there are some unforeseen complications; a hitch or two and a couple of bodies drop. But despite this, they get away with the swag. Enough to change their lives, make new identities, start fresh. But that’s when the real trouble begins...In this unique, riveting, linked anthology, we follow each culprit as they go their separate ways after the heist, and watch as this perfect score ends up a perfect nightmare. Featuring stories penned by acclaimed writers Brett Battles, Gar Anthony Haywood, Zoë Sharp, Manuel Ramos, Jessica Kaye, Joe Clifford and David Corbett, Culprits shows that sometimes the end means things are just getting started...

Christopher Zeischegg, "BODY TO JOB"

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Former porn star Christopher Zeischegg (aka Danny Wylde), gathers six years of writing into one definitive collection. A memoir of an adult film career from beginning to end and a life lived after, marked by post-porn dysphoria. Interspersed with select fiction, Zeischegg writes about youthful naivete, sex worker love, pro-porn activism, disenchantment, and violence. Body to Job is the ex-porn star's third book, and his most comprehensive to date—an explicit work of vulnerability, longing, terror, and life.

Morgan Jerkins, "THIS WILL BE MY UNDOING"

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

As one of the fiercest and most powerful critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins is a rising star in the literary world. Praised by such icons as Roxane Gay and Alexander Chee, Jerkins establishes herself in This Will Be My Undoing as an insightful and brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough and controversial subjects. Not just a personal essay collection, Jerkins mines her own experience growing up black and female for moments that lead into bigger, more universal discussions about urgent issues facing black women today, such as the paradox of black female sexuality, dating men who say they “don’t see color”, and being objectified, silenced, and marginalized in ways that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality.

Set against the backdrop of a divided nation under the Trump administration when racism and misogyny are on full public display, Jerkins masterfully tackles real issues about intersectionality, diversity, and privilege. Whether Jerkins is writing about the highly problematic Rachel Dolezal, “good hair,” being a black visitor in Russia, or her complex relationship with her own physical body, the portrait that emerges in This Will Be My Undoing is deeply intimate yet entirely universal.

Tavi Gevinson, "ROOKIE ON LOVE"

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

Tavi Gevinson returns to start the New Year off right with Rookie on Love, an anthology about the heart's most powerful emotion. Featuring exclusive, never-before-seen essays, poems, comics, and interviews from contributors like Jenny Zhang, Emma Straub, Hilton Als, Janet Mock, John Green, Rainbow Rowell, Gabourey Sidibe, and many more, this collection is the perfect reflection on love in its many forms.

Tee Franklin, "BINGO LOVE"

Fri, 06 Jul 2018 07:30:00 -0700

When Hazel Johnson and Mari McCray met at church bingo in 1963, it was love at first sight. Forced apart by their families and society, Hazel and Mari both married young men and had families. Decades later, now in their mid-’60s, Hazel and Mari reunite again at a church bingo hall. Realizing their love for each other is still alive, what these grandmothers do next takes absolute strength and courage. From Tee Franklin (Nailbiter’s The Outfit, Love is Love) and Jenn St-Onge (Jem & The Misfits), Bingo Love is a touching story of love, family, and resiliency that spans over 60 years.

Franklin is in conversation with award-winning television and comic book writer Amanda Deibert.

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, "CALL ME ZEBRA"

Thu, 05 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi has been hailed as an author “on the verge of developing a whole new literature movement” (Bustle) and, now, her new novel, Call Me Zebra, affirms her “brilliant, demented” (Kirkus) genius as she explores the ways in which we cope with grief, our unresolved histories, and the tangled depths of love.

More than a decade after fleeing Iran during the height of the Iraq War, Zebra, now an orphan, must face life in exile alone, with literature as her only armor. To reconcile her past and uncertain future, Zebra embarks on a literary pilgrimage, leaving America to retrace her family’s dislocation. As she traverses the vast expanse of the Western Mediterranean, she’s guided by the sage words of Cervantes,Borges, Stendhal, and Dali. But her journey back to Iran quickly derails in Barcelona when Ludo, a stalwart realist mystified by her intensity, enters the picture and the two begin a sexy, if fraught, affair.

Joanna Angel, "NIGHT SHIFT"

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

From the sinfully delicious mind of Joanna Angel, founder of adult company BurningAngel and award-winning adult actress and director, comes Night Shift: A Choose-Your-Own Erotic Fantasy!

Your mission: In a sketchy and sexy world filled with tissues, gallons of lube, sex toys, tiger print, and swinger parties, help Taryn choose her way as she learns what happens in this small, unexpectedly kinky town. From butt plugs to cross-dressing truckers to being held-up at gunpoint over dildos, experience this fun and sexy journey along with Taryn, as she goes from shy and sweet to skilled and empowered—but how she gets there is up to you!

Dahlia Schweitzer, "GOING VIRAL"

Wed, 04 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In Going Viral, Dahlia Schweitzer probes outbreak narratives in film, television, and a variety of other media, putting them in conversation with rhetoric from government authorities and news organizations that have capitalized on public fears about our changing world. She identifies three distinct types of outbreak narrative, each corresponding to a specific contemporary anxiety: globalization, terrorism, and the end of civilization. Schweitzer considers how these fears, stoked by both fictional outbreak narratives and official sources, have influenced the ways Americans relate to their neighbors, perceive foreigners, and regard social institutions.

Deborah Reed, "THE DAYS WHEN BIRDS COME BACK"

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

n her latest novel, The Days When Birds Come Back, Deborah Reed weaves an unforgettable tale of redemption and perseverance that questions what it means to love in times of grief and sorrow. Still raw from her divorce and the recent loss of her beloved grandparents, June returns to the Oregon coast and the house that holds her dark memories. With plans to sell her grandparents’ historic bungalow, she hires Jameson, a stranger from out of town, to restore it over the summer. But upon meeting, June and Jameson realize they have much more to contend with than an old house.

Propelled by Reed’s “gorgeous and wise prose” (Cheryl Strayed), The Days When Birds Come Back follows June and Jameson as they confront their harrowing, intertwined pasts. As the walls of June’s childhood home come down, long-buried secrets are exhumed. Jameson’s marriage is crumbling under the weight of a traumatic loss that took place years ago in June’s town, and June is grappling with the guilt of her troubled adolescence and father’s elusive death. Alone in the sweltering heat of the summer, their chemistry is undeniable. But can they find the forgiveness they need in time to build a future together? Scintillating and brimming with hope, Reed’s gripping story will keep readers on the edge of their seats. “An emotionally satisfying novel” (Publishers Weekly) set against the backdrop of Oregon’s charming, rustic coast, The Days When Birds Come Back is the perfect book to escape with this winter.

Tom Macher, "HALFWAY"

Tue, 03 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In his late teens Tom Macher rebelled against a world that seemed stacked against him. Raised in a broken family and estranged from an absentee father suffering with AIDS, Macher turned to alcohol to escape the painful loneliness of his reality.

Macher captures the trials of sobriety—suicide, death, recovery—and the unusual beauty that forms in the bonds of those who suffer. In visceral, striking prose, he introduces the unforgettable characters he meets along the way, from a former child actor, a young teen struggling with schizophrenia, a tough-love addiction counselor, a sex-addicted social worker, to Matt O, who became Macher’s loyal friend and wingman. Raw, disarming, frenetic, and subversive, Halfway is a brutally honest portrait of the world of down-and-out recovering alcoholics, and a story of how, in their darkest hour, these men create the bonds that form a family.

Sandra Allen, "A KIND OF MIRRACULAS PARADISE"

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 10:30:00 -0700

In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story About Schizophrenia, Sandra Allen tells her uncle's story faithfully to his account. Eight years in the making, but with an urgent message for our moment, this electrifying work is groundbreaking in its style and its spirit. It’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets House of Leaves, with the literary soul of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.

Allen is joined by Amanda Chicago Lewis, who writes a biweekly column for Rolling Stone.

Sara Saedi, "AMERICANIZED"

Mon, 02 Jul 2018 04:30:00 -0700

In Americanized, bright-eyed, straight-A student Sara Saedi uncovered a terrible secret at age thirteen: she was breaking the law simply by living in the United States. Only two years old when her parents fled Iran, she didn’t learn of her undocumented status until her older sister wanted to apply for an after-school job, but couldn’t because she didn’t have a Social Security number.

Fear of deportation kept Sara up at night, but it didn’t keep her from being a teenager. She desperately wanted a green card, along with clear skin, her own car, and a boyfriend. Americanized follows Sara’s progress toward getting her green card, but that’s only a portion of her experiences as an Iranian-“American” teenager. From discovering that her parents secretly divorced to facilitate her mother’s green card application to learning how to tame her unibrow, Sara pivots gracefully from the terrifying prospect that she might be kicked out of the country at any time to the almost-as- terrifying possibility that she might be the only one of her friends without a date to the prom.

Americanized combines the timely topic of immigration with a poignant and engaging voice that young readers won’t be able to put down!

Saedi is joined by Talia Gonzalez, actor and writer for television shows such as Teen Wolf and iZombie.

Scott McClanahan, "THE SARAH BOOK"

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 15:15:00 -0700

The Sarah Book is master storyteller Scott McClanahan's portrait of new love, young heartbreak, the coming together of families, and families coming undone. As much as this book takes place in Appalachia, it also takes place in the universe. Its landscapes are the highways and basements and dirty rooms where we are eternally condemned and redeemed. McClanahan has written a love letter to divorce, in a language somewhere between Romantic poetry and a distilled mountain twang. The Sarah Book is an unforgettable tale told by one of today's finest writers.

Damien Ober, "DOCTOR BENJAMIN FRANKLIN'S DREAM AMERICA"

Sun, 01 Jul 2018 13:10:44 -0700

Damien Ober's Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America is a blazingly original fictional history that weaves twenty-first century technology into a saddle-punk retelling of the American Revolution. It is 1777. Hours after a top-secret Congressional sub-committee uploads the Articles of Confederation, a mysterious internet plague breaks loose in the cloud, killing any user who accesses a networked device. Seven in ten Americans are dead, the internet is abandoned.

Seizing the moment, the British take control of New York and Philadelphia, scattering what little remains of the rebellion. Just when all seems lost, George Washington reappears from off-the- grid to pin the British army at Yorktown. Independence is won, but with the countryside in ruins and internet commerce impossible, the former colonies teeter on the brink of collapse. Meeting in secret, a faction of the Founding Fathers code a new error-proof operating system designed to stabilize the cloud and
ensure everlasting American prosperity.

Not everyone is happy with the new format. Believing the draconian regulations of the new OS a betrayal of the hard-fought revolution, Thomas Jefferson organizes a feisty, small-government opposition to fight the overreach of Washington's Federalist administration. Their most valuable weapon is Doctor Benjamin Franklin's Dream America, a new open-source social networking portal which will revolutionize representative government, return power to the people, and make Congress and the Presidency irrelevant . . .

Ober is joined by author Ben Loory, author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus.

Paul Briggs and Benson Shum

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

In the latest edition of the Walt Disney Animation Studios Artist Showcase series Catch My Breath, acclaimed animation talent Paul Briggs (Big Hero 6, Frozen, Zootopia) delivers a heartwarming and clever story about a boy who’s lost his breath: Losing it, trying to find it, even trying to buy it. But how he comes to get it back is sure to bring a smile to readers of all ages faces.

A young hippo, who’s a bit of a scardy-cat when it comes to swimming, will have her nerves and skills tested—in the most humerous and heartfelt of way—in the latest addition to the Disney Animation Artist Showcase picturebook series, Holly's Day at the Pool by Benson Shum.

OBJECT LESSONS with Evan Kindley, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, and Anna Leahy

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

Bloomsbury's Object Lessons is a series of concise, collectable, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Each book starts from a specific inspiration: an historical event, a literary passage, a personal narrative, a technological innovation-and from that starting point explores the object of the title, gleaning a singular lesson or multiple lessons along the way. Featuring contributions from writers, artists, scholars, journalists, and others, the emphasis throughout is lucid writing, imagination, and brevity. Object Lessons paints a picture of the world around us, and tells the story of how we got here, one object at a time.

Join us for an evening with three Object Lessons authors: Evan Lindley (Questionnaire), Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow (Personal Stereo) and Anna Leahy (Tumor).

Leni Zumas, "RED CLOCKS"

Sat, 30 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Life, liberty and property: for every embryo.

This is the effect of the Personhood Amendment, passed by a new president with big ideas. Not only does the Personhood Amendment outlaw abortion (and threaten anyone involved in the act with a charge of second-degree murder), it also prohibits in vitro fertilization and adoption by unmarried persons. In Leni Zumas’s Red Clocks, four women in Newville, Oregon, are left to navigate this new landscape: Ro, a biographer desperate to have a baby while writing the untold story of a female polar explorer; Susan, a mother trapped in suburbia with an extremely difficult husband; Mattie, an adopted teenager who finds herself pregnant and unwilling to allow her unborn child to wonder why it wasn’t wanted; and Gin, a forest-dwelling mender whose “witchcraft” somehow weaves its way into each woman’s life.

As the aftershocks of the Personhood Amendment wreak havoc in the small Oregon town, Gin is suddenly arrested for medical malpractice; and, in yet another echo of the past, a modern-day witch hunt ensues. As the trial begins, the town is faced with questions: What is a woman for? Who controls her body? What does it mean to become a mother? What is your place in the world if you choose not to have a child?

In a novel both vividly revolutionary and achingly familiar, Leni Zumas invites the reader to reexamine preconceived notions of power in a society where women’s bodies are controlled by the government. Through the eyes of high school teachers, stay-at-home mothers, aspiring marine biologists, and town misfits, Zumas wondrously paints the story of modern women reckoning with deeply conservative values.

Zumas is in conversation with Porochista Khakpour, author of the memoir Sick.

Sam Graham-Felsen, "GREEN"

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

Boston, 1992. David Greenfeld is one of the few white kids at the Martin Luther King Middle School. Everybody clowns him, girls ignore him, and his hippie parents won't even buy him a pair of Nikes, let alone transfer him to a private school. Unless he tests into the city's best public high school--which, if practice tests are any indication, isn't likely--he'll be friendless for the foreseeable future.

Nobody's more surprised than Dave when Marlon Wellings sticks up for him in the school cafeteria. Mar's a loner from the public housing project on the corner of Dave's own gentrifying block, and he confounds Dave's assumptions about black culture: He's nerdy and neurotic, a Celtics obsessive whose favorite player is the gawky, white Larry Bird. Together, the two boys are able to resist the contradictory personas forced on them by the outside world, and before long, Mar's coming over to Dave's house every afternoon to watch vintage basketball tapes and plot their hustle to Harvard. But as Dave welcomes his new best friend into his world, he realizes how little he knows about Mar's. Cracks gradually form in their relationship, and Dave starts to become aware of the breaks he's been given--and that Mar has not.

Infectiously funny about the highs and lows of adolescence, and sharply honest in the face of injustice, Sam Graham-Felsen's debut Green is a wildly original take on the struggle to rise in America.

Krista Suh, "DIY RULES FOR A WTF WORLD"

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 10:00:00 -0700

On January 21, 2017, millions of protestors took part in the Women's March, and many of them created a "sea of pink" when they wore knitted pink "pussyhats" in record numbers. The pussyhat swiftly found its place on the cover of TIME and the New Yorker, and it ultimately came to symbolize resistance culture. Creator of the Pussyhat Project, Krista Suh, took an idea and built a worldwide movement and symbol in just two months. But like so many women, Krista spent years letting her fears stop her from learning to live by her own rules.

Now in DIY Rules for a WTF World, Krista Suh shares the tools, tips, experiences, "rules," and knitting patterns she uses to get creative, get bold, and change the world. From learning how to use your own intuition to decide which rules are right for you to finding your inner-courage to speak up fearlessly; from finding what your passions are (this might surprise you!) to dealing with the squelchers out there, DIY Rules for a WTF World not only inspires you to demolish the patriarchy, but also enables you to create your own rules for living, and even a movement of your own, all with gusto, purpose, and joy.

Colin Winnette, "THE JOB OF THE WASP"

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school’s dark heart. And that’s when the corpses start turning up.

A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and a murder mystery all in one, Colin Winnette's The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.

Winnette is joined in conversation by Amelia Gray, author of Isadora.

Chris McCormick, "DESERT BOYS"

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

A luminous debut, Chris McCormick's Desert Boys traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when these transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire to escape and the hunger to belong. This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley “Kush” Kushner's world—the family, friends, and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new life in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts of town; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician who once served as his school’s Confederate mascot; Kush’s mother, an immigrant from Armenia; and Kush himself, introspective and queer.

McCormick is in conversation with Brit Bennett, author of The Mothers.

Susanna Fogel, "NUCLEAR FAMILY"

Thu, 28 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

“Your Grandma Rose Has Some Questions about Your Interracial Relationship”

So starts one of the letters in the dynamic debut novel Nuclear Family: A Tragicomic Novel in Letters by filmmaker and New Yorker contributor Susanna Fogel about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents. Told entirely in letters to Julie, a heroine we never meet, we get to know her and her increasingly unique family through their check-ins: their thank-you notes, letters of condolence, family gossip, and good old-fashioned familial passive-aggression.

Tom Gauld, "BAKING WITH KAFKA"

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

In his inimitable style, British cartoonist Tom Gauld has opened comics to a crossover audience and challenged perceptions of what the medium can be. Noted as a "book-lover's cartoonist," Gauld's weekly strips in The Guardian, Britain's most well-regarded newspaper, stitch together the worlds of literary criticism and pop culture to create brilliantly executed, concise comics. Simultaneously silly and serious, Gauld adds an undeniable lightness to traditionally highbrow themes. From sarcastic panels about the health hazards of being a best-selling writer to a list of magical items for fantasy writers (such as the Amulet of Attraction, which summons mainstream acceptance, Hollywood money, and fresh coffee), Gauld's cartoons are timely and droll--his trademark British humour, impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style sets him apart from the rest. In Baking with Kafka, he proves this with one witty, sly, ridiculous comic after another.

Gauld is in conversation with Mark Frauenfelder, a research director at the Institute for the Future, founding editor of Wired.com, and the author of eight books.

Fran Krause, "THE CREEPS"

Wed, 27 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Illustrator, animator, teacher, and comic artist Fran Krause has touched a collective nerve with his wildly popular web comic series–and subsequent New York Times best-selling book–Deep Dark Fears. In follow-up The Creeps he brings readers more of the creepy, funny, and idiosyncratic fears they love illustrated in comic form–such as the fear that your pets will tell other animals all your embarrassing secrets, or that someone uses your house while you’re not home–as well as two longer comic short-stories about ghosts.

Santiago Gamboa, "RETURN TO THE DARK VALLEY"

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

Return to the Dark Valley travels between European cities scarred by terrorism that have turned increasingly xenophobic and Latin American landscapes that carry their own sense of danger enveloped in “new world” promise.

Written in the sparkling prose and with the masterful suspense that have made Santiago Gamboa an international literary sensation, Return to the Dark Valley is a richly imagined portrait of a turbulent world where liberation is found in perpetual movement and determined exploration.

Scott Esposito, "THE DOUBLES"

Tue, 26 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Part memoir-through-film, part inquiry into the effect art has on our lives, Scott Esposito's The Doubles is a passionate, exquisitely written examination of 14 films that have made him.

Retelling one film per year, and covering 20 years of Esposito's life from 1996 - 2016, The Doubles shows the development via film of a critical intelligence and a maturing human being. From classic cinema like A Clockwork Orange to cosmological documentaries like A Brief History of Time to offbeat works like Koyaanisqatsi and major contemporary fare like Boyhood, Esposito's book inquires into the possibilities of a medium that has made us all.

Esposito is in conversation with Rebekah Weikel, a writer and editor living in LA.

Karl Geary, "MONTPELIER PARADE"

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 12:00:00 -0700

Montpelier Parade is just across town, but to Sonny it might as well be a different world. Working with his father in the garden of one of its handsome homes one Saturday, he sees a back door easing open and a beautiful woman coming down the path toward him. This is Vera, the sort of person who seems destined to remain forever out of his reach. Hoping to cast off his loneliness and a restless sense of not belonging--at high school, in his part-time job at the butcher shop, and in the increasingly suffocating company of his own family--Sonny drifts into dreams of a different kind of life. A series of intoxicating encounters with Vera lead him to feel he has fallen in love for the first time, but why does her past seem as unknowable as her future? Unfolding over a bright, rain-soaked Dublin spring, Karl Geary's Montpelier Parade is a rich, devastating debut novel about desire, grief, ambition, art, and the choices we must make alone.

Geary is in conversation with JT Petty, an American film director, author, and video game writer.

Clara Parkes, "A STASH OF ONE'S OWN"

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

A Stash of One’s Own: Knitters on Loving, Living With, and Letting Go of Yarn is an addictive-to-read anthology that celebrates yarn—specifically, the knitter’s reputation for acquiring it in large quantities and storing it away in what’s lovingly referred to as a “stash.”

The stories in Clara Parke's A Stash of One’s Own represent and provide validation for knitters’ wildly varying perspectives on yarn, from holding zero stash, to stash-busting, to stockpiling masses of it—and even including it in estate plans. These tales are for all fiber artists, spinners, dyers, crafters, crocheters, sheep farmers, shop owners, beginning knitters to yarn experts, and everyone who has ever loved a skein too hard to let it go.

Robin Sloan, "SOURDOUGH"

Sun, 24 Jun 2018 07:30:00 -0700

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.

Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.

Leavened by the same infectious intelligence that made Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore such a sensation, while taking on even more satisfying challenges, Sourdough marks the triumphant return of a unique and beloved young writer.

Augustus Rose, "THE READYMADE THIEF"

Sat, 23 Jun 2018 15:31:31 -0700

Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run, alone on the streets of Philadelphia. After taking the fall for a rich friend, Lee reluctantly accepts refuge in the Crystal Castle--a cooperative of homeless kids squatting in an austere, derelict building. But homeless kids are disappearing from the streets in suspicious numbers, and Lee quickly discovers that the secret society's charitable facade is too good to be true. She finds an unexpected ally in Tomi, a young artist and hacker whose knowledge of the Internet's black market is rivaled only by his ability to break into and out of buildings. From abandoned aquariums to highly patrolled museums to the homes of vacationing Philadelphians, Tomi and Lee can always chart a way to the next, perfect hide-out.

But the harder Lee tries to escape into the unmapped corners of the city, the closer she unwittingly gets to uncovering the disturbing agenda of the very men who pull the strings of the secret society she's hoped to elude, a group of fanatics obsessed with the secrets encoded in the work of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp. What these men want is more twisted than anything Lee could've imagined, and they believe Lee holds the key to it all. Augustus Rose's The Readymade Thief heralds the arrival of an astoundingly imaginative and propulsive new voice in fiction for fans of Marisha Pessl and Ernest Cline.

Rose is in conversation with Tom Bissell, author of Apostle: Travel Among the Tombs of the Twelve.

Eleanor Henderson, "THE TWELVE-MILE STRAIGHT"

Mon, 18 Jun 2018 17:25:00 -0700

Eleanor Henderson’s bestselling debut novel Ten Thousand Saints was named one of the New York Times Book Review’s ten best books of the year and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. It was deemed “fierce, devoted and elegiac,” and Ann Patchett said, “Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination.” In her forthcoming novel, The Twelve-Mile Straight, Henderson boldly returns to the page with a story inspired by those she heard about the small town in South Georgia her father grew up in, and combines the emotional acuity of her earlier work with a fresh take on big, important themes.

Henderson is joined by Edan Lepucki, author of the novels California and Woman No. 17.

Daniel Sweren-Becker, "THE EQUALS"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 17:25:15 -0700

What happens when your own government turns against you? The Equality Team continues to round up and subject The Ones—the 1% of the American population who were genetically engineered in vitro—to a vaccine that will level the playing field. Desperate to save her boyfriend James from this fate, Cody flees into the wild to seek
assistance from a shadowy rebel group dedicated to equal rights for the Ones at any cost.

But when she grows closer to a radical named Kai, she's brought deeper into the fold, only to realize the group's leader has a secret plan more dangerous than Cody could have imagined—something that could change the course of the Ones' future.

In The Equals, themes of justice, discrimination and terrorism mix with actual science to create a frightening version of our near future in Daniel Sweren-Becker's action-packed sequel to The Ones.

Alistair McCartney, "THE DISINTEGRATIONS"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 17:15:12 -0700

“I know nothing about death, absolutely nothing,” asserts the narrator of Alistair McCartney's inventive autobiographical novel. Yet he can’t stop thinking about it. Detached from life in Los Angeles and his past in Australia, uncomfortable around other humans, he researches death on the Internet; mulls over distant and intimate stories of suicides, serial killers, and “natural deaths”; and wanders about LA’s Holy Cross Cemetery. He’s looking for answers, all the while formulating his own disquieting philosophies.

Within this dizzying investigation into the mystery of death is another mystery: who is the companion igniting these memories? This enigmatic novel blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction, story and eulogy, poetry and obituary. Wry yet somber, astringent yet tender, The Disintegrations confronts both the impossibility of understanding death and the timeless longing for immortality.

Mr. McCartney is joined by David Francis, author of Agapanthus Tango, Stray Dog Winter, and Wedding Bush Road.

Demetri Martin, "IF IT'S NOT FUNNY, IT'S ART"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 16:58:45 -0700

Demetri Martin, comedian and New York Times bestselling author of This Is a Book and Point Your Face at This, is back with another collection of hilarious drawings and jokes.

Packed with hundreds of new illustrations and one-liners, If It's Not Funny, It's Art is a peek into the ingenious mind of author/comedian/filmmaker Demetri Martin. Exploring the meaning of art, life, death, ennui and the elegant fart joke with a sensibility all its own, this collection is a perfect gift for word lovers, art appreciators and fans of Demetri's unique brand of comedy. Sure to make you laugh out loud, and if it doesn't, then you know it's art.

Tod Goldberg, "GANGSTER NATION"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 16:46:35 -0700

It’s been two years since the events of Gangsterland, when legendary Chicago hitman Sal Cupertine disappeared into the guise of Las Vegas Rabbi David Cohen. Now, in September of 2001, everything’s coming up gold for David—but Sal wants out. He only needs to make it through the High Holidays, and he’ll have enough money to slip away, grab his wife and kid, and start fresh.

Across the country, former FBI agent Matthew Drew is now running security for an Indian Casino outside of Milwaukee, spending his off-time stalking members of The Family, looking for vengeance for the murder of his former partner. So when Sal’s cousin stumbles into the casino one night, Matthew takes the law into his own hands— again—touching off a series of events that will have Rabbi Cohen running for his life, trapped in Las Vegas, with the law, society, and the post-9/11 world closing in around him.

With the wit and gritty glamour that defines his writing, Tod Goldberg traces how the things we most value in our lives—home, health, even our spiritual lives—have been built on the enterprises of criminals.

Mr. Goldberg is joined by David L. Ulin, author of Ear to the Ground.

Matthew Zapruder, "WHY POETRY"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 16:23:45 -0700

In Why Poetry, award-winning poet Matthew Zapruder takes on what it is that poetry--and poetry alone--can do. Zapruder argues that the way we have been taught to read poetry is the very thing that prevents us from enjoying it. In lively, lilting prose, he shows us how that misunderstanding interferes with our direct experience of poetry and creates the sense of confusion or inadequacy that many of us feel when faced with it.

Mr. Zapruder is joined by David L. Ulin, author of the novel Ear to the Ground.

Attica Locke, "BLUEBIRD, BLUEBIRD"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 15:58:32 -0700

Attica Locke considers herself a Texan-in-exile, one with a complicated relationship to the truck-stop towns up and down Highway 59 in East Texas, where she sets Bluebird, Bluebird. It also happens to be where Attica’s entire family, on both sides, can trace their roots back to slavery. It’s a place that gave Attica’s family the values that mattered, even as it consistently broke their hearts. Many black Americans left towns just like those where Attica’s family lived to move north. But Attica will tell you that her family and their lives, then and now, are defined by the very fact that they stayed.

Everything that staying in East Texas meant for Attica and her family—and the intersection of that meaning with the current political climate—was the inspiration for Bluebird, Bluebird. Darren Mathews, a Texas Ranger with a tarnished badge, faces the issues that plague every black American who encounters law enforcement, never knowing quite when it’s safe to follow the rules. Mathews soon finds himself in the center of a murder mystery that turns the classic southern script about race inside out.

Anne Gisleson, "THE FUTILITARIANS"

Sun, 17 Jun 2018 15:38:54 -0700

For most people, early middle age doesn’t include a philosophical reading list and a deep dive into existentialism. But if Anne Gisleson’s new memoir, The Futilitarians, is anything to go on, it probably should.

By turns intellectual, poignant, playful, and deeply funny, The Futilitarians explores both the personal—from Anne’s Catholic upbringing in New Orleans, to her father’s death, to the suicides of her sisters—and the universal, the questions that mankind has grappled with for millennia. What is the correct way to live, to experience loss, to grow old? And what does it mean to be human?

Anne is joined by Matt Sumell, whose stories have appeared in Esquire, The Paris Review, and others. He is also a recipient of a Glenn Schaeffer Award and an Arlene Cheng Fellowship.

BEN LOORY READS FROM HIS NEW BOOK TALES OF FALLING AND FLYING

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 10:21:33 -0700

Ben Loory returns with a second collection of timeless tales, inviting us to enter his worlds of whimsical fantasy, deep empathy, and playful humor, in the signature voice that drew readers to his highly praised first collection. In stories that eschew literary realism, Loory's characters demonstrate richly imagined and surprising perspectives, whether they be dragons or swordsmen, star-crossed lovers or long-lost twins, restaurateurs dreaming of Paris or cephalopods fixated on space travel. In propulsive language that brilliantly showcases Loory's vast imagination, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work.

Appealing to the fans of fantasy, horror, and sci-fi writers like Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman, and Philip Pullman, as well as contemporary literary powerhouses like George Saunders, Karen Russell, and Helen Oyeyemi, Tales of Falling and Flying expands our understanding of how fiction can work and is sure to cement Loory’s reputation as one of the most innovative short-story writers working today.

Praise for Tales of Falling and Flying

“Ben Loory’s stories are little gifts, strange and moving and wonderfully human. I devoured this book in one sitting.” —Ransom Riggs, author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

“Russell Edson’s new protégé, or Steven Millhauser, distilled into tea. Meet, or re-meet Ben Loory, whose preposterous, friendly stories can’t help but charm. They are so bizarrely readable they don’t even feel like they’re made of words.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Parables, dark fables, quirky flash fictions—call them what you will, Ben Loory has perfected the form and in Tales of Falling and Flying proves once again he can disturb a little and entertain a lot. Easily read, not easily forgotten.”—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne and The Southern Reach Trilogy

“To read a Ben Loory story is to slip through a portal into an adjacent dimension. To learn—with brevity and clarity—the laws of this universe next door, new rules of logic and contradiction and truth. And, in the end, to be left with the disturbing and wondrous feeling of having never left home at all.” —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

“Ben Loory is a wonder. I'd like to curl up inside his marvelous head and canoodle with a besotted squid, swallow a tiny dragon, levitate with Death and fall in love with the Eiffel Tower, and after reading these sublime stories-- slyly funny, melancholy and deeply weird-- I suppose I have, and it was fantastic.”—Elissa Schappell

“Equal parts Beckett and Twilight Zone . . . Perfect for reading on strange beaches and by oddly shaped swimming pools. Fits right in your pocket or purse for emergency doses of the charming and weird.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander

Ben Loory is the author of the collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, and a picture book for children, The Baseball Player and the Walrus. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Tin House, READ Magazine, and Fairy Tale Review, been heard on This American Life and Selected Shorts, and performed live at WordTheatre in Los Angeles and London. A graduate of Harvard University and the American Film Institute MFA program in screenwriting, Loory lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

Event date: Thursday, September 7, 2017 - 7:30pm

SHAWNA KENNEY & RICH DOLINGER DISCUSS THEIR BOOK LIVE AT THE SAFARI CLUB WITH MIKE GITTER AND HIS BOOK XXX FANZINE

Thu, 31 May 2018 14:20:27 -0700

Live at the Safari Club: A People’s History of HarDCore is the uncensored oral history of a notorious underground punk venue in the nation’s capital, told by the very bands, fans, zinesters, promoters, graffiti artists, scenesters, senators’ kids and activists who made it happen.

From 1988 to 1997, the Safari Club was Washington, DC’s version of New York’s iconic CBGBs. An Ethiopian restaurant by day turned-Go-Go club-on-
Saturday nights, this windowless dive deep in the heart of the city then known as the “murder capital of the world” transformed into an all-ages venue every Sunday afternoon.

New York bands Sick of it All, Murphy’s Law, Bold, Earth Crisis and Gorilla Biscuits played their first DC shows on the Safari’s tiny mirrored stage. Southern California’s Chain of Strength, Insted, and Strife all breezed through at least once, while local legends Ignition, Kingface, Swiz, Battery, Damnation A.D. and Government Issue screamed for change.

Live at the Safari Club allows the scene to tell its own tales—the broken arms, bruised egos, back-stabbings, riots, rip-offs, fights, lifelong friendships and love stories revolving around the music.

Shawna Kenney authored the award-winning memoir I Was a Teenage Dominatrix(Last Gasp), edited the anthology Book Lovers (Seal Press) and co-wroteImposters (Mark Batty Publishers). She contributed to the book 9:30: A Time and Place as well as Spoke: Images and Stories from the 1980s Washington, DC Punk Scene (Akashic Books). Her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, Ms., Bust, Vice, Narratively, Alternative Press, Creative Nonfiction, and more.

Rich Dolinger has played in bands and has been involved in the hardcore scene since the late 80s. He’s dabbled in photography, music journalism, graphic design and film editing. His photography and articles have appeared in Spin Magazine, AP, Highwire Daze and While You Were Sleeping. He owns the Los Angeles-based contracting company Straight Edge Tile.

Photo by Kym Ghee

For well over three decades now, Mike Gitter has been responsible for hurting your ears. When xXx¨Fanzine released its twentieth and final issue in 1988, he focused on a career in music journalism as a contributing editor to Rip and Tower Records Pulse while freelancing for the likes of Thrasher, Kerrang!, Spin and Rolling Stone (amongst others). A move to New York City in 1989 eventually found him transitioning into the A&R departments of various record labels including Atlantic, Roadrunner, Century Media and Razor & Tie. Some of his more notable signings include Jawbox and Bad Religion for Atlantic, Killswitch Engage and Megadeth for Roadrunner; HIM and Chiodos for Razor & Tie as well as The Shrine and Ignite at Century Media. He’s also worked in music merchandising and artist management. Mike currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Event date: Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - 7:30pm

MAJA D'AOUST DISCUSSES HER NEW TAROT DECK THE WHITE WITCH TAROT

Tue, 29 May 2018 19:49:01 -0700

Join White Witch Maja D’Aoust as she gives a live divination demonstration exploring an alternative method for reading the Tarot based on Alchemical techniques. Her new Tarot deck, The White Witch Tarot, uses a spread that encourages the use of psychological archetypes in a marriage of opposites that mirror the Shakespearean drama. Examine the purposes and properties of the Tarot through this unique deck that uses meditative channeled images and text to convey the mysteries.

Use the transformative and healing power of the white witch as White Witch Maja D’Aoust explores the 22 Major Arcana archetypes of the Tarot through meditative art and channeled mysteries in this stunning black and gold deck and companion guide. Use this deck as a traditional Tarot Majors-only system or delve into a technique using protagonists and antagonists pitted against each other until they reach unification, much like Shakespearean therapy where we explore problems via another lens. Learn to visualize and build your own reality by discovering answers to your deepest questions, bringing to light powerful truths and seeing the radiance of the self through a poetic treatment of the Majors. Created through decades of research into Alchemy and different divination modalities, this deck offers a fresh new perspective on using the cards to unveil what has been hidden.

Maja D'Aoust is a practicing Witch who performs public rituals and gives educational lectures. Maja's interest in Alchemy, magic and the esoteric sciences spans her entire lifetime. After completing her Bachelors degree in Biochemistry, Maja studied oriental medicine, martial arts and acupuncture, later earning her Masters degree in Transformational Psychology. Maja worked for 11 years as the librarian of Manly P. Hall's Philosophical Research Society. Author of several books, journal articles and blog content Maja writes and is a visual artist. Currently Maja is starting a public educational non-profit 501 c-3 called The Well Wishers which focuses on teaching wellness and esoteric sciences to the community.

Event date: Saturday, September 2, 2017 - 5:00pm

DC'S YOUNG ANIMAL PANEL FEATURING CECIL CASTELLUCCI, GERARD WAY, JONATHAN RIVERA AND JODY HOUSER

Tue, 29 May 2018 09:28:10 -0700

Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy

From writer Cecil Castellucci and artist Marley Zarcone, Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy—a bold new reimagining of one of comics’ maddest and most memorable characters and part of the DC’s Young Animal imprint led by rock-star Gerard Way.

Loma Shade may be from another planet, but she’s still like every other twentysomething who feels that their life is going nowhere fast. Bored out of her mind, her solution is to drop out of school, dump her boyfriend and leave her homeworld of Meta behind—courtesy of the infamous “madness coat” of renegade poet Rac Shade, which is not so much a garment as it is a multidimensional gateway.

After stealing the coat and astrally projecting herself across space, Loma ends up in the body of Megan Boyer, an Earth girl who seems to have it all: youth, beauty and a conveniently damaged brain. Following her “miraculous” recovery, however, Loma finds there’s just one problem with being Megan: Everyone hates her. She was a bully who terrorized her enemies and her friends alike, and now Loma’s stuck with the consequences.To make matters worse, back on Meta there are dark forces that want Rac’s dangerously valuable coat for their own nefarious purposes, and they’re closing in on Loma’s vulnerable physical body. At the same time, the primal madness that the coat channels is slowly, irresistibly eroding Loma’s equally vulnerable soul.

With two new lives to live, can this Changing Girl survive either one without losing her mind?

Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth and the Eisner-nominated Odd Duck. She is currently writing Shade the Changing Girl, Vol. 1 Earth Girl Made Easy, an ongoing comic on Gerard Way's DC Young Animal imprint. Her picture book, Grandma's Gloves, won the California Book Award Gold Medal. She lives in Los Angeles.

Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground

DC’s classic Silver Age hero is revived in Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye Vol. 1: Going Underground, the first chapter of a trailblazing new saga from artist Michael Avon Oeming (Powers) and writers Jonathan Rivera and My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way, the visionary founder of DC’s Young Animal imprint!

Cave Carson was once the world’s greatest underground adventurer—but that was a long time ago. When he settled down with his wife, Eileen, to raise their daughter, Chloe, he traded the controls of his vehicle, the Mighty Mole Mark 1, for a desk and keyboard. Since then, Cave has led a quiet life—even with the constant distraction of his otherworldly cybernetic eye. But when a sudden illness claims Eileen’s life, Cave’s tranquil existence is shattered—and he and Chloe soon find themselves hurtling down a terrifying tunnel of danger, discovery, mayhem and madness. At the bottom of that tunnel lie secrets buried for decades—secrets that hold the key to thwarting a conspiracy that threatens to consume the surface and subterranean worlds alike. But will Cave and his intrepid team of super-spelunkers be able to overcome this new generation of evil—or is there less to this hero than meets the eye? Collects issues #1-6.

Gerard Way is the Eisner Award-winning writer of The Umbrella Academy and the comics miniseries The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys. He is the creative mind behind the new grassroots imprint, DC's Young Animal, whose retro-inspired lineup bridges the gap between the DC Universe and Vertigo. Way is also widely known for his former role as the lead vocalist and co-founder of the alternative rock band My Chemical Romance.

Jon Rivera is a writer of comic books and graphic novels, best known for his work on DC's Young Animal. Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye, co-written by imprint founder Gerard Way, is one of the line's inaugural titles.

Doom Patrol Vol. 1: Brick by Brick

The spirit of Grant Morrison's groundbreaking Doom Patrol is captured in this debut series starring the cult-favorite misfits as a part of Gerard Way's new Young Animal imprint.

Flex Mentallo, Robotman, Rebis, Crazy Jane, and more are back to twist minds and take control. This new take on a classic embraces and reimagines the Morrison run's signature surrealism and irreverence. Incorporating bold, experimental art and a brash tone to match a new generation of readers, Gerard Way's Doom Patrolestablishes radical new beginnings, breaks new ground, and honors the warped team dynamic of the world's strangest heroes. This abstract and unexpected ensemble series nods at the Doom Patrol's roots by continuing to break the barriers of the traditional superhero genre. Collects issues #1-6.

Doom Patrol is the flagship title of Young Animal--a four-book grassroots mature reader imprint, creatively spearheaded by Gerard Way, bridging the gap between the DCU and Vertigo, and focusing on the juxtaposition between visual and thematic storytelling.

Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress

As part of the new DC’s Young Animal imprint, a bold new take on the world of the Batman comes from writer Jody Houser, artists Tommy Lee Edwards andShawn Crystal and DC’s Young Animal mastermind Gerard Way—Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress.

The shadow of the Bat falls over all of Gotham City, from its dark alleys to its glittering high-rises. But a new vigilante has just stepped away from that shadow, and she has her own brand of violent retribution to deal out to the city’s corrupt elites.

Meet Violet Paige, a rich young celebutante with a bad attitude and a worse reputation. No one would ever suspect that this tabloid-fodder wild child has a secret hidden beneath her spoiled heiress exterior—a secret that has driven her to become the terrifying force of vengeance against her privileged peers known as Mother Panic! But even as Violet launches her all-out assault on the rich and twisted, her shaky allies threaten to betray her, and every one of Gotham’s guardians—from Batwoman to the Dark Knight himself—is hot on her trail. Will Mother Panic continue to strike terror into her enemies’ hearts? Or will her violent quest for justice reach an equally violent end? Collects Mother Panic Vol. 1: A Work in Progress #1-6.

Jody Houser is the creator behind the webcomic Cupcake POW! Houser has written Faith for Valiant Comics, Max Ride: Ultimate Flight and Agent May for Marvel, and Orphan Black for IDW. She has been a contributing writer to numerous comics anthologies, including Avengers: No More Bullying, Vertigo CMYK: Magenta, and both Womanthology series. Houser contributed to Justice League of America: Road to Rebirth and is currently writing Mother Panic for DC.

Event date: Friday, September 1, 2017 - 7:30pm

CARINA CHOCANO DISCUSSES HER BOOK YOU PLAY THE GIRL WITH KRISTINA WONG

Fri, 25 May 2018 08:56:03 -0700

In this smart, funny, impassioned call to arms, a pop culture critic merges memoir and commentary to explore how our culture shapes ideas about who women are, what they are meant to be, and where they belong.

Who is “the girl?” Look to movies, TV shows, magazines, and ads and the message is both clear and not: she is a sexed up sidekick, a princess waiting to be saved, a morally infallible angel with no opinions of her own. She’s whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself. She’s an abstraction, an ideal, a standard, a mercurial phantom.

From the moment we’re born, we’re told stories about what girls are and they aren’t, what girls want and what they don’t, what girls can be and what they can’t. “The girl” looms over us like a toxic cloud, permeating everything and confusing our sense of reality. In You Play the Girl, Carina Chocano shows how we metabolize the subtle, fragmented messages embedded in our everyday experience and how our identity is shaped by them.

From Bugs Bunny to Playboy Bunnies, from Flashdance to Frozen, from the progressive ’70s through the backlash ’80s, the glib ’90s, and the pornified aughts—and at stops in between—Chocano blends formative personal stories with insightful and emotionally powerful analysis. She explains how growing up in the shadow of “the girl” taught her to think about herself and the world and what it means to raise a daughter in the face of these contorted reflections. In the tradition of Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, and Susan Sontag, Chocano brilliantly shows that our identities are more fluid than we think, and certainly more complex than anything we see on any kind of screen.

Praise for You Play the Girl

“You Play the Girl by Carina Chocano blew my mind. Like a goldfish realizing that water existed, I instantly came alive to the air and the atmosphere of how my Otherness informed my girlhood. Each and every message of being asked to stand still so that I could be seen by the cultural product of male-made entertainment made me scream with recognition. In particular, the Flashdance chapter time-travelled me back to my youth, but holding hands with a clear-eyed, brilliant, hilarious friend. Re-looking at Stepford Wives, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched and all of the other hypnotic suggestions about my supposed woman-hood made me feel alive and energized and ready to topple the patriarchy. The world is changing for women and girls and here is one of the first steps—going back to do archaeology about what the heck happened to us, how we got colonized. If information is power, You Play the Girl is amsuperpower.”—Jill Soloway, writer, director, creator of Transparent

“Carina Chocano is a brilliant thinker, a dazzling stylist and an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. An important critical work as well as an entertaining personal story, You Play the Girl looks at old archetypes in new and often astonishingly insightful ways and establishes Chocano as a unique talent and crucial voice in the cultural conversation.”—Meghan Daum, author of The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion

“Carina Chocano unearths the little horrors of our culture’s pervasive, insidious sexism in essays so brilliant and witty you’ll wish her book would never end. Chocano is one of our sharpest, most original cultural observers, and You Play the Girl is as engrossing as it is unforgettable.”—Heather Havrilesky, author of How to Be a Person in the World

Carina Chocano is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Elle, and her writing has appeared in Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. A former staff film and TV critic at the Los Angeles Times, she has also worked as a TV and book critic at Entertainment Weekly and a staff writer at Salon. She lives in Los Angeles.

Kristina Wong is solo performer, writer, actor, educator, “culture jammer”, and filmmaker. Kristina’s background in education, art for social change, and community work informs the content of her performances and writing which are both entertaining and thought provoking.

She was awarded the Creative Capital Award in Theater and a Creation Fund from the National Performance Network to create her third full-length solo show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest exploring the remarkably high incidence of suicide among Asian American women in a world that’s more nuts than we are. She is completing a novel started with the PEN USA Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship.

Event date: Thursday, August 31, 2017 - 7:30pm

LUCY IVES READS FROM HER NOVEL IMPOSSIBLE VIEWS OF THE WORLD WITH AMINA CAIN

Thu, 24 May 2018 14:40:24 -0700

(Podcast editor's note: The Q&A segment for this event took place off-mic for the most part and, despite our best efforts, the audio is difficult to hear at times.)

A witty, urbane, and sometimes shocking debut novel, set in a hallowed New York museum, in which a co-worker’s disappearance and a mysterious map change a life forever

Stella Krakus, a curator at Manhattan’s renowned Central Museum of Art, is having the roughest week in approximately ever. Her soon-to-be ex-husband (the perfectly awful Whit Ghiscolmbe) is stalking her, a workplace romance with “a fascinating, hyper-rational narcissist” is in freefall, and a beloved colleague, Paul, has gone missing. Strange things are afoot: CeMArt’s current exhibit is sponsored by a Belgian multinational that wants to take over the world’s water supply, she unwittingly stars in a viral video that’s making the rounds, and her mother–the imperious, impossibly glamorous Caro–wants to have lunch. It’s almost more than she can overanalyze.

But the appearance of a mysterious map, depicting a 19th-century utopian settlement, sends Stella–a dogged expert in American graphics and fluidomanie (don’t ask)–on an all-consuming research mission. As she teases out the links between a haunting poem, several unusual novels, a counterfeiting scheme, and one of the museum’s colorful early benefactors, she discovers the unbearable secret that Paul’s been keeping, and charts a course out of the chaos of her own life. Pulsing with neurotic humor and dagger-sharp prose, Impossible Views of the World is a dazzling debut novel about how to make it through your early thirties with your brain and heart intact.

Praise for Impossible Views of the World

“An art historical mystery that will interest fans of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, with a narrator equal parts intellectual, ironic, and cool…Scintillating…A diversion and a pleasure, this novel leaves you feeling smarter and hipper than you were before.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Stella is like Hannah Horvath from Girls—smart, with an equal tendency toward snark and introspection—living in From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The novel sends up the museum world, with pretentious art folks courting corporate dollars and the usual office politics, but maintains a sense of something larger, even magical, working in the background.”—Booklist

“The charm and energy of Impossible Views of the World rest in Ives’s uncanny eye for the subtle tells of romance, the idiosyncrasies of the NYC young, and the details of 19th-century furniture and art…A clever curatorial mystery, a love-gone-wrong rom-com or a sharp-witted story of a young New York woman, Impossible Views of the World is way more fun than a rainy afternoon in the American Objects wing of a cavernous museum.” —Shelf Awareness

“[A] smart and singular debut novel…Ives maximizes her story’s humor with subtlety; a line here and there is enough to call attention to the absurdity of, for instance, the museum’s corporate benefactor’s attempt to secure the world’s water rights. She also isn’t afraid to make her heroine unlikable, which works in the novel’s favor…odd and thoroughly satisfying.” — Publishers Weekly

“I first knew Lucy Ives’s work as a poet, and to have her prose is a gift, too. The detailed novel she’s built with such authenticity, wit, and feeling is remarkable for its vitality, insights, and lyrical view of a changing world.” — Hilton Als, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of White Girls

“This book was written by a rampaging, mirthful genius. It stands before me like a runestone, magical, mysterious—an esoteric juggernaut masquerading as a ‘debut novel.’ During the days I spent reading it, I said goodbye to all else.” — Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen

“There are abundant pleasures to be found in Lucy Ives’s debut novel about art curation, corporate control, and utopia (among many other subjects and digressions), but the best is the poetic, elegant intelligence of its narration, vocalized by Stella Krakus, whose every sentence wryly climbs from the ridiculous to the sublime.” — Teddy Wayne, author of Loner and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

“Lucy Ives, a deeply smart and painstakingly elegant writer, wins the prize with this intricate, droll, stylish book—at once a mystery novel, a romantic comedy, a tricky essay on aesthetics, an exposé of art-world foibles, and a diary of emotional distress. With sharp phrases, uncanny plot-turns, and mise-en-abymes galore, this mesmerizing tale radiates the haute irreality of Last Year at Marienbad and the dreamy claustrophobia of The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, this time for adults only.” —Wayne Koestenbaum, author of My 1980s and Other Essays

Lucy Ives is the author of several books of poetry and short prose, including The Hermit and the novella nineties. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Lapham’s Quarterly, and at newyorker.com. For five years she was an editor with the online magazine Triple Canopy. A graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University. She teaches at the Pratt Institute and is currently editing a collection of writings by the artist Madeline Gins.

Amina Cain is the author of the short story collection Creature, out with Dorothy, a Publishing Project. Her stories and essays have appeared in BOMB, n+1, The Paris Review Daily, and Full Stop, among other places. She lives in Los Angeles

Event date: Wednesday, August 30, 2017 - 7:30pm

MCSWEENEY'S 50TH ISSUE RELEASE PARTY

Wed, 23 May 2018 10:41:03 -0700

Join us for release party for Issue 50 of TIMOTHY McSWEENEY’S QUARTERLY CONCERN. To celebrate our 50th issue, we’ve put together a guaranteed show stopper, with stories, essays, treatises, manifestos, letters, comics, and illustrated travel diaries from fifty different contributors. There’s stunning new work from writers who we’ve long published — Jonathan Lethem, Lydia Davis, Sherman Alexie, Etgar Keret, Sheila Heti, Diane Williams, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, Steven Millhauser (among many others) — and fantastic new writing from authors who we’ve long admired, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Thomas McGuane, Kevin Young, and Carrie Brownstein. The physical object that will contain all this great work will be a sturdy and beautiful hardcover book— something to behold and something to keep. Plus, the dust jacket folds out into a poster by Tucker Nichols that can gaze down at you from above your breakfast nook, bathtub, gift wrapping station, or wherever you’d like to be reminded of 50 glorious issues of the McSweeney’s Quarterly.

Readers include:
Kevin Moffett
Corinna Vallianatos
Sarah Walker
Carson Mell
Brian Evenson

Event date:

Tuesday, August 29, 2017 - 7:30pm

BRANDY COLBERT READS FROM HER YA NOVEL LITTLE & LION AND STEPHANIE KUEHN READS FROM HER YA NOVEL WHEN I AM TRHOUGH WITH YOU

Tue, 22 May 2018 10:48:02 -0700

When Suzette comes home to Los Angeles from her boarding school in New England, she isn’t sure if she’ll ever want to go back. L.A. is where her friends and family are (along with her crush, Emil). And her stepbrother, Lionel, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, needs her emotional support.

But as she settles into her old life, Suzette finds herself falling for someone new . . . the same girl her brother is in love with. When Lionel’s disorder spirals out of control, Suzette is forced to confront her past mistakes and find a way to help her brother before he hurts himself—or worse.

When I Am Through with You (Dutton Books for Young Readers)

“This isn’t meant to be a confession. Not in any spiritual sense of the word. Yes, I’m in jail at the moment. I imagine I’ll be here for a long time, considering. But I’m not writing this down for absolution and I’m not seeking forgiveness, not even from myself. Because I’m not sorry for what I did to Rose. I’m just not. Not for any of it.”

Ben Gibson is many things, but he’s not sorry and he’s not a liar. He will tell you exactly about what happened on what started as a simple school camping trip in the mountains. About who lived and who died. About who killed and who had the best of intentions. But he’s going to tell you in his own time. Because after what happened on that mountain, time is the one thing he has plenty of.

When I Am Through With You is a gripping story of survival and the razor’s-edge difference between perfect cruelty and perfect love.

Brandy Colbert is the author of the young adult novel Pointe, which was named a best book of the year by Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, the Chicago and Los Angeles public libraries, and Bank Street, as well as a Popular Paperback by the American Library Association. Her short fiction and essays have been published in several critically acclaimed anthologies, and her next novel, Little & Lion, will be published in August 2017. She lives and writes in Los Angeles.

Stephanie Kuehn is the critically acclaimed author of four young adult novels, including Charm & Strange, which won the ALA's William C. Morris Award for best debut novel, and Complicit, which was named to YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list. She was also awarded the PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship for her most recent novel, The Smaller Evil. Booklist has praised her work as "Intelligent, compulsively readable literary fiction with a dark twist." Stephanie lives in Northern California and is a post-doctoral fellow in clinical psychology.

Event date: Saturday, August 26, 2017 - 5:00pm

ALICIA MALONE DISCUSSES HER BOOK BACKWARDS AND IN HEELS WITH MAUDE GARRETT

Tue, 22 May 2018 09:03:49 -0700

"After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels..." - Ann Richards

Women have been instrumental in the success of American cinema since its very beginning. One of the first people to ever pick up a motion picture camera was a woman. As was the first screenwriter to win two Academy Awards, the inventor of the boom microphone and the first person to be credited with the title Film Editor. Throughout the entire history of Hollywood women have been revolutionizing, innovating, and shaping how we make movies. Yet their stories are rarely shared.

This is what film reporter Alicia Malone wants to change. "Backwards and in Heels" tells the history of women in film in a different way, with stories about incredible ladies who made their mark throughout each era of Hollywood. From the first women directors, to the iconic movie stars, and present day activists. Each of these stories are inspiring in the accomplishments of women, and they also highlight the specific obstacles women have had to face. "Backwards and in Heels" combines research and exclusive interviews with influential women and men working in Hollywood today, such as Geena Davis, J.J. Abrams, Ava DuVernay, Octavia Spencer, America Ferrera, Paul Feig, Todd Fisher and many more, as well as film professors, historians and experts.

Think of Backwards and in Heels as a guidebook, your entry into the complex world of women in film. Join Alicia Malone as she champions Hollywood women of the past and present, and looks to the future with the hopes of leveling out the playing field.

Alicia Malone is a film reporter, host, writer and self-confessed movie geek. She first gained notice hosting movie-centric shows and reviewing films in her native Australia, before making the leap to Los Angeles in 2011.

Since then, Alicia has appeared on CNN, the Today show, MSNBC, NPR and many more as a film expert. Currently, she is a host on FilmStruck, a cinephile subscription streaming service run by the Criterion Collection and Turner Classic Movies, and she is the creator and host of the weekly show, Indie Movie Guide on Fandango.

Alicia is passionate about classic films, independent movies and supporting women in film. In 2015, Alicia gave a TEDx talk about the lack of women working in film and why this is important to change. In 2017, she was invited to give a second TEDx talk, where she spoke about the hidden stories of the earliest women working in Hollywood. Alicia has also spoken at conferences around America, and because of this, was named of one the 100 Worthy Women of 2016.

Alicia has traveled the world to cover the BAFTAs, the Oscars, the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and SXSW. She is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, and over the years has interviewed hundreds of movie stars and filmmakers.

She also wrote this bio, but knew it would sound way less egotistical if written in third person.

Maude Garrett has spent over a decade as a host on all forms of media including television, radio and digital on an array of shows, but she tries her hardest to keep creating content about her favorite topic: geekdom, founding Geek Bomb back in 2012. Maude's other claim to fame is being best friends with Alicia Malone…

Event date: Sunday, August 20, 2017 - 5:00pm

JOANNA NOVAK READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL I MUST HAVE YOU

Sun, 20 May 2018 10:35:47 -0700

The year is 1999, and thirteen-year-old Elliot is a self-appointed "diet coach" who teaches her classmates how to survive on one stick of gum a day to get heroin-chic, Kate Moss thin. Elliot is obsessed with her best friend and former "client" Lisa, who is fresh out of inpatient treatment and dating a nineteen-year-old drug dealer. Meanwhile, Elliot's mother Anna, a capricious poetry professor, has a drug addiction and eating disorder of her own. When Lisa transfers her fixation from food to sex with her boyfriend, Elliot's fragile grip on reality begins to falter, at the same that time that Anna's fascination with the object of her own blind lust, the student who relinquishes his cocaine to her during office hours begins to consume her. I Must Have You is the story of what happens one three-day weekend in an explosion of desire, hunger, and lost innocence.

JoAnna Novak's kaleidoscope of 1990s America, filled with vibrant imagery from riot grrl graffiti to Michael Jordan posters, offers a vision of the complexities of womanhood and the culture that keeps the modern girl sick. I Must Have You is a provocative debut of rare honesty from a daring new voice. Similar to the works of Miranda July, Novak's novel will appeal to a new generation of readers who hunger for raw female protagonists.

Praise for I Must Have You

"I Must Have You is a book about girls―their secret languages and private codes, their painful preoccupations and complex compulsions, and their scary tendency, when caught in the gazes of society, men, (and worst, each other), to diminish themselves―sometimes to the point of disappearing completely. With risky, confident prose and brazen psychological renderings―not to mention a knack for getting the 90's just right―Novak takes us on a seductive, uncharted journey through modern womanhood, obsession and illness. I can honestly say I have never read anything like this book." ―Molly Pretiss, author of Tuesday Nights in 1980 "I Must Have You is a devastating novel about loving and trying to destroy one’s own body."―Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

"I Must Have You showcases JoAnna Novak's raw, real, and vivid voice in the character of Elliott, a sharp-tongued, sharp-witted, and complex young heroine unlike any we've met. Novak's intelligent, funny, frightening, and deeply felt novel bravely goes where this genre has not gone before: into the darker reaches of a culture that casts a long shadow across the lives of girls and women today. Novak explores the extent of our longing, and—ultimately—the source of our strength."—Marya Hornbacher, New York Times Bestselling Author of Madness, Wasted, and others.

"JoAnna Novak's voice is unforgettable and her irreverent, addictive debut is sure to position her as one of the great stylists of her generation. I Must Have You is a brilliant and candid look at what it means to be a girl in this world; it's a meditation on hunger, on wanting, on the things and people that consume us, and on the things and people that we long to consume. A truly exciting, beautiful novel."—Diana Spechler, author of Who By Fire and Skinny

“I Must Have You presents a harrowing and immersive story of compulsion and disorder, addiction and obsession, with frequent detours through the teenage cultural wasteland of the late nineties, all rendered in JoAnna Novak’s crazed, slang-stilted, glinting prose.”—Teddy Wayne, author of Loner

"JoAnna Novak's I Must Have You is a rhapsodic, tumbling, yet rigorously controlled excavation of the secret worlds within us all. Her characters hurtle toward the painful pleasure of self-destruction, uninterested in stopping themselves, determined to find the next prick to make them feel alive. It's a visceral process, like picking off a scab. This is a necessary book."—Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star

"I Must Have You is a tragic, funny, and moving coming-of-age story. It was impossible not to be swept up in JoAnna Novak's gorgeous, inventive prose, or to stop yourself from falling in love with her irreverent, wild, and ultimately human characters. I loved every word."—Anton DiSclafani, New York Times Bestselling author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls and The After Party

"Novak looks unflinchingly at the precarious attachments between female peers, mother and daughters, during some dangerous, inchoate transitions. With exacting prose she explores the the shadow terrain of female attachment, one that is uncertain at best, dangerous at worst. This is a book you'll want to look away from for its familiarity and its honesty, but you won't be able to. This story is nothing if not a disorienting mediation on the tangle of self-loathing, loneliness, and a desire for oblivion that so many women privately hold."—Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel

JoAnna Novak's debut novel I Must Have You will be published in May 2017 and a book-length poem, Noirmania, will be published in 2018. She has written fiction, essays, poetry, and criticism for publications including Salon, Guernica, BOMB, The Rumpus, Conjunctions, and Joyland. She received her MFA in fiction from Washington University and her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy. She lives in Los Angeles.

JARETT KOBEK READS FROM HIS NOVEL THE FUTURE WON'T BE LONG WITH JAMES ST. JAMES

Wed, 16 May 2018 09:20:16 -0700

Jarett Kobek published his first novel, I Hate the Internet, last year with a small indie publisher and it immediately took on cult status. Kobek received a rave review from Dwight Garner in The New York Times, who described the novel “as a glimpse at a lively mind at full boil.” Jonathan Lethem declared Kobek “as riotous as Houellebecq,” and Bret Easton Ellis was photographed reading it in bed. Viking is thrilled to be publishing Kobek’s brilliant and epic follow-up novel, The Future Won't Be Long, a provocative, ecstatic story of friendship, sex, art, and ambition in the twilight days of New York City’s East Village (1986-1996).

The Future Won't Be Long centers on Adeline—featured years later in I Hate the Internet—a wealthy art student in New York City who chances upon a young man from the Midwest known only as Baby in a shady East Village squat. The two begin a fiery friendship which propels them through a decade of New York life punctuated by the deaths of Warhol, Basquiat, Wojnarowicz, by the Tompkins Square Park riots, and by the rise of club kid culture. Adeline is fiercely protective of Baby, but he soon takes over his own education. Once just a kid off the bus from Wisconsin, Baby soon finds himself at the center of the club kid social scene, cavorting with Michael Alig and James St. James at The Tunnel, Limelight, and Alig’s infamous “Outlaw Party” at a midtown McDonald’s. As Adeline and Baby both develop into the artists they never expected to become, Kobek pays tribute to the last gasps of the gritty, drug-fueled scene of the East Village as gentrifiers begin to trickle in. Kobek, himself a graduate of NYU, writes with a native’s sensitivity to New York, especially about those who come here with hope and those who come to escape their pasts. Riotously funny and wise, The Future Won't Be Long is a euphoric, propulsive novel coursing with a rare vitality, an elegy to New York and to the relationships that have the power to change—and save—our lives.

Jarett Kobek is a Turkish American writer living in California. He is the author of the novel I Hate the Internet (2016) and the novella Atta (2011)

James St. James who was once dubbed a "celebutante" by Newsweek magazine, now leads a quiet, sedate existence in Los Angeles, far from the madness that he writes about.

Event date: Thursday, August 17, 2017 - 7:30pm

TOM PERROTTA READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL MRS. FLETCHER

Thu, 03 May 2018 12:14:12 -0700

A provocative and wildly funny look at parenthood, the empty nest, and sex in the suburbs.

Eve (the eponymous Mrs. Fletcher) is a single mother, divorced and raising her amiable but clueless son Brendan in the suburbs. When he heads off to college, they must both contend with life on their own. Eve takes a gender studies class, braves the local dating pool, and vastly expands her social–and sexual – circles. Brendan discovers that what impressed high school girls (being a jock, being popular) might not be so enticing to college women.

Along with Eve and Brendan, Perrotta introduces us to a cast of flawed but deeply sympathetic characters, many of whom are stretching themselves and enjoying it. There’s Amanda, Eve’s employee at the local senior center, beleaguered but doing her best to provide the seniors with stimulating programming (at times, a little too stimulating). There’s Margo, Eve’s transgender professor, whose dark personal history is belied by her ebullient nature. Amber, Brendan’s college girlfriend, is a softball-playing social justice warrior whose romantic impulses conflict with her politics. And then there’s Julian, a smart but troubled kid from Brendan’s class, whose life becomes entangled with both Brendan’s and Eve’s. Perrotta brings all these characters vividly to life with great generosity and compassion.

Most of all, though, Mrs. Fletcher is all about Eve. This is a coming of age novel in which the character who grows and changes is (refreshingly!) not an eighteen-year-old but a forty-six- year-old. Eve comes a long way, and her journey is a brilliant, funny story of sexual awakening in unexpected places.

Praise for Mrs. Fletcher

“From the thrill of learning of its existence, to the feverish turning of pages, to the contemplative afterglow that comes from having finished: there’s nothing like a new Tom Perrotta novel. Mrs. Fletcher is all you dream it will be: hilarious, provocative, (a little too), relatable and every moment a joy ride.”— Maria Semple, bestselling author of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Today Will Be Different

“Tom Perrotta has always been a smart, fearless writer, a wet-your- pants funny satirist who will in the very next sentence ambush you with genuine emotion. Buckle your seat belt and surrender your dignity, because Mrs. Fletcher is a romp.”— Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofEmpire Falls

Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of eight works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into critically acclaimed movies, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into an HBO series. He lives outside Boston.

Event date: Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - 7:30pm

MIMI POND DISCUSSES HER GRAPHIC NOVEL THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS WRONG WITH WAYNE WHITE

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 13:55:34 -0700

Join LA-based cartoonist Mimi Pond for the launch of her highly-anticipated graphic novel The Customer Is Always Wrong. Told in the same brash yet earnest style as her previous memoir Over Easy, The Customer is Always Wrong is the saga of a young naïve artist named Madge working in a restaurant of charming drunks, junkies, thieves, and creeps. Taking place in Oakland in the late seventies, Pond’s story details the trials and tribulations of Madge’s daily grind as a waitress at the Imperial Cafe.

Mimi Pond is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer. She has created comics for the Los Angeles Times, Seventeen magazine, National Lampoon, and many other publications. She has also written for television: her credits include the first full-length episode of The Simpsons, “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”, and episodes for the television shows Designing Women andPee Wee’s Playhouse. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the painter Wayne White.

Wayne White was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Originally White built his reputation as a world-class illustrator, animator, puppeteer, cartoonist and art director in New York and Los Angeles. He is most well-known as the Emmy-award-winning set and puppet designer of the seminal and influential 1980s children’s TV show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” In the last 16 years, White’s reputation in the art world has been firmly established with his masterfully created word paintings and for his rollicking, site-specific installations. He lives in Los Angeles.

Event date: Saturday, August 12, 2017 - 5:00pm

LINDSAY HUNTER READS FROM HER NOVEL EAT ONLY WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY WITH ROXANE GAY

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 12:50:29 -0700

A father searches for his addict son while grappling with his own choices as a parent (and as a user of sorts)

Achingly funny and full of feeling, Eat Only When You’re Hungry follows fifty-eight-year-old Greg as he searches for his son, GJ, an addict who has been missing for three weeks. Greg is bored, demoralized, obese, and as dubious of GJ’s desire to be found as he is of his own motivation to go looking. Almost on a whim, Greg embarks on a road trip to central Florida—a noble search for his son, or so he tells himself.

Greg takes us on a tour of highway and roadside, of Taco Bell, KFC, gas-station Slurpees, sticky strip-club floors, pooling sweat, candy wrappers and crumpled panes of cellophane and wrinkled plastic bags tumbling along the interstate. This is the America Greg knows, one he feels closer to than to his youthful idealism, closer even than to his younger second wife. As his journey continues, through drive-thru windows and into the living rooms of his alluring ex-wife and his distant, curmudgeonly father, Greg’s urgent search for GJ slowly recedes into the background, replaced with a painstaking, illuminating, and unavoidable look at Greg’s own mistakes—as a father, as a husband, and as a man.

Brimming with the same visceral regret and joy that leak from the fast food Greg inhales, Eat Only When You’re Hungry is a wild and biting study of addiction, perseverance, and the insurmountable struggle to change. With America’s desolate underbelly serving as her guide, Lindsay Hunter elicits a singular type of sympathy for her characters, using them to challenge our preconceived notions about addiction and to explore the innumerable ways we fail ourselves.

Praise for Eat Only When You're Hungry

"[A] commanding narrative . . . A savage tale of parenthood and squandered hope from an author whose unsparing eye never ceases to subvert the mundane." —Kirkus

"Hunter's absurd Floridian landscapes and darkly tender moments are keen and hilarious, exposing the complexities of addiction and an overweight man with a weak heart but unfailing love." —Booklist

"The frailties of the human body and the human heart are laid bare in Lindsay Hunter’s utterly superb novel Eat Only When You’re Hungry. There is real delicacy, tenderness, and intelligence with which Hunter tackles this portrait of a broken family of people who don’t realize just how broken they are until they are forced to confront the fractures between them and within themselves. With this novel, Hunter establishes herself as an unforgettable voice in American letters. Her work here, as ever, is unparalleled." —Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

"This novel takes us on a road trip with an American Everyman into the heart of American hunger—for freedom, for connection, for junk food, for love. Hunter has a brilliant sense for the perfectly telling image, and her humor is so biting and smart it was almost a surprise, at the end of this engrossing book, to realize how thoroughly she had broken my heart.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

"Compassionate, claustrophobic, gut-wrenchingly observed, Eat Only When You’re Hungry probes the fine lines between hunger and addiction, addiction and desire. In perfectly nuanced prose, Lindsay Hunter observes the human ability to go on in the face of the unexpected, the unknown, the regretted, and, perhaps most important, the mundane." —Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade

Lindsay Hunter is the author of the story collections Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s and the novel Ugly Girls. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Chicago with her husband, sons, and dogs.

Photo by Liliane Calfee

Roxane Gay is the author of the novel An Untamed State, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Fiction; the essay collection Bad Feminist; Ayiti, a multi-genre collection, the collection of stories Difficult Women and the memoir, Hunger. She is at work on a comic book in Marvel’s Black Panther series. Her writing has appeared in Best American Short Stories 2012, the New York Times, the Guardian, and many others. She is a recipient of the PEN Center USA Freedom to Write Award, among other honors. She splits her time between Indiana and Los Angeles. She can be found online at www.roxanegay.com and on Twitter @rgay.

Event date: Thursday, August 10, 2017 - 7:30pm

DANIELLE DAVIS READS FROM HER BOOK ZINNIA AND THE BEES

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 10:11:21 -0700

A colony of honeybees mistakes seventh-grader Zinnia’s hair for a hive — and that’s the least of her problems. While Zinnia's classmates are celebrating the last day of seventh grade, she's in the vice principal's office, serving detention. Her offense? Harmlessly yarn-bombing a statue of the school mascot. When Zinnia rushes home to commiserate with her older brother and best friend, Adam, she's devastated to discover that he's gone — with no explanation. Zinnia’s day surely can't get any worse . . . until a colony of honeybees inhabits her hive-like hair! Infused with magical realism, Danielle Davis delivers a quirky, heartfelt debut, exploring both the complex life of a young loner and a comical hive of honeybees. Together, these alternating and unexpected perspectives will touch anyone who has ever felt alone, betrayed, or misunderstood.

Danielle Davis grew up in Singapore and Hong Kong and now lives in Los Angeles where she reads, writes, and roller skates. She’s earned an M.A. in Literature and Creative Writing and her short stories have been published in literary magazines. She’s had the privilege of teaching English to middle school and community college students and currently volunteers with literary organizations in L.A. Zinnia and the Bees is her first novel.

Event date: Saturday, August 5, 2017 - 5:00pm

CHRISTA FAUST AND GARY PHILLIPS READ FROM THEIR COMIC PEEPLAND

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 10:55:51 -0700

Times Square, 1986: the home of New York’s red light district where strip clubs, porno theatres and petty crime prevails.

When a chance encounter for Peepbooth worker Roxy Bell leads to the brutal murder of a public access pornographer, the erotic performer and her punk rock ex-partner Nick Zero soon find themselves under fire from criminals, cops, and the city elite, as they begin to untangle a complex web of corruption leading right to city hall.

Like The Naked City, there are eight million stories in The Deuce. This is one of them.

Praise for Peepland

"Don’t let the bright lights in PEEPLAND’s pages fool you into thinking this story is sweet. This graphic novel is rife with pain, suffering and death. There are some moments of rightful justice, tender warmth, and laugh-out-loud humor. PEEPLAND is a story that I would not hesitate to call beautiful. However, it’s not for the faint of heart. This story is surprisingly honest, realistic and harsh in how it handles the fate of its characters. Writers Christa Faust and Gary Phillips, along with artist Andrea Camerini, craft a beautiful work of art together. So, cash in your token and sit down. You’re about to read something you won’t forget."--Mya Nunnelly, Comicverse

Gary Phillips has published various crime novels, short stories, edited anthologies, written comics and radio scripts and whatever else he can to forestall his appointment at the crossroads.

Christa Faust a hardboiled crime writer who has worked in the Times Square peep booths, as a professional dominatrix, and in the adult film industry both behind and in front of the cameras. Born and raised in NYC, she is now living as an ex-pat in La La Land.

Event date: Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - 7:30pm

RYAN GATTIS READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL SAFE

Mon, 16 Apr 2018 19:54:37 -0700

A gritty, fast-paced thriller, Safe hurtles readers toward a shocking conclusion that asks the toughest question of all: how far would you go to protect the ones you love?

Ricky 'Ghost' Mendoza, Jr. is trying to be good. In recovery and working as a freelance safecracker for the DEA, the FBI, and any other government agency willing to pay him, Ghost is determined to live clean for the rest of his days. And maybe he could, if the most important person in his life hadn't gotten into serious financial trouble. To fix it, all Ghost has to do is crack a safe and steal drug money from under the noses of the gangs and the Feds without getting caught. Or killed.

Rudy 'Glasses' Reyes runs drugs and cleans up messes for the baddest of bad men. When Ghost hits one of his safes, Glasses must hunt him down or be held accountable. But Glasses is worried about more than just money. The heist puts everything in his life at risk--his livelihood, his freedom, even his family.

Ryan Gattis is the author of Kung Fu High School and All Involved, a novel about the 1992 L.A. riots. He lives in Los Angeles.

Event date: Tuesday, August 1, 2017 - 7:30pm

ADITI KHORANA READS FROM HER NEW NOVEL THE LIBRARY OF FATES

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 11:33:33 -0700

A romantic coming-of-age fantasy tale steeped in Indian folklore, perfect for fans of The Star-Touched Queen and The Wrath and the Dawn.

No one is entirely certain what brings the Emperor Sikander to Shalingar. Until now, the idyllic kingdom has been immune to his many violent conquests. To keep the visit friendly, Princess Amrita has offered herself as his bride, sacrificing everything—family, her childhood love, and her freedom—to save her people. But her offer isn't enough.

The palace is soon under siege, and Amrita finds herself a fugitive, utterly alone but for an oracle named Thala, who was kept by Sikander as a slave and managed to escape amid the chaos. With nothing and no one else to turn to, Amrita and Thala are forced to rely on one another. But while Amrita feels responsible for her kingdom and sets out to warn her people, the newly free Thala has no such ties. She encourages Amrita to go on a quest to find the fabled Library of All Things, where it is possible for each of them to reverse their fates. To go back to before Sikander took everything from them.

Stripped of all that she loves, caught between her rosy past and an unknown future, will Amrita be able to restore what was lost, or does another life—and another love—await?

Praise for The Library of Fates:

"[R]ich, beautiful worldbuilding and thought-provoking questions on the power of experience, stories, and fate..."—Kirkus Reviews

"Khorana's dazzling second book features a sweeping quest, sumptuous romance and complex heroines. This is the kind of book that lingers in your dreams."—Roshani Chokshi, New York Times bestselling author of The Star-Touched Queen

"The Library of Fates transported me to a magical kingdom where troubled oracles, irreverent goddesses, and megalomaniacal kings battle for control of love and fate. With a rich, real mythology and a stunning twist, it's basically everything I ever wanted in a book."—Heidi Heilig, author of The Girl from Everywhere

“I was swept away by this unique, tantalizing tale. The Library of Fates spins a spell that breaks the heart and utterly enchants. An essential addition to any library—magical or not.”—Jessica Khoury, author of the Corpus Trilogy and The Forbidden Wish

Aditi Khorana spent part of her childhood in India, Denmark and New England. She has a degree in International Relations from Brown University and an MA in Global Media and Communications from the Annenberg School for Communication. She has worked as a journalist at ABC News, CNN, and PBS, and most recently as a marketing executive consulting for various Hollywood studios including FOX, Paramount and SONY. Mirror in the Sky is her first novel. Her second book, Library of Fates, a feminist historical fantasy set in fictional ancient India, about a louche misogynistic dictator overthrowing a tiny, idyllic kingdom and the women who must wrench it back from him is out July, 2017.

Event date: Sunday, July 30, 2017 - 5:00pm

CHRISTINE PELISEK DISCUSSES HER BOOK THE GRIM SLEEPER WITH DEBORAH VANKIN

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 12:25:02 -0700

In 2006, Christine Pelisek broke the case of a terrifying serial killer who went unchecked in Los Angeles for decades. Two years later, in her cover article for L.A. Weekly, Christine dubbed him "The Grim Sleeper" for his long break between murders. The killer preyed on a community devastated by crime and drugs and left behind a trail of bodies--all women of color, all murdered in a similar fashion, and all discarded in the alleys of South Central.

The case of the Grim Sleeper is unforgettably singular. But it also tells a wider story: about homicide investigations and police-community relations in areas beset by poverty and gang violence; about how a serial killer could roam free for two decades in part due to society’s lack of concern for his chosen victims; and about the persistence of those women's families and the detectives who refused to let the case go cold.
No one knows this story better than Pelisek, the reporter who followed it for more than ten years. Based on extensive interviews, reportage, and information never released to the public, The Grim Sleeper captures the long, bumpy road to justice in one of the most startling true crime stories of our generation.

Christine Pelisek is an award-winning investigative reporter who has been covering crime for almost fifteen years. She is currently the crime reporter for People Magazine, and previously worked at LA Weekly; she has also covered national stories for The Daily Beast and 20/20. She’s been profiled in the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Columbia Journalism Review, andOttawa Sun, and has been interviewed as a crime expert by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Headline News. She lives in Los Angeles.

Photo by Amanda Pelisek

Deborah Vankin is an arts and culture writer for the Los Angeles Times. Her award-winning interviews and profiles unearth the trends, issues and personalities in L.A.’s explosive arts scene. She has live-blogged her journey across Los Angeles with the L.A. County Museum of Art’s “big rock,” scaled downtown mural scaffolding with street artist Shepard Fairey, navigated the 101 freeway tracking the 1984 Olympic mural restorations and ridden Doug Aitken’s art train through the Barstow desert. Most recently, she spent a day roller-coastering at Universal Studios with Chinese piano virtuoso Yuja Wang for a profile. Her work as a writer and editor has also appeared in the New York Times, LA Weekly and Variety, among other places. Originally from Philadelphia, she’s the author of the graphic novel “Poseurs.” Her career began, more than a decade ago at the LA Weekly, where she was situated at a desk next to another young, budding reporter, Christine Pelisek...

Event date: Saturday, July 29, 2017 - 5:00pm

TAMARA SHOPSIN DISCUSSES HER GRAPHIC MEMOIR ARBITRARY STUPID GOAL

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 09:26:19 -0700

In Arbitrary Stupid Goal, Tamara Shopsin takes the reader on a pointillist time-travel trip to the Greenwich Village of her bohemian 1970s childhood, a funky, tight-knit small town in the big city, long before Sex and the City tours and luxury condos. The center of Tamara’s universe is Shopsin’s, her family’s legendary greasy spoon, aka “The Store,” run by her inimitable dad, Kenny—a loquacious, contrary, huge-hearted man who, aside from dishing up New York’s best egg salad on rye, is Village sheriff, philosopher, and fixer all at once. All comers find a place at Shopsin’s table and feast on Kenny’s tall tales and trenchant advice along with the incomparable chili con carne.

Filled with clever illustrations and witty, nostalgic photographs and graphics, and told in a sly, elliptical narrative that is both hilarious and endearing, Arbitrary Stupid Goal is an offbeat memory-book mosaic about the secrets of living an unconventional life, which is becoming a forgotten art.

Praise for Arbitrary Stupid Goal

“Arbitrary Stupid Goal is a completely riveting world—when I looked up from its pages regular life seemed boring and safe and modern like one big iPhone. This book captures not just a lost New York but a whole lost way of life.” —Miranda July

“Tamara Shopsin's illustrations are instantly recognizable: economical, seemingly simple and straightforward, but always working on a few different levels. Tamara the person is similar: quiet but charming and warm and tough and determined. Now it turns out her prose is the same way: funny and playful but revealing, and making us see the world we thought we knew with fresh eyes.” —Christoph Niemann, author of I Lego N.Y.

“Tamara Shopsin’s new memoir is hilarious. Just in like the West Village itself, you zigzag along on a fun adventure, never knowing who you are going to meet. What a fun read!” —Amy Sedaris

“Tamara Shopsin’s memoir is a funny and absorbing portrait of the city in a grubbier, less corporate incarnation. If you believe, as she does—and I do—that New York is, ‘matter-of-fact, the best place on earth,’ then read this book. And if you don’t believe that, after you read this book, you will.” —Roz Chast

"[Shopsin] weaves a marvelous patchwork quilt of stories about a Manhattan that doesn’t exist anymore . . [Arbitrary Stupid Goal is] an artistic ode to a way of life that people now living in New York City might never experience." —Publishers Weekly (Pick of the Week, Starred Review)

"A warm evocation of a quirky life and exuberant times." —Kirkus

"Deeply nostalgic but not at all mawkish, Shopsin’s supremely charming and affecting memoir of growing up in a pre-gentrified Greenwich Village will enchant fans of restaurant lore and postwar New York historyalike. In short, impressionistic chapters illustrated with photos, ephemera, and Shopsin’s own adorably insouciant line drawings, the book conjures a vanished bohemia without any hint of the irritating pedantry that dogs so many of its kind. Shopsin’s parents—familiar to fans of the writer Calvin Trillin and those who’ve seen the documentary I Like Killing Flies—opened Shopsin’s General Store in 1973 and turned it into a restaurant shortly thereafter, one beloved by local weirdos, celebrities, models, artists, and everyone in between. Shopsin, who still works there sometimes, recalls her unconventional childhood and those who shaped it with considerable warmth; she pays special attention to her dad’s late friend, Willy, an outsize personality whom Shopsin cares for in his dotage. Gumball machines, meat slicers, Nazi bunkers, and pancake methodologies all make cameo appearances, much to the reader’s delight.— Eugenia Williamson, Booklist

Tamara Shopsin is a well-known cook at the distinctly New York City eatery Shopsin's, a New York Times and New Yorkerillustrator, and the author of 5 Year Diary and What Is This?, as well as the coauthor of This Equals That and Mumbai New York Scranton. She lives in New York City with her husband.

Event date: Thursday, July 27, 2017 - 7:30pm

EUGENE LIM READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL DEAR CYBORGS, WITH JANICE LEE, HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ AND KAREN AN-HWEI LEE

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 10:54:59 -0700

The novel begins with the friendship between two young, Asian American boys in a small, Midwestern town who bond over their outcast status and shared love of comic books. Meanwhile, in an alternate or perhaps future universe, a team of superheroes debates the efficacy of protest and swaps stories of artistic ennui on their lunch breaks. Recalling the work of Tom McCarthy and Valeria Luiselli, Eugene Lim gleefully toys with narrative conventions—blending Hollywood chase scenes with sharp cultural critiques, hard-boiled detective pulps with subversive philosophy. Unfolding like the revelations of a dream, Dear Cyborgs weaves together the story of a friendship’s dissolution with provocative and lively meditations on creativity and political dissent.

Praise for Dear Cyborgs

“Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs is a mad badass fan letter to comicdom and a chastening reminder of how America’s greatest fantasy doesn’t involve superheroes with superpowers but the prospect of a fair and honest political life. Go read it in the streets.” —Joshua Cohen, author of Book of Numbers

“Eugene Lim tells his sly superhero tales in a kind of hard-boiled deadpan—a voice at once incongruously comic and playfully soulful. Beneath the dry wit there’s an ache of loneliness, an echo of every comic-book reader’s yearning for the camaraderie of the super team, the intimate enmity of the nemesis.” —Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes

“Eugene Lim’s Dear Cyborgs is a secret tunnel fresh with cool, strange storms. What is it to be super? What is it to be beyond? Dear Cyborgs is ripe with mysteries, heroes, even heartache.” —Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot

“[An] entertaining reflection on art, resistance, heroes, and villains . . . [Dear Cyborgs] is eerily reflective of our fractured times, darting from subject to subject with the speed of a mouse click. A colorful meditation on friendship and creation nested within a fictional universe.” —Kirkus Reviews

Eugene Lim is the author of two novels, Fog & Car and The Strangers. His writing has appeared in Fence, the Denver Quarterly, Little Star, Dazed, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. He is the founder and managing editor of Ellipsis Press and works as a librarian in a high school. He lives in Queens, New York.

Harold Abramowitz is from Los Angeles. His books include Blind Spot, Not Blessed, Dear Dearly Departed, Man’s Wars And Wickedness: A Book of Proposed Remedies & Extreme Formulations for Curing Hostility, Rivalry, & Ill-Will (with Amanda Ackerman), and UNFO Burns A Million Dollars. Harold co-edits the short-form literary press eohippus labs, and writes and edits as part of the collaborative projects, SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and UNFO.

Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and most recently the essay collection The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She currently lives in Los Angeles and is Editor of the imprint #RECURRENT for Civil Coping Mechanisms, Founder & Executive Editor of Entropy, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, and Co-Editor (w/ Maggie Nelson) of SUBLEVEL, the new online literary magazine based in the CalArts MFA Writing Program. She can be found online at janicel.com.

Karen An-hwei Lee is author of the poetry collections Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012), Ardor (Tupelo 2008), In Medias Res (Sarabande 2004), and a novel, Sonata in K (Ellipsis 2017). Currently, Lee lives in San Diego, where she serves in the university administration at Point Loma Nazarene University.

Event date: Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 7:30pm

CINDY RINNE READS FROM LISTEN TO THE CODEX, WITH SPECIAL GUESTS

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 09:45:48 -0700

The Native Blossoms Chapbook Series embraces poetry of place, exploring connections to the natural landscape, the untamed, the indigenous. Each chapbook, while utilizing themes and concepts that comprise the contemporary American lyric, features at least one poem that takes the botanical name of a wildflower or other flora native to the poet's locale as its title. As Joy Harjo encourages, "See those sensitive hills? They need to be talked to, sung to. . . ."

Listen to the Codex (Yak Press)

The twenty-eight poems in this collection stitch a tale that interlaces ancient mythology with science fiction. The story we embark upon in these pages is one that is particularly feminine. Skillfully woven together, we encounter figures both mystical and ordinary, ranging from Native tribes and Zen practices to a futuristic self-healing robot. These poems bring together several disparate narrative threads and from them, reconcile an intricate whole. This is Cindy's second chapbook, and fourth poetry collection.

Praise for Listen to the Codex:

“Calling upon the energy of origins, Cindy Rinne’s sensuous Listen to the Codex parallels a woman’s journey with the cycles of the earth. These imaginative poems of opening, embodiment, and surprise bring the sacred to the everyday: lighting candles and sage, invoking meditation, chanting, dirt rituals, and the guidance of a self-healing robot. A book of flight and remembrance, Rinne shows how the act of losing and finding calls us to listen, root ourselves in the natural world, and ‘breathe a circular breath.’"~ Jennifer K. Sweeney author of Little Spells and How to Live on Bread and Music

“Cindy Rinne’s poems are ‘arms of flight,’ ceremonial offerings that create a reality both ancient and modern. In these pages, you’ll meet a feathered unicorn and a self-healing robot, visit planets and stars, and taste a seed that holds ‘the soul of burning earth.’"~ Cynthia Anderson, author of Waking Life

“Cindy Rinne’s chapbook, Listen to the Codex, presents an alternate universe side by side with the one we know. The world of the “codex” is peopled with deer goddesses, Maya gods, sacred spirit snakes, and my favorite, a ‘self-healing robot.’ Alongside, we find the California Interstates 10 and 15 intersecting freeway overpass and the city of Long Beach. Inventive, baroque with imagery, and yet spare, these poems are a striking sampling of Rinne’s gift for capturing mystical moments in ordinary time and space. We are in the mystical past, the real past, the present, and the mystical present all at once. The pristine structure of the collection contrasts with the surrealistic, sci-fi, preternatural content in the poems. Rinne’s talent cannot go unobserved as one journeys through these poems, finding that the Red Madonna meets the self-healing robot. Who knows where it goes from there?”~ Carla McGill, Ph.D., author of Writing Customs blog

Cindy Rinne creates art and writes in San Bernardino, CA. She brings myth to life in a contemporary context. Cindy is the author of Breathe in Daisy, Breathe Out Stones (FutureCycle Press), Quiet Lantern (Turning Point Press), spider with wings (Jamii Publishing), and co-author of Speaking Through Sediment with Michael Cooper (ELJ Publications). Cindy is a Finalist for the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and a founding member of PoetrIE, an Inland Empire-based literary community. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Sea Foam Magazine, Blue Heron Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, Driftwood Press, The Honest Ulsterman (Northern Ireland), The Whirlwind Review, Birds Piled Loosely, CircleShow and others.

Hover the Bones (Yak Press)

This debut collection digs through the garden of the familiar “ties that bind” — family relationships — to unearth profound connections and upsetting loss. The nineteen poems included in this volume honor the memory of those lost with surprising honesty and emotional clarity. Presented in precise, yet musical language, these poems negotiate a complex landscape with contemplative grace.

Praise for Hover the Bones:

“In Hover the Bones, burying a miscarried child looks like planting a seed in a garden, and trimming vines feels like taking the place of a dead mother. The book’s epigraph from Audre Lorde reminds us that “we were never meant to survive,” and the final poem leaves us with a peaceful benediction: ‘May we be well. / May we be happy. / May we be free from suffering.’ Melisa Malvin-Middleton has created beauty out of darkness.” ~ Katie Manning, Founding Editor-in-Chief of Whale Road Review, and author of Tasty Other and The Gospel of the Bleeding Woman

Melisa Malvin-Middleton is a Los Angeles poet, playwright, and musician who teaches writing at California State University, Northridge and College of the Canyons. Her poetry has appeared in Silver Birch Press, The Ofi Press, Quail Bell Magazine, Rogue Agent, Angel City Review, and Clear Poetry, while her plays have been performed by Fresh Produce’d and Savage Players.

Night Walks (Yak Press)

This collection of twenty-eight poems travels through backyards, art, myth and focuses on small, familiar moments of light and loss. Carroll’s feminine voice delivers place—carefully framed and exposed—and invites us to grab our maps and join the journey.

Praise for Night Walks:

"Nancy Carroll’s Night Walks is a beautifully crafted collection of tableax that take us on a sensational journey through time and diverse archetypes. From ‘midnight swims around islands and lakes’ to ‘night wanders,’ we visit different eras inhabited by a ‘vagabond moon’ under the poet’s ‘hidden hypnosis.’ Like a skillful architect, she uses ‘stone, geometry, splinters’ to ‘construct new language like whisper, brush, tiptoe.’ Gratefully we delight in her song, where ‘she hangs like rain, strung between two ventricles, two lyres’ and ‘maps every faint implausible dream.’ " ~ Hélène Cardona, poet, translator, actor, and author of Dreaming My Animal Selves

Nancy Carroll received her Master of Arts in English with a concentration in Creative Writing at CSUN. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches composition at LA Valley College. Her poems have appeared in national journals such as Borderlands, REDzine, California Quarterly, and Redheaded Stepchild.

Event date: Sunday, July 23, 2017 - 5:00pm

BOOKWOMEN SPEAK: WNBA CENTENNIAL VISIONARIES SERIES FEATURING JADE CHANG, NATASHIA DEON AND LISA MECHAM

Fri, 30 Mar 2018 16:14:36 -0700

In honor of Women’s National Book Association’s 2017 centennial anniversary, WNBA/LA is proud to present: Bookwomen Speak: WNBA Centennial Visionaries Series Jade Chang and Natashia Deón In Conversation with Lisa Mecham.

Writer, poet, and literary enthusiast Lisa Mecham will engage critically acclaimed authors Jade Chang (The Wangs vs. The World) and Natashia Deón (Grace) in a discussion on writing, stories, and community and inclusion in literary spaces. All are welcome to attend.

ABOUT WOMEN'S NATIONAL BOOK ASSOCIATION, LOS ANGELES CHAPTER: Women's National Book Association, Los Angeles is a nonprofit organization that promotes literacy and supports the role of women in the book community. WNBA/LA brings together individuals with diverse backgrounds to share knowledge of the book industry and to support local reading initiatives. www.wnba-books.org/la

Event date: Wednesday, June 21, 2017 - 7:30pm

RICHARD LANGE READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL THE SMACK

Fri, 30 Mar 2018 11:28:42 -0700

Rowan Petty is a conman down on his luck. He's flat broke, living out of cheap hotels, and wondering how it all went wrong. His car quits on him in Reno, and he takes a job there on the bottom rung of a lousy phone scam. When he's not swindling lonely widows, he tries to turn nickels into dimes at the poker table. One snowy night, he crosses paths with a sweet-talking hooker who's tired of the streets, and sparks fly.

When an old friend of his turns up spreading a rumor about two million dollars in army money smuggled out of Afghanistan and stashed in an apartment in Los Angeles, it seems like a chance at the score of a lifetime. So Petty and the hooker head south, and straight into trouble. A wounded vet, a washed-up actor, and Petty's estranged daughter are all players in the dangerous game they find themselves caught up in. For the winner: a fortune. For the loser: a bullet to the head.

Praise for Richard Lange

"Lange writes of the disaffections and bewilderments of ordinary lives with as keen an anger and searing lyricism as anybody out there today. He is Raymond Carver reborn in a hard cityscape. Read him and be amazed." -- T.C. Boyle, author of The Harder They Come

"When you find yourself rooting for the killer in a grisly crime novel, you know you're in the hands of a real writer. Every character feels like flesh and bone."-- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Lange is incapable of creating a character that isn't memorable. Even the most minor are indelibly sketched.... The zone where literary fiction meets genre fiction is a crowded borderland these days. Lange proves himself comfortable on both sides of the line."-- Antoine Wilson, Los Angeles Times

"Richard Lange is a natural-born storyteller."-- Ron Rash, author of Above the Waterfall

"Make all the comparisons you like-Cormac McCarthy, Dennis Lehane, Martin Scorsese-but Richard Lange is a force of his own, the high standard for crime fiction." -- Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon, The Wilding, andRefresh, Refresh

"Lange stands out as the greatest young crime writer of his generation, precisely because he doesn't write crime - he writes literature." -- Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and Bad Sex on Speed

"The Smack just might be Mr. Lange's best yet, and that's saying something. His Los Angeles tableau of concrete and graffiti and neon is as sharp as razor wire. The characters are authentic down to the bone, the dialogue pitch-perfect believable, the desperation palpable, the situation urgent, the story riveting. Simply put, The Smack wallops you upside the head with its bad-ass-ness."-- Tom Cooper, author of The Marauders

"If Elmore Leonard and Dennis Cooper collaborated on a novel, they might produce something as exciting, harrowing and emotionally powerful as The Smack. Call it a literary thriller or call it thrilling literature--Richard Lange is emerging as the master of a new kind of novel: One that delivers breathless, gripping action while anchored in the authentic troubles of the real world. The Smack arrives like a genuine miracle--that rare thriller that will jack your pulse even as it breaks your heart."-- Adam Sternbergh, author of Shovel Ready

"The Smack is much more than a crime novel. It is a novel about life itself. The secret to great writing isn't just to observe. It's to create a world that readers understand at least as well as they do their own. Richard Lange has accomplished this, and more. His sensitivity and pacing are reminiscent of Raymond Carver, Charles Willeford, and Jim Thompson." -- Gerald Petievich, author of To Live and Die in L.A. and The Sentinel

"It's hard to imagine Richard Lange wasn't, in some previous life, a hustler from Reno with a girlfriend named Tinafey he met on a professional date who goes to LA to steal a fortune from a one-legged soldier home from Afghanistan and a host of other terrifying individuals. The characters are real and satisfying, the relationships will warm your heart and break it at the same time. The Smack is convincing, hectic and terrific fun."-- Joe Ide, author of IQ

Event date: Thursday, July 20, 2017 - 7:30pm

PAUL MADONNA DISCUSSES HIS BOOK ON TO THE NEXT DREAM

Wed, 28 Mar 2018 11:15:16 -0700

Paul Madonna's popular comic, "All Over Coffee" had been running for twelve years in the San Francisco Chronicle when he was evicted from his longtime home and studio in the Mission District, ground-zero in the "tech wars" transforming the city. Suddenly finding himself yet another victim of San Francisco's overheated boomtown housing market, with its soaring prices and rampant evictions, Madonna decided to use his comic as a cathartic public platform to explore the experience, and to capture the complex, highly charged atmosphere of a city—and a life—being forced through a painful transition.

In a series of drawings and stories, Madonna evokes the sense of vertigo induced by being forced from his home, and the roil of emotions that ensue as he enters into the city's brutal competition for a place to live. The line between reality and surreality begins to blur almost immediately, in real life and in his comic. Absurd, maddening, and all-too-poignant, these drawings and stories capture the spirit of not just San Francisco, but a cultural epidemic that has now spread to cities around the world.

Praise for On to the Next Dream:

"For years I've been intrigued and charmed by Paul Madonna's careful and thoughtful drawings of overlooked nooks and by-ways of San Francisco. In his new book he now combines them with manic, delirious, and increasingly paranoid writings as he struggles with the all-consuming City dilemma of gentrification; of who came first, who gets to stay, which wave of usurpers is more 'real' and deserving than the next, and finally, what happens when someone decides it's your turn to go. Beautiful and engaging."—Sandow Birk, visual artist

"Madonna has created a kind of San Francisco Realism, details so absurd, cruel, and beautiful that they can only come from our infuriating home. If Charlie Kaufman squatted in an illegal sublet in Armistead Maupin's mind, this would be the lovely tenant."—Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life

"Paul Madonna's On to the Next Dream is bleak, terrifying, hilarious and lovely."—MariNaomi, author and illustrator of Turning Japanese

"Simply delightful. I really don't like much out there, I really don't, but On to the Next Dream I couldn't put down. It was sharp, clever, honest, and maybe the funniest book on eviction ever written."—New Yorker cartoonist and New York Times bestselling author, Bob Eckstein, Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores

Paul Madonna is a San Francisco-based artist and writer. He is the creator of the comic series "All Over Coffee" and the author of two books, All Over Coffee and Everything is its own reward. His drawings and stories have appeared in numerous books and journals as well as galleries and museums, including the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Oakland Museum of California.

Event date: Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - 7:30pm

JENNIFER BRODY DISCUSSES HER NEW YOUNG ADULT NOVEL THE UNITED CONTINUUMS, WITH ELIZABETH BRIGGS AND XACH FROMSON

Tue, 27 Mar 2018 12:00:59 -0700

In the epic conclusion to the award-winning Continuum Trilogy, Aero leads a group insurgents from the Second Continuum to overthrow his rival Supreme General Vinick and unite his space colony’s military forces, while Seeker takes on a secret mission back to her home colony to reinforce Earth's defenses and protect the First Continuum against an even greater threat. Meanwhile, Myra’s nightmares have become a reality as the Dark Thing hurtles toward Earth with designs on eradicating the planet’s fledgling populace. The only thing standing in the way are the three Carriers and those who would join them to fight against a second coming of the Doom.

Praise for The United Continuums

"Dystopian done right! Jennifer Brody takes readers on an incredible journey filled with new worlds, life altering decisions, and the human spirit's need to persevere. Fast paced and brilliantly written! Five stars!"—Kelly Anne Blount, USA Today bestselling author

"Wow. Jennifer Brody has done it again, creating another spectacular read that had me on the edge of my seat—I simply couldn't turn the pages fast enough! The United Continuums is a breath-taking and satisfying conclusion to The Continuum Trilogy, packed to the brim with characters of great emotional depth, stunning world-building, and beautiful writing. A must-read for science fiction fans. Brody is now one of my auto-buy authors."—Madeline Dyer, author of the Untamed series

"Jennifer Brody just keeps getting better and better! Packed with non-stop action and a sweeping, intricate world, The United Continuums delivers a satisfying conclusion to a sci-fi adventure that you don't want to miss."—Pintip Dunn, New York Times bestselling author of Forget Tomorrow

Jennifer Brody’s award-winning novel The 13th Continuum sold in a 3-book deal and is being packaged into a feature film. The book is a Gold Medal Winner (Young Adult – Sci-Fi/Fantasy) from the Independent Publisher‘s Moonbeam Children’s Book Awards. Return of the Continuums and The United Continuums complete this epic trilogy. She is a graduate of Harvard University, a creative writing instructor at the Writing Pad, and a volunteer mentor for the Young Storytellers Foundation. After studying film at Harvard University, she began her career in Hollywood. Highlights include working on The Lord of the Rings films and The Golden Compass. Find her online at http://www.jenniferbrody.com/.

Elizabeth Briggs is the New York Times bestselling author of the Future Shock trilogy and the Chasing The Dream series. She graduated from UCLA with a degree in Sociology and has worked for an international law firm, mentored teens in writing, and volunteered with dog rescue groups. Now she's a full-time geek who lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a pack of fluffy dogs. Find her online at www.elizabethbriggs.net.

Xach Fromson is a Los Angeles native who has been obsessed with horror and dark fiction from a very young age. After a brief and ill-advised attempt at being a theater major, he received his BA in Creative Writing from California State University Northridge in 2009. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California Riverside’s Palm Desert program. He appeared on stage at Dirty Laundry Lit in February, 2013, and has a short story in the anthology Halloween Tales, out in 2014. He is currently in various stages of working on a ton of projects. Asking him his favorite book will earn you as blank a stare as asking him his favorite wine or whiskey. And once, he slew a dragon. Find him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @_mythogenesis_.

Event date: Sunday, July 16, 2017 - 5:00pm

ZINZI CLEMMONS READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL WHAT WE LOSE

Fri, 23 Mar 2018 16:08:53 -0700

From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age--a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country.

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor--someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi's life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman's understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

Praise for What We Lose

"Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit--wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored." --Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout

"An intimate narrative that often makes another life as believable as your own." --John Edgar Wideman, author of Writing to Save a Life

"The narrator of What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice, moving between the death of her mother and the birth of her son, as well as an America of blacks and whites and a South Africa of Coloreds. What an intricate mapping of inner and outer geographies! Clemmons's prose is rhythmically exact and acutely moving. No experience is left unexamined or unimagined." --Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland

"Zinzi Clemmons' first book heralds the work of a new writer with a true and lasting voice--one that is just right for our complicated millennium. Bright and filled with shadows, humor, and trenchant insights into what it means to have a heart divided by different cultures, What We Lose is a win, just right for the ages." --Hilton Als, author of White Girls

"I love how Zinzi Clemmons complicates identity in What We Lose. Her main character is both South African and American, privileged and outsider, driven by desire and gutted by grief. This is a piercingly beautiful first novel." --Danzy Senna, author of New People

"It takes a rare, gifted writer to make her readers look at day-to-day aspects of the world around them anew. Zinzi Clemmons is one such writer.What We Lose immerses us in a world of complex ideas and issues with ease. Clemmons imbues each aspect of this novel with clear, nuanced thinking and emotional heft. Part meditation on loss, part examination of identity as it relates to ethnicity, nationality, gender and class, and part intimate look at one woman's coming of age, What We Lose announces a talented new voice in fiction." --Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House

"Wise and tender and possessed of a fiercely insightful intimacy, What We Lose is a lyrical ode to the complexities of race, love, illness, parenthood, and the hairline fractures they leave behind. Zinzi Clemmons has gifted the reader a rare and thoughtful emotional topography, a map to the mirror regions of their own heart." --Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal, a contributing editor to Literary Hub, and deputy editor for Phoneme Media. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope, The Paris Review Daily, Transition, and the Common. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Bread Loaf, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Event date: Wednesday, July 12, 2017 - 7:30pm

VICTORIA REDEL DISCUSSES HER NOVEL BEFORE EVERYTHING, WITH SETH GREENLAND

Wed, 21 Mar 2018 11:29:08 -0700

Before Everything is a celebration of friendship and love between a group of women who have known each another since they were girls. They’ve faced everything together, from youthful sprees and scrapes to mid-life turning points. Now, as Anna, the group’s trailblazer and brightest spark, enters hospice, they gather to do what they’ve always done—talk and laugh and help each other make choices and plans, this time in Anna’s rural Massachusetts home. Helen, Anna’s best friend and a celebrated painter, is about to remarry. The others face their own challenges—Caroline with her sister’s mental health crisis; Molly with a teenage daughter’s rebellion; Ming with her law practice—dilemmas with kids and work and love. Before Everything is as funny as it is bittersweet, as the friends revel in the hilarious mistakes they’ve seen each another through, the secrets kept, and adventures shared. But now all sense of time has shifted, and the pattern of their lives together takes on new meaning. The novel offers a brilliant, emotionally charged portrait, deftly conveying the sweep of time over everyday lives, and showing how even in difficult endings, gifts can unfold. Above all it is an ode to friendship, and to how one person shapes the journeys of those around her.

Praise for Before Everything

“Gorgeous, a heartbreaker, a non-stop dazzler, a major achievement. Thank you, Victoria Redel.”—Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hours

“Before Everything is a riveting, timely story that explores the unsettlingly beautiful and emotionally-charged landscape that is revealed when old friends embrace what they have never before admitted: the limits of mortality and the boundlessness of friendship.”—Ruth Ozeki, bestselling author of A Tale for the Time Being

“Victoria Redel bears witness to a remarkable group of women, effortlessly weaving back and forth through time, each thread revealing the cracks and secrets of their complex lives, while also drawing them closer. . . . Redel proves that female friendship is the quiet, steady engine that truly runs the world.”—Hannah Tinti, bestselling author of The Good Thief

“Before Everything is, well, everything you want a novel about life, death, and friendship to be—smart, moving, sweeping, poetic, stinging, just beautiful. I loved these women (and their men) and this elegy to their long-reaching bonds.”—Dani Shapiro, author of Slow Motion, Devotion: A Memoir, and Still Writing

Victoria Redel is the critically acclaimed author of four previous works of fiction and three collections of poetry. Her debut novel, Loverboy, was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times and won the Sister Mariella Gable Prize from Graywolf Press and the Forward Silver Literary Fiction Prize. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has contributed to The New York Times, theLos Angeles Times, Elle, O, the Oprah Magazine, Granta, One Story, and the Harvard Review. She received her MFA in poetry from Columbia University and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Seth Greenland is a novelist, an award-winning playwright, and a screenwriter. He is the author of the novels I Regret Everything, The Angry Buddhist, The Bones, and Shining City, which was named a Best Book by the Washington Post. He was a writer-producer on the Emmy-nominated HBO seriesBig Love and executive produced the film, No Pay, Nudity. Until recently he was the co-host of the LARB Radio Hour on KPFK. Born in New York City, Greenland currently lives with his wife in Los Angeles. www.SethGreenland.com

Event date: Tuesday, July 11, 2017 - 7:30pm

JANELLE BROWN READS FROM HER NEW NOVEL WATCH ME DISAPPEAR

Sat, 17 Mar 2018 18:21:38 -0700

How well can you ever really know another person—even the woman that you sleep beside, night after night?

It's been a year since Billie Flanagan--a Berkeley mom with an enviable life--went on a solo hike in Desolation Wilderness and vanished from the trail. Her body was never found; just a shattered cellphone and a solitary hiking boot. Her husband and teenage daughter have been coping with Billie's death the best they can: Jonathan drinks as he works on a loving memoir about his marriage; Olive grows remote, from both her father and her friends at the all-girls school she attends. But then Olive starts having strange visions of her mother, still alive. Jonathan worries about Olive's emotional stability, until he starts unearthing secrets from Billie's past that bring into question everything he thought he understood about his wife. Who was the woman he knew as Billie Flanagan?

Together, Olive and Jonathan embark on a quest for the truth--about Billie, but also about themselves, learning in the process about all the ways that love can distort what we choose to see. Janelle Brown's insights into the dynamics of intimate relationships will make you question the stories you tell yourself about the people you love, while her nervy storytelling will keep you guessing until the very last page.

Praise for Watch Me Disappear

"Clever and compelling, this ricocheting tale reveals that even in the closest families, how little we know of the ones we love, and how our own secrets are often the hardest to bear, can cost us dearly in the end." --Lisa Gardner, author of Right Behind You

"Tantalizing and twisty, Watch Me Disappear is both a spider's web of a thriller and a moving exploration of the deeper mysteries of marriage and family. You won't be able to put it down, but you won't forget it either." --Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me

"A riveting, seductive read about the secret, protected places within even the most intimate relationships . . . Janelle Brown has written a novel that provokes thought as her story twists and turns. I loved it." --Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Water for Elephants

"Watch Me Disappear is at once a riveting page-turner and a thoughtful meditation on what it means to know other people--and ourselves." --Edan Lepucki, New York Times bestselling author of Woman No. 17 and California

"I devoured Watch Me Disappear in one sitting. In this poignant and captivating story of a missing woman and the family she left behind, Brown deftly peels away the layers of a loving marriage to reveal a haunting mystery and a devastating truth: that no matter how much you love someone, you can never truly know them." --Laura McHugh, author of The Weight of Blood and Arrowood

"The real magic of Watch Me Disappear is Brown's gift for evoking familial love in all its mad permutations--and the more intensely for the high stakes of what has been taken, and what is yet to be found. This is a story you simply don't want to end--but then, lord, what an ending!" --Tim Johnston, author of Descent

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything and This Is Where We Live. An essayist and a journalist, she has written for Vogue, The New York Times, Elle, Wired, Self, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, and numerous other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two children.

LITERARY PACHANGA PRESENTS JESUS TREVINO, ALICIA GASPAR DE ALBA AND CHRISTINE GRANADOS

Thu, 15 Mar 2018 11:28:47 -0700

Literary Pachanga showcases three Chicano authors. Skylight Books will host a trio of authors to celebrate Southern California’s ties to the Ellis Island of the West – El Paso, Texas.

Chicano writers Jesús Treviño, Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Christine Granados will read from their collective works.

All artists were born or raised in El Paso, Texas and two (Treviño and de Alba) make their home in Southern California.

Jesús Salvador Treviño is writer/director whose television directing credits include Criminal Minds, Law & Order Criminal Intent and many others. He has written, directed and produced several PBS documentaries about Latinos. Trevino’s latest effort is a video website showcasing Latino history, art, music, theater, literature, cinema and food. He will read from his most recent collection of short stories Return to Arroyo Grande which was published in 2015 and won the 2016 American Book Award.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, a native of the El Paso/Juárez border has published 11 books, among them award-winning novels and collections of poetry and short fiction. Since 1994, she has been a professor of Chicana/o Studies, English, and Gender Studies at UCLA, and is currently Chair of the LGBTQ Studies program. She will read from Calligraphy of the Witch published by St. Martin’s Press in 2007, released in paperback by Arte Público Press in 2012.

Christine Granados has been a Spur Award finalist and received Sandra Cisneros’ literary prize the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award in 2006 for her first book of fiction Brides and Sinners in El Chuco, published by the University of Arizona Press and her stories have been in many anthologies. She will read from and discuss her second book, a novella and short stories about strong Mexican American women who live along the border, titled Fight Like a Man and Other Stories We Tell Our Children.

CHELSEA MARTIN DISCUSSES CACA DOLCE WITH MIRA GONZALEZ

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 21:54:58 -0800

Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life (Soft Skull Press)

From a cult favorite and indie-press bestseller who has been called “the preeminent chronicler of Internet-age malaise” (Lena Dunham) and “an exquisite original” (Chloe Caldwell), a candid, tender, and very funny book about relationships, class, art, sex, money, and family.

In a fresh, subversive voice that charts her trajectory from a dead-end California town to a burgeoning career as an author and illustrator, cult favorite Chelsea Martin returns with her debut essay collection, Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow LIfe. Blending the poignant wit of David Sedaris in his bestseller Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim with the feminist candor of Melissa Broder’s So Sad Today and Jessi Klein’s You’ll Grow Out of It, CACA DOLCE is a book about relationships, class, art, sex, money, and family—and about growing up weird, and poor, in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Chelsea examines her varied experiences: as an eleven-year- old atheist, trying to will an alien visitation to her neighborhood; fighting with her stepfather and grappling with a Tourette’s diagnosis as she becomes a teenager; falling under the sway of frenemies and crushes in high school; going into debt to afford what might be a meaningless education at an expensive art college; navigating the messy process of falling in love with a close friend; and struggling for independence from her emotionally manipulative father and her hometown family and friends.

Praise for Caca Dolce:

“Martin’s honest writing exists above the confines of fear and social norms. She is a breath of pure oxygen in a literary environment that often shies away from female grit. . . her writing is sweaty, uncomfortable, and enchanting. She taps into the consciousness of her past selves with precision and care, respecting the integrity and desires of those younger women. A sure hit for fans of Sara Benincasa’s Agorafabulous! and Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl.” —Booklist (starred review)

“A wild ride of a memoir, and a true glimpse into the mind of an artist as she’s figuring out what life is all about.” —Nylon

“Martin, a writer who’s earned a cult following with her books Mickey and Even Though I Don’t Miss You, turns to nonfiction in her debut essay collection, bringing her irreverent voice to tales of childhood, crushes, art school and the California town she grew up in where people just can’t seem to leave.” —Huffington Post

“The arc of growing self-awareness lends the story both gravity and an odd appeal.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Deeply human—it’s a lonely book that made me feel less alone.” —Melissa Broder, author of So Sad Today

“I highly enjoyed Caca Dolce—a weird, funny, moving, complex memoir that’s excitingly like if Diane Williams edited a 500-page novel down to 200 pages.” —Tao Lin, author of Taipei

“Chelsea Martin is one of the best American writers alive. Savage and sharp, tender and hilarious, Martin’s Caca Dolce is a book like she’s never written before. You’ll only think one thing after reading it. Chelsea Martin can do anything.” —Scott McClanahan, author of The Sarah Book

“Chelsea Martin delivers neon electric jolts of reality in deadpan perfection. Refreshing, hilarious, self-deprecating, as far from pretentious as you can get.” —Molly Brodak, author of Bandit

“I’m probably not Chelsea Martin’s biggest fan because I’m sure she has legitimate stalkers, but I’m way up there. Gold, gold I tell ya.” —Mary Miller, author of The Last Days of California

“If David Sedaris were younger, hipper, and had once subscribed to Cat Fancy, he might write like this.”—Elizabeth Ellen, author of Person/a

Chelsea Martin is the author of Everything Was Fine Until Whatever;The Really Funny Thing About Apathy; Even Though I Don’t Miss You, which was named one of the Best Indie Books of 2013 by Dazed magazine; and Mickey. Her work has appeared in publications including Buzzfeed, Hobart, Lenny Letter, Vice, and Catapult, and chosen as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2016. She is a comic artist and illustrator and the creative director of Universal Error and currently lives in Washington State.

FRAN KRAUSE DISCUSSES HIS NEW COMIC THE CREEPS

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 21:40:03 -0800

The Creeps (Ten Speed Press)

A follow-up to the New York Times best-selling Deep Dark Fears: a second volume of comics based on people’s quirky, spooky, hilarious, and terrifying fears.

Illustrator, animator, teacher, and comic artist Fran Krause has touched a collective nerve with his wildly popular web comic series–and subsequent New York Times best-selling book–Deep Dark Fears. Here he brings readers more of the creepy, funny, and idiosyncratic fears they love illustrated in comic form–such as the fear that your pets will tell other animals all your embarrassing secrets, or that someone uses your house while you’re not home–as well as two longer comic short-stories about ghosts.

Fran Krause is an animator and cartoonist. He is currently a teacher in the character animation program at CalArts, creator of several cartoons, and the creator of the Deep Dark Fears webcomic series and book.

DAVID ROCKLIN READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL THE NIGHT LANGUAGE

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 21:22:13 -0800

The Night Language (Rare Bird Books)

The Night Language tells the story of a young man, Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia), who is taken from his home and the Abyssinian war to the court of Queen Victoria—a world he knows nothing about.

With him is Philip Layard, a young apprentice to one of the doctors on the battlefield in Abyssinia, who becomes Alamayou's guardian, only friend, and eventually, the love of his life. When Parliament accuses Alamayou of murder, the young prince is sentenced to return to Abyssinia, where he will be executed.

His only hope comes from the very thing that cannot be uttered: the unexpected and forbidden love between Alamayou and Philip.

Inspired by true events, The Night Language is a unique novel of love, loss, and the consequences of repressive societies.

Praise for The Night Language

"The Night Language is a rare achievement: lush language and classic storytelling with a contemporary feel that renders its history palpable. It is also a love letter to the artist, the outcast, the othered. Keep it by your bedside, read it in the early hours—it will not fail to inspire you."
—Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased

"Not since Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient have I read a novel in which a character—the story and skinsong of Alamayou—has haunted language, history, and heart so intensely. David Rocklin's novel The Night Language is a book of longing. Longing for history to unravel and retell itself around those whose buried voices and bodies truly mattered, longing for time to reverse and make decolonization possible, power giving way to intimacy, longing for art to bring a body back home, longing for language to unmoor itself and bring us back to life. If you read one novel this year, let it be The Night Language. It is still possible for a reader’s heart to be broken back open."
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Book of Joan, The Small Backs of Children, and The Chronology of Water

"The Night Language is a postcard sent from a lost time and place but postmarked today. As he surveys the crisscross borders of gender and race in a troubled past, David Rocklin draws a line around the heart of our troubled present: the price of war, the privilege of wealth, the poison of xenophobia. Also: the wordless power of love. The shadows of two black men, an African prince and a British apprentice, dance together out of a forgotten history right into the here and now."
—Martin Pousson, author of Black Sheep Boy

David Rocklin is the author of The Luminist and the founder/curator of Roar Shack, a monthly reading series in Los Angeles. He was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in LA with his wife, daughters, and a 150 lb Great Dane who seriously needs to stay on his own bed. He’s currently at work on his next novel, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger.

LISKA JACOBS READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL CATALINA WITH DAVID ULIN

Tue, 05 Dec 2017 20:53:12 -0800

Catalina (Farrar/MCD)

A magnetic, provocative debut novel chronicling a young woman’s downward spiral following the end of an affair

Elsa Fisher is headed for rock bottom. At least, that’s her plan. She has just been fired from MoMA on the heels of an affair with her married boss, and she retreats to Los Angeles to blow her severance package on whatever it takes to numb the pain. Her abandoned crew of college friends (childhood friend Charlotte and her wayward husband, Jared; and Elsa’s ex-husband, Robby) receive her with open arms, and, thinking she’s on vacation, a plan to celebrate their reunion on a booze-soaked sailing trip to Catalina Island.

But Elsa doesn’t want to celebrate. She is lost, lonely, and full of rage, and only wants to sink as low as the drugs and alcohol will take her. On Catalina, her determined unraveling and recklessness expose painful memories and dark desires, putting everyone in the group at risk.

With the creeping menace of Patricia Highsmith and the bender-chic of Bret Easton Ellis, Liska Jacobs brings you inside the mind of an angry, reckless young woman hell-bent on destruction—every page taut with the knowledge that Elsa’s path does not lead to a happy place. Catalina is a compulsive, deliciously dark exploration of beauty, love, and friendship, and the sometimes toxic desires that drive us.

Praise for Catalina

“Catalina is an extraordinarily engaging study in the tension of opposing forces: youth and world-weariness, beauty and unreliability, good intentions and roads to hell. The backbone of the novel is its relentless unwillingness to apologize for its main character—not for her faults, not for her complexities. Hot damn and about time. Liska Jacobs writes with teeth; this book’s got bite.”—Jill Alexander Essbaum, New York Times-bestselling author of Hausfrau

“Catalina’s feminist fatale narrator, Elsa, has both the heartbroken cynicism of Daisy Buchanan and the inscrutable seductiveness of Carmen in The Big Sleep. Liska Jacobs writes crystal-clear, hypnotically sensual prose, and Catalina is California noir at its darkest and sharpest.”—Kate Christensen, author of The Great Man and In the Drink

“In her propulsive debut, Liska Jacobs tells the story of a beautiful young woman’s dissolute downward spiral with precision and insight. Catalina deftly explores the desperate social frontiers where the morals of the privileged class dissolve. You won’t be able to look away.”—J. Ryan Stradal, New York Times-bestselling author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest?

“Catalina is true California, down to the bones and skin, a novel about the places Liska Jacobs knows in her soul. Beauty and the body as currency and betrayal, seekers of love and comfort—her characters blow all that up, and just when you think you know what will happen, Catalina swerves and you are along for the ride.”—Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here and Highwire Moon

“Sophisticated and surprising, Catalina brings an excitingly modern vibe to the time-honored story of a young woman coming undone in California. Like a love child of Joan Didion and Kate Braverman, Liska Jacobs is a master of menacing cool and the seductive havoc wreaked by self-destruction.”—Gina Frangello, author of A Life in Men and Every Kind of Wanting

Liska Jacobs holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The Rumpus, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and The Hairpin, among other publications. Catalina is her first novel.

Photo by Jordan Bryant

David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground.A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award.

STEFAN BUCHER READS FROM HIS BOOK LETTERHEADS

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 22:01:59 -0800

LetterHeads: An Eccentric Alphabet (Unnamed Press)

From the creator of the popular Daily Monster YouTube series comes a revolutionary new vision for “characters,” one that brings the alphabet hilariously alive.

A very special design book, LetterHeads is the first to feature “sculpted“ portraits of letters, employing 3D modeling software, which has been used almost exclusively by Hollywood’s CGI and video game production community. Until now!

LetterHeads is a graphic design book for creatives of any age, celebrating diversity and inspired by the people of the artist’s hometown of Los Angeles. Infused with unique personalities, surrounded by playful vocabulary and an intriguing color palette, the letters reflect just how alive language can be. The use of ground-breaking 3D technology acts as a link to not just the future of letterform creation, but education itself.

• Molded and carved like a series of classical sculptures, but free of the gaudy paint jobs, the LetterHeads allow the quirks and nuances of each diverse character to emerge.
• The LetterHeads are a landmark approach to letterform creation, combining decorative lettering of the 19th century with the crisp digital modeling of a Pixar blockbuster.
• LetterHeads enfolds playful vocabulary with color literacy, celebrating the diversity of both letterforms and people.

Stefan G. Bucher is an American writer, graphic designer and illustrator. He is the man behind the award-winning California design studio 344 Design. He is also the creator of the popular online animation series Daily Monster. For 100 days he filmed himself drawing a new monster every night, based on random ink blots. Visitors then posted stories about each monster on the blog. The clips have been viewed well over three million times and are collected, along with selected stories, in the book “100 Days of Monsters.” He is the subject of an hour-long documentary film about his life and work, produced as part of lynda.com’s “Creative Inspiration” series.

ANN WHITFORD PAUL READS FROM HER CHILDREN'S BOOK IF ANIMALS SAID I LOVE YOU

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:49:28 -0800

If Animals Said I Love You (Farrar Straus Giroux)

If animals said “I love you” like we do... how would they say it?

Whale would make bubbles shoot from her spout. Boa would give her hatchlings a hug. Gorilla would snuggle his child to sleep. And across the animal kingdom, every creature would show love in a special way. Ann Whitford Paul and David Walker are back with If Animals Said I Love You, a sweet imagining of love in the animal world.

Praise for If Animals Said I Love You and If Animals Kissed Goodnight

“Love isn't reserved for just parent and child: siblings, cousins, and friends also get in on the act... Surely adult and child pairs reading this together will find ways to mimic the animals' ways of expressing their love.” —Kirkus Reviews, on If Animals Said I Love You

"There are probably not enough synonyms for 'cute' to cover this survey of hypothetical smooches between animal parents and off-spring... The characters radiate unconditional love."—Publishers Weekly, on If Animals Kissed Goodnight

"The imaginative possibilities alone make this one stand out from the glut of sickly sweet bedtime books. Sure to send readers off to a gentle goodnight... after a kiss, of course." —Kirkus Reviews, on If Animals Kissed Goodnight

Ann Whitford Paul and David Walker collaborated on If Animals Kissed Good Night and Little Monkey Says Good Night, a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, which Kirkus Reviews praised as "a perfect good-night read." Ms. Paul lives in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Walker lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

MARY KURYLA READS FROM HER COLLECTION FREAK WEATHER WITH BRENDA WEHLE

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 20:46:24 -0800

Freak Weather (Massachusetts Press)

From a nurse who sees a rattlesnake in the pediatric ICU to an animal control officer convinced she’s found her abducted daughter in the house of a dog hoarder, the thirteen stories in Freak Weather are as unpredictable as the atmospheric changes that give this collection its name. With dark and raucous humor, Mary Kuryla creates female characters who, at times, combine a violent urgency with lack of introspection as they struggle to get out from under the thumb of a perceived authority. The intricate language is inseparable from the narrator’s conviction; the characters lie with such bravado they’re soon tangled up in their own webs. This brand of romanticism in a female character is little tolerated, and Freak Weather’s mission—Kuryla’s artistic mission overall—is to scratch at the intolerable. Call it bad instructions for moral
behavior.

Mary Kuryla has been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Prize. Several of the stories in this collection have been adapted into award-winning films that premiered at the Sundance, London, Edinburgh, and Toronto International film festivals.

Praise for Freak Weather

“There is a feral quality to some of these stories, an attitude that is truly startling. The language is perfectly matched to the not-so- conflicted women living off venison, weed, and their husband’s paychecks. The territory here is sometimes disturbing; the treatment of these people who are in over their heads is always both tough and surprisingly moving. The ‘action’ resides as much in the brisk, fresh language as in what these people conjure in a crisis. Ultimately, the author delivers stories unlike anyone else’s.”—Amy Hempel, Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction judge and author of The Dog of the Marriage: Stories

“This is what they mean by muscular prose, but with lithe muscles, quick and bright, and dueling senses of swagger and grimness. A striking and satisfying debut.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master: Stories

"What a memorable, witty, imaginative collection this is, beautifully modulated, extravagant yet precise. Each story is startling and expertly hewn, with a perfect balance of toughness and whimsy.”—Joanna Scott, author of De Potter’s Grand Tour

“A powerful collection of stories about women who are unapologetically themselves—often struggling, sometimes drunk, sometimes irresponsible, but in all cases painfully human and alive. Each of these pieces opens a window onto a life and then, before we have time to explain to ourselves how we’re not like that, abruptly slams it shut, leaving us exquisitely off balance.”—Brian Evenson, author of The Warren

“There is much beguiling strangeness in the pages of Freak Weather, but there are no strangers: you know all of these people. They're the slightly scary neighbors, the folks who talk a little too loudly in the convenience store, the children who act older than they should. You've wanted to know about their lives, and now they're telling you everything. Simultaneously appalling and gorgeous.”—Pinckney Benedict, author of Miracle Boy & Other Stories

Mary Kuryla’s collection Freak Weather: Stories was selected by Amy Hempel for the 2016 AWP Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction. She has been the recipient of The Pushcart Prize, as well as the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Prize. Her stories have appeared in Epoch, Shenandoah, Denver Quarterly, Witness, Greensboro Review, Pleiades, The New Orleans Review, The Normal School and Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. She is the author, with Eugene Yelchin, of The Heart of the Snowman, Ghost Files: The Haunting Truth, and The Next Door Bear for Harper Children’s Books. Her award-winning shorts and feature films have premiered at Sundance and Toronto. She has written screen adaptations for United Artists and MGM. She teaches screenwriting and media studies at Loyola Marymount University and Emerson, Los Angeles.

Award-winning actress Brenda Wehle has appeared in film and TV (American Beauty, Woman Walks Ahead), and worked extensively in New York, most recently on Broadway in The Crucible. She is currently in Mary Jane at the New York Theatre Workshop. A member of the Guthrie Theater Acting Company, she appeared in over 35 productions.

PANIO GIANOPOULOS DISCUSSES HIS NEW COLLECTION OF STORIES HOW TO GET INTO OUR HOUSE AND WHERE WE KEEP THE MONEY WITH CECIL CASTELLUCCI

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 20:27:15 -0800

How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money (Four Way Books)

In this collection’s tour-de-force title story, Ethan, a marketing manager for consumer-goods brands, finds himself in a bizarre standoff with his wife, new boss, and daughter’s swim teacher over the sudden presence in his life of Scudder, Ethan’s graffiti-artist nephew. Before long, Ethan is defacing his boss’s office with dry-erase markers and climbing a condemned building in the dead of night. How swiftly, Gianopoulos reminds us, we become the very thing we’re trying to avoid; how soon we find ourselves at the point of no return: a guy whose prep school girlfriend has just “asked him to break her leg” with a cinderblock “and send her home.”

A love song to the power of the inadvertent and unplanned, this collection tracks a gaggle of lost souls—a bewildered young medical student, a man jealous of his girlfriend’s love for her tiny Pomeranian, and a restless free-diving housewife—as it captures “that itchy, panicky feeling you get when you suspect you’ve stepped into the slowest line at the supermarket.” Its characters persist in lives pockmarked with awkwardness, continually in search of “another parallel version” of themselves. Amid their domestic mayhem, Gianopoulos finds humor and warmth, an animal curled up around a protagonist’s ankle “like a misplaced comma.” How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money is a witty, telling, urbane exploration of the clumsiness of relationships, of the small wars and gigantic missteps that shape our lives with our nearest and not-
always-so-dearest.

Praise for How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money

“A wonderful collection of nine stories combining wry humor, engaging characters, and shrewd psychological insight....Witty, discerning, and laugh-out-loud funny.”--Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

“This is a stunning collection, brilliant in its incisive depictions of the mapless territory of midlife. From the man who despises and tries to lose his girlfriend’s dog to the would-be seducer for whom technology reveals a searing glimpse at how he is perceived by the young, these characters inspire your compassion even as they beg for your forgiveness—and even as they make you laugh out loud. Short story collections rarely arrive this compelling, this accomplished, this imaginative, and this wise. I am already impatient to share this masterful book, which I know will convert more and more readers to the joys of the form.”—Robin Black

“Panio Gianopoulos is the most natural of storytellers, and in his first collection, How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, he shows enormous range, mastery and feel for the short story. With echoes ranging from Updike to Murakami to Tom Perrotta, and a wonderfully capacious group of characters, Gianopoulos announces himself as a terrific new voice for the form. This is one to read and savor.”—Daniel Torday

“Panio Gianopoulos’s How to Get into Our House and Where We Keep the Moneyis an auspicious debut. In these smart and knowing stories, smart and knowing people come up against the limits of their knowingness and break through into a deeper humanity.”—David Gates

Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the novella A Familiar Beast. His writing has appeared in Big Fiction, Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, Chicago Quarterly Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Northwest Review, Rattling Wall, and Tin House. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, he has been included in the anthologies The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Nonfiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes. He lives with his family in New York.

CAITLIN DOUGHTY DISCUSSES HER BOOK FROM HERE TO ETERNITYCAITLIN DOUGHTY DISCUSSES HER BOOK FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 20:09:04 -0800

From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (W.W. Norton)

In From Here To Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, mortician Caitlin Doughty explores the world’s funeral traditions—from robotic graves in Japan to an Indonesian village where families live with the bodies of their dead for months, even years, prior to the funeral. Following up on her New York Times best-selling book SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES, the author argues that in modern America, funerals have become procedural and impersonal, meant to sanitize and distance the survivors’ from confrontation with mortality—all in the name of profit and “dignity.” The result is a culture pervaded by death anxieties and bereft of traditions that would help people make sense of their own mortal ends. Doughty advocates for alternative rituals designed to save us from the funeral-industrial complex.

In her travels, Doughty encounters funeral traditions that, to our eyes, may appear both beautiful and appalling. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus tells a story about two nations with very different perspectives on death: the Greeks and the Callatians. The Greeks cremate their dead and are repulsed by cannibalism, while the Callatians consume their dead and are repulsed by cremation. Herodotus’s lesson remains true to this day: the funeral traditions of other cultures almost always strike the outsider as barbaric.

Doughty, however, goes beyond ghoulish spectacle to ask how different cultures benefit from their unique funeral traditions and to question how our own culture might learn from them. Readers travel with Doughty as she learns about, and even participates in:

The Japanese tradition of kotsuage, the ritual removal of large bone fragments from cremated ashes by family members using chopsticks
A nonprofit mobile funeral pyre operation in Colorado that dodged local ordinances to revive a funeral tradition that dates back to prehistory
A museum in Guanajuato, Mexico, for the mummies of disinterred corpses whose relatives could not pay the cemetery’s fee for “perpetual” interment; the museum includes a section for Angelitos, dead children whose bodies were believed to connect survivors to favored souls who could advocate for the living in Heaven
An American research effort aimed at composting the dead and returning the body to its natural position in the cycle of life, death, and renewal
A Bolivian woman’s efforts to collect and care for ñatitas, preserved human skulls that are treated like community advisors and are alleged to grant wishes; the skulls are at the center of conflicts between traditional beliefs and Roman Catholic teachings and, occasionally, enjoy smoking a cigarette

In her encounters with these funeral rites and traditions, Doughty explores the profound value they hold for the community. From Here To Eternity is an eye-opening exploration of the many different, and often surprising, ways humanity embraces the inescapable fact of death, filled with vivid and sometimes shocking details about how diverse cultures send off their dead.

But Doughty’s tour of the borderlands between the living and the dead is never simply morbid. As uncanny and surreal as some traditions may initially appear, when Doughty contrasts them to the vapid and emotionally sterile experiences promoted by America’s funeral industry, the depth and value of these ritualized customs is revealed. In a voice that is sympathetic, endlessly curious, and often engagingly humorous, Doughty advocates for a more humane and involved approach to mourning rituals. With lively illustrations by Landis Blair—whose style is a perfect match for Doughty’s humane and insightful prose—From Here To Eternity is a book about death for the living, and the importance of the rituals that help us understand how a meaningful end can enrich our sense of what it means to be alive.

Mortician Caitlin Doughty—host and creator of “Ask a Mortician” and the New York Times bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes—founded the Order of the Good Death. She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs the nonprofit funeral home Undertaking LA.

TARA JEPSEN DISCUSSES HER BOOK LIKE A DOG WITH MICHELLE TEA

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:59:18 -0800

Like a Dog (City Light Publishing)

A scrappy young skateboarder's story of underground worlds and fringe existences, confusing family relationships and the struggle for intimacy.

Paloma is aimlessly winging it through life. A skateboarder in her early 30s, she takes low-paying jobs, drinks neon-colored wine coolers in the park with her best friend, and drives to the Central Valley to skate the empty swimming pools dotting the sun-blasted landscape. Paloma struggles to have a relationship with her brother Peter, whose opiate addiction makes that nearly impossible. She enjoys occasional doses of something like closeness whenever Peter is sober, and these rare moments keep her lunging for his affections. Her delusions about the nature of addiction—along with a steady intake of alcohol—manage to keep the looming threat of his death by overdose at a comfortable enough distance.

When Peter lands a lucrative position managing a pot farm in Mendocino County, he offers Paloma a job. She shines in her new role, selling weed to celebrities in Los Angeles and making good money for the first time. With a new sense of self-confidence she decides to try out the world of stand-up comedy, and though she's absolutely terrible at it, she's happier than she's ever been. As Peter slides into a dangerous spiral, Paloma does her best to roll with the ups and downs, life's beginnings and endings.

Praise for Like a Dog:

"Tara Jepsen's Like a Dog is outrageously funny and soul-scrapingly grim, in the tradition of our most intrepid, shameless, and shame-filled comedians and storytellers. It also announces a singular new voice in American fiction—one which is deeply alive, hard-hitting, and tender."––Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts

"This book beat the crap out of me. I am bruised and laughing. Thank you Tara Jepsen, may I have another?"—Daniel Handler, author of All The Dirty Parts

"Tara Jepsen captures the absurd, animal humor of residing in a human female body on planet Earth like no other, and Like a Dog sets it loose within a hazy California underground of abandoned skate pools, weed farms and comedy open mics. Eccentric and insidery, taking on the bonds of family and addiction, the effort to find a life and the drive to end it, Like a Dog brims with hyper-conscious gems of hilarity and pathos."––Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave

Tara Jepsen is a writer and actor living in Los Angeles, California. She's appeared in Emmy-winning series Transparent. She and longtime collaborator Beth Lisick created, wrote and acted in original web series Rods and Cones, released by Jill Soloway and Rebecca Odes's Wifey.tv in September 2014, named one of Indiewire's 25 Best Series/Creators of 2014. Tara has written and performed original sketch comedy with Lisick throughout the U.S. since 1999. They have appeared at Dixon Place in NYC, at San Francisco's Sketchfest, at the UCB in Los Angeles, and myriad additional venues. Jepsen has been published by The Believer, xojane.com, and SF Weekly, among others. She has toured and performed extensively with the seminal queer cabaret Sister Spit since 1997. And, she co-hosted the legendary San Francisco open mic K'vetsh at a gay men's bath house for over ten years.

Author, activist, and queer/feminist icon Michelle Tea is the author of five memoirs, including the award-winning Valencia (now a film). Her novels include Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, the first in a Young Adult fantasy trilogy published by McSweeneys. Tea is the Founding Artistic Director of RADAR Productions, a queer-feminist literary non-profit in San Francisco and is the editor of Sister Spit Books, an imprint of City Lights. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, n+1, Buzzfeed, The Bold Italic, Marie Claire, xoJane.com and many other print and web publications.

CARMEN MARIA MACHADO READS FROM HER NEW SHORT STORY COLLECTION HER BODY AND OTHER PARTIES

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:44:59 -0800

Her Body and Other Parties (Graywolf Press)

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.

A wife refuses her husband's entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store's prom dresses. One woman's surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella "Especially Heinous," Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgangers, ghosts, and girls with bells for eyes.

Earthy and otherworldly, antic and sexy, queer and caustic, comic and deadly serious, Her Body and Other Parties swings from horrific violence to the most exquisite sentiment. In their explosive originality, these stories enlarge the possibilities of contemporary fiction.

Praise for Her Body and Other Parties

“The stories in Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties vibrate with originality, queerness, sensuality and the strange. Her voracious imagination and extraordinary voice beautifully bind these stories about fading women and the end of the world and men who want more when they’ve been given everything and bodies, so many human bodies taking up space and straining the seams of skin in impossible, imperfect, unforgettable ways.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist and Hunger

“Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties tells ancient fables of eros and female metamorphosis in fantastically new ways. She draws the secret world of the body into visibility, and illuminates the dark woods of the psyche. In these formally brilliant and emotionally charged tales, Machado gives literal shape to women's memories and hunger and desire. I couldn’t put it down.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!

“Those of us who knew have been waiting for a Carmen Maria Machado collection for years. Her stories show us what we really love and fear.”—Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night

“Carmen Maria Machado writes a new kind of fiction: brilliant, blindingly weird, and precisely attuned to the perils and sorrows of the times.”—Ben Marcus, author of Leaving the Sea

“Carmen Maria Machado has a vital, visceral, umbilical connection to the places deep within the soul from where stories emanate. With a tenderness that is both touching and terrifying, Her Body and Other Parties gives insight into a cluster of worlds linked by their depth of feeling and penetrating strangeness.”
—Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

“Brilliantly inventive and blazingly smart, these stories have the life-and-death stakes of nightmares and fairy tales; they’re full of urgent, almost unbearable reality. Carmen Machado is an extraordinary writer, an essential voice.”—Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

“Her Body and Other Parties will delight you, hurt you, and astonish you as only the smartest literature can. In this collection Machado blends horror, fairy tale, pop culture and myth in mesmerizing ways that feel utterly new. These stories are peerless and brilliant.”—Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa

“Carmen Maria Machado shuffles together fantastic, realistic, popular, and literary genres and then deals winning hand after winning hand. Whether it is reworking fairy tales, rewriting the entire run of Law and Order into a grim fantasy, or diving into unchartered territory entirely Machado's own, Her Body and Other Parties is a deft and thoughtful reclaiming of both literature and genre.”—Brian Evenson, author of A Collapse of Horses

“Her Body and Other Parties is genius: part punk rock and part classical, with stories that are raw and devastating but also exquisitely plotted and full of delight. This is a strong, dangerous, and blisteringly honest book—it’s hard to think of it as a ‘debut,’ it's that good.”—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne

“What Carmen Maria Machado has done with this collection is nothing less than stunning. Just when you think you’ve figured her out, she unveils another layer of story, so unexpected, so profound, it leaves you gasping.”—Lesley Nneka Arimah, author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

“With her lush, generative imagination, shimmering language, and utter fearlessness, Carmen Maria Machado is surely one of most ferociously gifted young writers working today. . . . Hilariously inventive, emotionally explosive, wonderfully sexy, Machado’s stories will carry you far from home, upend your reality, and sew themselves to your soul.”—Michelle Huneven, author of Blame and Off Course

“Carmen Maria Machado is the way forward. Her fiction is fearlessly inventive, socially astute, sometimes pointed, sometimes elliptical, and never quite what you’re expecting—yet behind it you can always hear that ancient tale-teller’s voice, bartering for your attention with its dangers and its mysteries, its foolhardy characters pulled this way and that by the ropes of their emotions. . . . There is at once the breath of the new about these stories and the breath of the timeless.”—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead

“A form-bending fabulist in the tradition of Kevin Brockmeier, Kelly Link, and Karen Russell, she gleefully seeks out weird shapes and subjects for every story. . . . She writes uncanny, creepy, sexy, funny, feminist, magical-realist, metafictional, pop-cultural, and all-of-the-above stories, and she seems determined never to write the same story twice. Yet for all of its wildly inventive variety, Her Body and Other Parties is unified by the one story it keeps finding new ways to tell: how women can survive in worlds that want them to disappear, whether into marriage, motherhood, death, or (literally) prom dresses.”—Bennett Sims, author of A Questionable Shape

Carmen Maria Machado’s work has appeared in Granta, the New Yorker, NPR, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Shirley Jackson Award, and was a finalist for the Calvino Prize. She lives in Philadelphia. You can visit her website at: www.carmenmachado.com

KENNY FRIES DISCUSSES HIS MEMOIR IN THE PROVINCE OF THE GODS WITH EMILY RAPP BLACK

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:29:52 -0800

In the Province of the Gods (University of Wisconsin Press)

An American's journey of profound self-discovery in Japan, and an exquisite tale of cultural and physical difference, sexuality, love, loss, mortality, and the ephemeral nature of beauty and art.

Kenny Fries embarks on a journey of profound self-discovery as a disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he also discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and A-bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, and he must find a way to reenter life on new terms.

Praise for In the Province of Gods

"Like the best memoirs, Kenny Fries’s In the Province of the Gods reminds us of the genre’s twinned truths: first, that the surest way to discover the self is to look out at the world, and second, that the best way to teach others about something is to tell them not ‘what it is,’ but what it means to you. Fries’s deft, questioning prose is as full of compassion as curiosity, and his revelations about himself are no less compelling than what he learns about Japan.”—Dale Peck, author of Martin and John

“Elegant and probing, In the Province of the Gods reads like the log of an early adventurer charting a newly discovered land. History, sexual politics, disability, and wooden fortune sticks are blended into an unexpected, tightly written exploration of Japanese culture. Fries may be the guy on the journey, but we’re the ones making the discoveries.”—Susan R. Nussbaum, author of Good Kings, Bad Kings

“In this subtle page turner, Fries helps reinvent the travel-as-pilgrimage narrative. He neither exoticizes nor shies away from the potential pitfalls of a western mind traveling abroad; instead he demonstrates how, through an all too rare open heart and a true poet’s eye, bridges can be built, and understanding deepened, one sincere action at a time.”—Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye

“Kenny Fries writes out of the pure hot emergency of a mortal being trying to keep himself alive. So much is at stake here—health, affection, culture, trauma, language—but its greatest surprise is what thrives in the midst of suffering. A beautiful book.”—Paul Lisicky, author of The Narrow Door

Kenny Fries is the author of Body, Remember: A Memoir and The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory, winner of the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights. He is the editor of Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out and author of the libretto for The Memory Stone, an opera commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College.

Photo by Michael R. Dekker

Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir, and The Still Point of the Turning World, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Nonfiction. Her book-length lyric essay, Casa Azul Cripple, which examines the intersection of art, disability, and sex through the life and work of Frida Kahlo, is forthcoming from the New York Review of Books/NottingHill Editions in 2020. She is at work on a book about the resilience of objects and forces in the world called The Wingbeats of Insects and Birds, for which she received a 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship. Emily is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California-Riverside, where she teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing Program and in the School of Medicine. She lives with her husband, writer and editor Kent Black, and their daughter in Redlands, California.

LARRY SMITH AND SPECIAL GUESTS DISCUSS SIX WORDS FRESH OFF THE BOAT

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 20:53:28 -0800

Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Immigration, Identity, and Coming to America (Kingswell)

Marrying the acclaimed immigration-themed ABC Television Network series Fresh Off the Boat with the New York Times bestselling Six-Word Memoirseries by Larry Smith, Kingswell Press is thrilled to publish Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Immigration, Identity, and Coming to America.

This timely and unique crowd-sourced book of immigration stories — each told in six words — captures hundreds of memoirs on the experience from across America, spanning cultures and generations, to paint a powerful portrait of who we are as a country, and where we came from.

Contributors include refugees (“Refugee went from burkas to bachelors,” “Boat person finds freedom in America”); students (“I only speak Spanish on weekends,” “Hoping my school lunch doesn’t ‘smell’”); armed forces personnel (“Salvadoran immigrant raises US Navy diver,” “Retired Marine, looked upon as outsider”); an astronaut (“From migrant farmworker to NASA astronaut”); an Olympiad (“Albanian Olympiad flees for America: reborn”); and a Teen Jeopardy winner (“Land of opportunity lets me learn”).

The book also includes coming-to- America stories from a number of notable actors, authors, athletes, artists, entrepreneurs, and political figures, among them:

M. Night Shyamalan: “My accent has become my voice.”
Aziz Ansari: “Every immigrant’s journey is truly incredible.”
Arianna Huffington: “Another Greek Odyssey, thriving in America.”
Mario Batali: “Joyous polyglot, cooked with the world.”
Jeremy Lin: “Abandoned the piano for a basketball.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “Nobody is ever just a refugee.”
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: “Indian mother: Ford’s first female engineer.”
Junot Díaz: “We immigrants are America’s true superpower.”
Narciso Rodriguez: “Immigrant son proudly dresses First Lady.”
George Takei: “Even after internment, still love America.”
Gabourey Sidibe: “We all have traditional Muslim names.”
Madeleine Albright: “In 1948, I was a refugee.”

The book also includes six words from the cast and creative team of Fresh Off the Boat, many of whom are immigrants or the children of immigrants, as well as several longer essays that expand on a six-word story, providing first-person accounts, both joyful and harrowing, of coming to America.

With more than one million available on SixWordsMemoirs.com already, Six Words Fresh Off the Boat: Stories of Immigration, Identity, and Coming to America is sure to tug at the heartstrings, create meaningful connection, and provide an accessible conversation starter between generations to get together and share the incredible journeys, personal, humorous moments, and unique experiences that shaped and impacted their lives along the way to the creation of an American dream.

Called “on a quest to spark the creativity of aspiring writers” by O, The Oprah Magazine, Larry Smith is the creator of the global phenomenon, the Six-Word Memoirs project, a bestselling series of books, board games, and live-event series. Since 2006, more than one million short life stories have been shared on SixWordMemoirs.com, and countless more in classrooms, churches, veterans’ groups, speed-dating sessions, and more. Prior to launching Six-Word Memoirs, Larry was a journalist whose work can be found in The New York Times, ESPN The Magazine, Popular Science, Slate, and other publications. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife, writer Piper Kerman.

WRITING WHILE FEMALE: WOMEN’S FICTION, CHICK LIT, AND OTHER MISDEMEANORS WITH TERI EMORY AND HEIDI MASTROGIOVANNI

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 20:11:15 -0800

The novelists Teri Emory (Second Acts) and Heidi Mastrogiovanni (Lala Pettibone’s Act Two) have between them well over a century’s life experience, and they’ve got tales to tell. Come hear them discuss how they’ve managed to support their writing habits over many years, how they handle the ageless scourge of rejection, how they create female characters who resemble actual women, how they published debut novels in the seventh decade of life, and how they view “chick lit,” “women’s fiction,” and other labels. (Spoiler alert on the labels: Teri and Heidi are not thrilled about them.)

Lala Pettibone's Act Two (Amberjack Publishing)

Lala Pettibone, a forty-something widow whose outrageous antics befit women half her age, has been imagining her sexy boss Gerard is as smitten with her as she is with him. Enter Gerard’s fabulous girlfriend from Paris. After spending the rest of the day drinking wines straight from the bottle, Lala attends the monthly meeting of her Greenwich Village co-op, where the residents are informed that a toxic wasteland in the building’s basement requires everyone to pony up forty-grand by the end of the week.

Lala very reluctantly decides to sublet her apartment and make a bundle while visiting her Auntie Geraldine in Los Angeles. But good things come her way in sunny California, including inspiration to finish writing an uproarious novel based on her own ridiculous adventures.

Lala Pettibone's Act Two is a wonderfully hilarious, second-coming-of-age-novel. Bridget Jones has absolutely nothing on Lala in the Late-Bloomer-With-Maybe-Lots-of-Potential-Department.

Heidi Mastrogiovanni is a dedicated animal welfare advocate who lives in Los Angeles with her musician husband and their three rescued senior dogs. She loves to read, hike, travel, and do a classic spit-take whenever something is really funny. Heidi is a graduate of Wesleyan University and was chosen as one of ScreenwritingU’s 15 Most Recommended Screenwriters of 2013. The comedy web series she writes and produces, Verdene and Gleneda, was awarded the Hotspot on the Writers Guild of America’s Hotlist.

Second Acts (Amberjack Publishing)

An unshakable friendship among three women takes root in a college dorm in the late 1960s. Fueled by the bravado of that era, the three women charge into adulthood with lofty ideas and high expectations.

Throughout the decades that follow, they share their joys and shepherd each other through heartache. In the year leading up to 9/11, they are forced to confront hard truths about themselves and the choices they have made over time. They must dispel past regrets and make peace with present circumstances as they begin the second acts of their lives, sustained as always by their abiding friendship.

Teri Emory is living proof that a liberal arts education does not necessarily make a person unemployable. As evidence: She has taught at the University of North Florida, Hunter College, Yeshiva University, and Fordham University and survived a fifteen-year tour of duty as a corporate writer. Her articles and poems have appeared in print and online publications, and she has edited essays and book-length manuscripts on absurdly esoteric topics. Teri was born in the Bronx and grew up in and around New York City. She is proud to have been educated entirely in public schools, from kindergarten at P.S. 77 to graduate school at U.C. Berkeley. She has lived and worked in Manhattan, Berkeley, Jacksonville, Philadelphia, and Rome. A devoted mother and besotted grandmother, she now resides in Las Vegas, married to a man whom she re-met, after almost forty years, at her high school reunion.

MARTHA BATALHA DISCUSSES HER NEW NOVEL THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUSMAO WITH CORINNE PURTILL

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:55:32 -0800

The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao (Oneworld Publications)

Euridice is young, beautiful and ambitious. For her parents’ sake, she sacrifices her own aspirations to marry Antenor, spending her days ironing his shirts and removing the lumps of onion from his food. But as his professional success grows, so does Euridice’s feeling of restlessness. Casting duty aside, she embarks on various secret projects, only to have each dream crushed in turn by her tradition-loving husband. Antenor eventually restores order in his household – until the day Euridice’s long-lost sister Guida appears at the door with a young child and a terrible story.

Praise for The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao

“The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao encompasses not only a vast Rio de Janeiro, from North to South and across Downtown, but also spans for 80 years – from 1880 through 1960 – in order to tell the story of numerous families ruled by beautiful, stubborn women. Martha combines drama and humor with an unfailably modern savoir-faire.”—Ruy Castro, author of Bossa Nova and Garrincha

“In a clever and unusual way, Batalha takes the reader for a journey in the streets of the old Rio de Janeiro, filled with its array of memorable characters — a fun and delightful novel.”—Carlos Saldanha, director of the film RIO

“One of the writers to watch in 2017.”—Elle Magazine (Spain)

Martha Batalha studied journalism and literature in Brazil before moving to New York where she worked in publishing. The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao is her first novel. She lives in Santa Monica, California, with her husband and two kids.

Corinne Purtill is a journalist who has reported around the world for publications including GlobalPost (now PRI), CNN, Salon and Quartz, where she is currently a staff writer. She is the author of Ghosts in the Forest, a Kindle Single, and lives in California with her family.

STEPHEN ELLIOTT DISCUSSES HIS COLLECTION OF ESSAYS SOMETIMES I THINK ABOUT IT

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 19:17:34 -0800

Sometimes I Think About It (Graywolf Press)

Building on the extraordinary storytelling that characterized his breakout book, The Adderall Diaries, Stephen Elliott tells a powerful story about outsiders and underdogs. Elliott traces his childhood with an abusive and erratic father, his life on the streets as a teenager, and his growing interest in cross-dressing and masochism. His search for dignity and happiness leads him to write of a man who loses his family in a rock slide, of the vexing realities of life in Palestine, and of a young man caught in the prison-industrial complex. And his abiding interest in the spectacle of money in America takes him from pop music and pornography to publishing and the tech industry’s assault on West Los Angeles. Through personal essays, reportage, and profiles written over fifteen years, Stephen Elliott tells with great sympathy the stories of those who are broken and seek to be whole.

Praise for Sometimes I Think About It

“I love these essays so hard I want to chew on them. For the bite of it. Stephen Elliott has the uncanny ability to go out into the culture and locate a self set loose from consumer culture and money identity. When it comes to outsider bodies and lives and stories, Stephen Elliott is there to remind us that the edges are where our cultural shape comes from. Without the edges, the center doesn't even exist. Sometimes I Think About It is an outsider tour de force.”—Lidia Yuknavitch

“In lean, often heartbreaking prose, Stephen Elliott gives us an American landscape defined by lost opportunities for human connection. There are sons without fathers, left unprotected; fathers who cannot love their sons; grown men haunted by the absence of family. In intensely personal essays and intimate reported stories Elliott writes of this painful gap—between our need for closeness and our actual capacity to care for one another.”—Alex Mar

“I am among the many readers who have been waiting impatiently for a new book from Stephen Elliott. I devoured Sometimes I Think About It in a matter of hours and set about rereading it at once. I did this because I read to feel the presence of a wise, true friend on the page and because Stephen Elliott never fails to supply that, plus amazement and sorrow and every detail the rest of us miss. He is writing here in the tradition of Didion and Hunter Thompson. These are fierce meditations on outcasts and outlaws, on what it means to have your world slip out from under you. I cannot think of a writer who reveals to us the terrors and wonder of disequilibrium like Elliott. This is exquisite work from one of our finest writers.”—Steve Almond

“Stephen Elliott’s essays treat the darkest subjects with the lightest touch, showing humanity’s ugliness as one side of a spinning coin, with beauty on the other; how beauty is often suspect, brutality easier to trust. Frankly intimate and frequently funny, Elliott’s observations—on loneliness, on sex work, on the people of Silicon Valley—open distances that you sensed but couldn’t see until he showed you: there, there.”—Padma Viswanathan

Stephen Elliott is the author of The Adderall Diaries and Happy Baby, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award. He is the founding editor of the Rumpus and the director of the movies About Cherry and After Adderall.

SARAH SCHULMAN DISCUSSES HER BOOK CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 18:36:50 -0800

Conflict Is Not Abuse (Arsenal Pulp Press)

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways in which cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behaviour and Traumatized behaviour resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.

This important and sure to be controversial book brings insight into contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial and geo-political difference, as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, African Americans at the hands of police, people with HIV, and Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, revealing how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the "other" to avoid facing themselves.

Praise for Conflict Is Not Abuse

With awesome brilliance and insight, Sarah Schulman offers readers new strategies to intervene on all relations of domination both personal and political. The core of
this book provides ways to think and move beyond blaming and/or assuming victimhood -- so that each of us may come to understand the role we assume in creating and sustaining conflicts in all our relations. Sharing myriad ways, critical vigilance can help us all understand that conflict need not be viewed as abuse that essential distinctions may be made between the hurt we experience in conflict and the violence of abuse, Schulman offers a vision of mutual recognition and accountability that liberates. —bell hooks

It's impossible to be invested in the world and not be invested in this groundbreaking and challenging book. From a position of artist and social critic, Sarah Schulman gives us a detailed and considered reading of some of our most overly determined and venomous conflicts. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a book to interrogate, ponder, and discuss. —Claudia Rankine

Schulman's book could not have come at a better time ... Conflict is a balm against comforting explanations for violence and abuse, ones we know aren't true, just easy. —Village Voice

Conflict's publication could not be timelier ... A sharply observant and relevant text that is already getting its wish for action granted. —Lambda Literary

Conflict is Not Abuse should prove to be essential reading for people interested in psychology, group dynamics, and social justice activism. —Global Comment

A compelling call out of call-out culture and everything that it messily dredges up, brings forward, and shunts away. —Canadian Art

Schulman"s new work is a provocative rethinking of intimate and civil discourse for a rapidly shrinking world ... a rallying cry for civil engagement and engaged civility.—Gay City News

Conflict Is Not Abuse presents a gestalt shift in thinking about conflict, power relations, harm and social responsibility. —The Globe and Mail

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.

MANDY KAHN READS FROM HER BOOK OF POETRY GLENN GOULD'S CHAIR

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 17:48:18 -0800

Glenn Gould's Chair (Eyewear Publishing)

Mandy Kahn’s wonderfully inventive and gloriously lyrical second collection of poems, Glenn Gould’s Chair, weaves composer biography and classical music terminology into a compelling, accessible, and unabashedly beautiful consideration of the creative life.

In the collection, Béla Bartók treks into remote villages to record folk songs on the world’s first phonograph, a dying Gustav Mahler is greeted in heaven by Mozart, Igor Stravinsky receives a letter from a music student who wonders what rules are left to break, and Glenn Gould’s chair defends its owner against claims of eccentricity. Kahn—who also works as an opera librettist—explores the challenges and exaltations of art-making in poems that explode with curiosity, incisiveness, and awe—and that build into a lush celebration of the creative process.

Kahn’s 2014 debut collection Math, Heaven, Time—also from Eyewear Publishing—prompted a reviewer from the Los Angeles Review of Books to write, “In using the word “remarkable,” I do mean that the collection is so extraordinary or exceptional as to invite comment. Or perhaps I should have called it striking, because it certainly impresses itself powerfully and deeply upon the observer’s mind or vision. From the moment I was first introduced to Mandy Kahn and her debut collection, I knew I had encountered a voice beyond the common realm...Of the influences she names, Thoreau seems to have left his transcendental nature print most prominently. There’s also a sense of Yeats’s splendor and, at times, the concision of Dickinson, but as with all true visionaries, her alchemy creates a completely new sound — a melopoeia that is both familiar and otherworldly.”

Mandy Kahn is the author of the poetry collection Math, Heaven, Time. Former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser featured Kahn’s poem “At the Dorm” in his newspaper column American Life in Poetry. She frequently collaborates with composers to create new works that combine poetry and classical music and was a librettist for Yuval Sharon’s acclaimed opera Hopscotch. Kahn is coauthor, with Aaron Rose, of the nonfiction bookCollage Culture, which was also released as a record with a score by No Age. She lives in Los Angeles.

WNBA/LA CELEBRATES NATIONAL READING GROUP MONTH WITH SIEL JU, ABBI WAXMAN AND GABRIELLE ZEVIN

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 14:16:06 -0700

ctober is National Reading Group Month. Celebrate the joy of reading!

Join WNBA/LA for a panel discussion at Skylight Books with critically-acclaimed authors Siel Ju (Cake Time), Abbi Waxman (The Garden of Small Beginnings), and Gabrielle Zevin (Young Jane Young).

This event is free and open to all.

About the authors:

Siel Ju is a writer in Los Angeles. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Feelings Are Chemicals in Transit (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), and Might Club (Horse Less Press, 2014). Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, and other publications. She also edits Flash Flash Click, a weekly email lit zine for fast fiction. Siel is the recipient of a residency from The Anderson Center at Tower View and holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. Cake Time is her first novel-in-stories.

“Siel Ju’s Cake Time is sharply observed and wonderfully contemporary: these complex, flawed, and real characters live in our current world, with all its confusions and opportunity to connect—or disconnect. It’s about the perils and pleasures of intimacy, and its heroine feels as alive as you and I. A compelling and unflinching debut.” - Edan Lepucki, author of California

Born in England, Abbi Waxman has worked as a copywriter and then a creative director at various advertising agencies in London and New York, including Ogilvy and Mather, Y&R, Grey, and Wunderman. She now writes books, TV shows, and screenplays of her own.

“It is Waxman’s skill at characterization that lifts this novel far above being just another “widow finds love” story. Clearly an observer, Waxman has mastered the fine art of dialogue as well. Characters ring true right down to Lilian’s two daughters, who often steal the show. This debut begs for an encore from Waxman.”-- Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

Gabrielle Zevin is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her eighth novel, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, spent more than four months on the New York Times Bestseller list, reached #1 on the National Indie Bestseller list, and has been a bestseller all around the world. She has also written books for children and young adults, including the award-winning Elsewhere.

“This book will not only thoroughly entertain everyone who reads it; it is the most immaculate takedown of slut-shaming in literature or anywhere else.” --Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

THOM ANDERSEN DISCUSSES HIS BOOK OF ESSAYS SLOW WRITING WITH TOSH BERMAN

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 14:10:12 -0700

Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema (Visible Press)

Slow Writing is a collection of articles by Thom Andersen that reflect on the avant-garde, Hollywood feature films, and contemporary cinema. His critiques of artists and filmmakers as diverse as Yasujirō Ozu, Nicholas Ray, Andy Warhol, and Christian Marclay locate their work within the broader spheres of popular culture, politics, history, architecture, and the urban landscape. The city of Los Angeles and its relationship to film is a recurrent theme. These writings, which span a period of five decades, demonstrate Andersen’s social consciousness, humour and his genuine appreciation of cinema in its many forms. Thom Andersen’s films include the celebrated documentary essays Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1975), Red Hollywood (1996), Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015). Of the thirty-four texts included in the book, six are hitherto unpublished; others have been revised or appear in different versions to those previously available.

Praise for Slow Writing

“There are few writers and few filmmakers who make me rethink what cinema is more than Thom Andersen. Sometimes this is a matter of introducing fresh perspectives, such as making cinema and architecture more mutually interactive. It’s always a political matter of figuring out just who and where we are, and why.”----- Jonathan Rosenbaum

“In his disarmingly plainspoken introduction, Thom Andersen more or less apologizes for not becoming a film critic, and for not delivering a manifesto. Slow Writing shows us just how terrific a critic he hasn’t (mostly) bothered to be. This book belongs on a very small and special shelf of the most incisive and ungrandiose books by artists.”----- Jonathan Lethem

Thom Andersen has lived in Los Angeles for most of his life. His knowledge of and enthusiasm for the city has deeply informed his work, not least his widely praised study of its representation in movies, Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), which was voted one of the 50 Best Documentaries of All Time in a Sight & Sound critics’ poll. Andersen made his first short films and entered into the city’s film scene as a student of USC and UCLA in the 1960s. His hour-long documentary Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (1974) was realised under an AFI scholarship and has lately been restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. His research into the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist, done in collaboration with film theorist Noël Burch, produced the video essay Red Hollywood (1996) and book Les Communistes de Hollywood: Autre chose que des martyrs (1994). Andersen’s recent films include Reconversão (2012) on the work of Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, and The Thoughts That Once We Had (2015), a personal history of cinema loosely inspired by Gilles Deleuze. A published writer since 1966, Andersen has contributed to journals such as Film Comment, Artforum, Sight and Sound and Cinema Scope. He has taught at the California Institute of the Arts since 1987, and was previously on faculty at SUNY Buffalo and Ohio State University. Also a respected film curator, he has acted as programmer for Los Angeles Filmforum and curated thematic retrospectives for the Viennale. Slow Writing: Thom Andersen on Cinema is the first collection of his essays.

Tosh Berman is a writer and poet. His two books are Sparks-Tastic (Rare Bird) and a book of poems, The Plum in Mr. Blum's Pudding (Penny-Ante Editions). He is also the publisher and editor of his press, TamTam Books, which published the works of Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Debord, Jacques Mesrine, Ron Mael & Russell Mael (Sparks) Gilles Verlant, and Lun*na Menoh.

JJ STRONG READS FROM HIS DEBUT US KIDS KNOW WITH LINDSEY LEE JOHNSON

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 13:33:26 -0700

Us Kids Know (Razorbill)

We all knew about Cullen Hickson.

Siblings Bri and Ray O'Dell are lost. Anxious. Restless. Ray—bullied at his Catholic school for being small and timid—wants to be someone people respect or, even better, someone people fear. Meanwhile, Bri knows that something is off about her friendship with the shiny, happy, sophisticated blond girls on her field hockey team. They don't really understand Bri, and if Bri is being totally honest, she doesn't really understand them either.

When storied delinquent Cullen Hickson enters the orbit of the O'Dell siblings, though, everything changes. Bri and Ray find an alluring, addictive outlet in Cullen, who opens their eyes to a world they didn't know existed. For Ray, that means experiencing the singular thrill of crime—from breaking and entering to grand theft auto—while Bri quickly dives into an all-consuming romance with the enigmatic upperclassman.

As Bri and Ray become more and more entwined with Cullen's antics, and their once-thrilling experiences grow increasingly dangerous, a series of life-changing events
threatens to lead the teens down a dark path—one that could forever alter the course of their lives.

Praise for Us Kids Know

"A gripping, tragic debut novel that will fascinate and trouble sophisticated teen readers."—Kirkus Reviews

"Strong's debut novel is one that will resonate with those searching for meaning or a higher power in life....the alternating narratives of these three [characters] will give
readers much to ponder about romance, friendship, life and death, and all the ineffable spaces in between." —Booklist

“The twists and turns in this novel left me sweating with suspense. The story of a brother and sister and the older boy who comes into their lives very astutely shows how its teen characters catalyze each other’s lives, creating unpredictable chemical reactions in which each propels the others into a dangerous direction not one of them could have imagined. Unsentimental and gripping, this is a memorable debut.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black

“An unflinching exploration of teenagers hurtling toward a point of no return. A compelling, impressive debut that doesn’t shy away from the allure of danger.” —Latifah
Salom, author of The Cake House

"Us Kids Know is at once a page-turning adventure and a poignant exploration of the human heart. Strong renders these complex teenagers with deep empathy and insight as they quest for truth and meaning in an uncertain world. I fell in love with this funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately life-affirming book.” —Lindsey Lee Johnson, author of The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

JJ Strong received a creative writing degree from the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in English from Georgetown University. His writing has appeared in Fifth Wednesday, the Santa Monica Review, and LA Weekly. He taught for many years in the undergraduate writing program at USC, before relocating to the Washington, D.C. area with his wife and son.

Lindsey Lee Johnson holds a master of professional writing degree from the University of Southern California and a BA in English from the University of California at Davis. She's taught writing at USC, Clark College, and Portland State University. She is a native of Marin County, California, where she has served as a tutor and mentor at a private learning center, focusing on teaching writing to teenagers. She now lives with her husband in Los Angeles. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth (Random House 2017) is Lindsey's debut novel. The book was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an American Booksellers Association Indie Next Pick, a LibraryReads Pick, a Book of the Month Club Pick, and People Magazine's Book of the Week. Translations have been published or are forthcoming in Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Israel, Turkey, and The Netherlands.

BRIAN EVENSON, JESSE BALL AND LILLI CARRE DISCUSS THEIR NEW NOVEL THE DEATHS OF HENRY KING

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 13:17:06 -0700

The Deaths of Henry King (Uncivilized Books)

In The Deaths of Henry King, the hapless Henry King, as advertised, dies. Not just once or even twice, but seven dozen times, each death making way for a new demise, moving from the comic to the grim to the absurd to the transcendent and back again. With text by Jesse Ball and Brian Evenson complimented by Lilli Carre's macabre, gravestone-rubbing-style art, Henry King's ends are brought to a vividly absurd life.

Praise for The Deaths of Henry King

“This unique experience of the macabre blends in plenty of humor; indeed, readers will laugh at Henry as he watches himself get beaten to death, perish trying to scream in space, be eaten by a bear, or focus so hard on avoiding an open manhole that he gets hit by a car.”—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Brian Evenson:
“Brian Evenson is one of the treasures of American story writing, a true successor both to the generation of Coover, Barthelme, Hawkes and Co., but also to Edgar Allan Poe.”—Jonathan Lethem

Praise for Jesse Ball’s A Cure for Suicide:
“Spellbinding . . . [Has] the simplicity of a fable and the drama of a psychological thriller.”—The New York Times Book Review

Praise for Lilli Carré:
“Lilli Carré’s work most piquantly recalls the great avant-garde narrative films, from Menilmontant (1926) to The Saddest Music in the World (2003). Her Wanda Gág–meets–Gene Deitch drawing style and new-weirdness literary bent make her work acutely interesting to both read and scrutinize.”—Ray Olson, Booklist

Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses and the novella The Warren. His novel Last Days won the ALA’s RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He lives in Los Angeles, and teaches at CalArts.

Jesse Ball (1978-). Born in New York. His prizewinning works of absurdity are beloved in a dozen languages.

Lilli Carré is an artist living in Los Angeles. She has created several books of comics, including Heads or Tails (Fantagraphics) and the children’s book Tippy and the Night Parade (Toon Books). Her comics and illustration work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Best American Comics.

JENNIFER WEISS-WOLF DISCUSSES HER BOOK PERIODS GONE PUBLIC

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 13:13:06 -0700

Periods Gone Public (Arcade Publishing)

The first book to explore menstruation in the current cultural and political landscape and to investigate the new wave of period activism taking the world by storm. After millennia of being shrouded in taboo and stigma, periods have gone mainstream. A new, high-profile movement has emerged—one dedicated to bold activism, creative product innovation, and smart policy advocacy—to address the centrality of menstruation in relation to core issues of gender equality and equity.

In Periods Gone Public, Jennifer Weiss-Wolf—the woman Bustle dubbed one of the nation’s “badass menstrual activists”—explores why periods have become a prominent political cause. From eliminating the “tampon tax,” to enacting new laws that ensure access to affordable, safe products, menstruation is no longer something to whisper about. Weiss-Wolf shares her firsthand account in the fight for “menstrual equity,” introducing the leaders, pioneers, and everyday people who are making change happen. And she challenges readers to face stigma head-on and elevate an agenda that recognizes both the power—and the absolute normalcy—of menstruation.

Praise for Periodss Gone Public

“This book may be the beginning of liberation for us all.”—Gloria Steinem

“Periods Gone Public gives powerful voice to one of the most ignored human rights issues around the globe. It’s required reading for every one of us.” —Abigail Jones, award-winning journalist and New York Times bestselling author

“Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s passion and vision for menstrual equity continues in Periods Gone Public. While both inspiring and educating, she continues to keep menstruation on front pages and at the forefront of conversations across the globe.” —Elissa Stein, author of Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation

“Periods Gone Public shows why menstrual stigma is not only a social justice issue but an economic and political one. The policy landscape is carefully outlined and bolstered by Jennifer Weiss-Wolf’s deep knowledge of the subject, making it even clearer why this issue has become a focal point of the modern fourth-wave feminist agenda today.” —Madame Gandhi, musician and activist

“One of the most important pieces of literature on women’s rights and health policy in decades. A game-changing blueprint for action.”—NYC Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is a leading voice and advocate for equitable menstrual policy in America. Newsweek deemed her the “architect of the U.S. policy campaign to squash the tampon tax.” Weiss-Wolf’s writing and work have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, the Nation, Bloomberg, and Ms. Magazine, among others. She is a lawyer and vice president for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law. She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey.

KATHLINE CARR READS FROM HER BOOK MIRACULUM MONSTRUM AND GABRIEL JESIOLOWSKI READS FROM THEIR BOOK AS BURNING LEAVES

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 12:29:42 -0700

Miraculum Monstrum (Red Hen Press)

Miraculum Monstrum is a hybrid narrative about fictitious female artist Tristia Vogel, who experiences a radical physical transformation, beginning with the excrescence of apparent wings. Though her affliction is possibly an anomalous mutation resulting from worldwide ecological upheaval, the bird/woman is co-opted by a religious cult and written as the central figure of their scriptural text. Miraculum Monstrum contains fragmentary verse, scraps of lore, cult propaganda, curatorial commentary and images in a catalog for an exhibit of Vogel's visual artifacts and writings that chronicle this speculative history.

Praise for Miraculum Monstrum

"Enter in: here is that familiar moment when someone on the sidewalk, someone we maybe call schizophrenic, or deranged, yells out to her (our?) demons, or to eternity, to just leave her the fuck alone, and for once you hear it, and for once you agree, and wonder what would happen if everyone yelled out what they really felt, and why don't they, and what's lost in the silence. Enter: here is sadness and resistance and wings--a life (re)created, pieced together from the fragments we all become."--Nick Flynn, author of The Reenactments

"Miraculum Monstrum by Kathline Carr is a remarkably inventive, audacious debut collection that unfolds as poems, stories, fragments, drawings, paintings, mixed media pieces, and quotes to document and illustrate the life of Tristia Vogel, a visual artist who transforms dramatically and traumatically into a bird, and becomes an unintentional prophet. . . . This book is a unique and brilliant contribution to contemporary dystopic literature."--Jan Conn, author of Tomorrow's Bright White Light

"Kathline Carr's Miraculum Monstrum joins ranks with Gabriel García Márquez's story 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings' and Remedios Varo's painting Creation of the Birds, among other significant works, in an artistic (oracular) tradition that invokes the artist-figure as bird, art-making as flight. The poetic voice and sheer inventiveness of this book as a response to our current environmental crisis is breathtaking. Its deft word-play tangles like filigree amid the heaviness of sickness. Miraculum Monstrum's architecture, in its interplay of word and image, post-apocalyptic Ovidian myth, documentary fiction, feminist magical realism, taxonomy, and sensuousness, is a tour de force of hybrid poetics."--Shira Dentz, author of door of thin skins

"A visionary's warning, a topographical map of the mind, a manual of survival in the face of apocalyptic odds. Kathline Carr's imagined curatorial chronicle of Tristia Vogel?s metamorphosis is devastating--and transcendent."--Jane Denitz Smith, playwright

"In Miraculum Monstrum, Kathline Carr chronicles the story of Tristia Vogel, an early twenty-first century painter who suffers a mutation that begins with a bony, feather-like protrusion from her scapula. Her condition defies diagnosis, and eventually brings her to full bird-body transformation, persecution and adoration, disaster and the joy of flight. Carr reaches far down and back into our deepest shared stories, of messianic hopes, apocalyptic-climactic disaster, and body-wracking metamorphosis, to move human imagination itself forward toward its own evolution and possible survival. Readers, like the pilgrims who flock to Tristia, will be leveled by a strange kindred impossible beauty in these pages which piece the story together with poems, pieces of Tristia's art, and all manner of records and responses to the story of her life. Miraculum Monstrum is truly visionary, an act of the imagination of mythic scope."--Diane Gilliam, author of Dreadful Wind & Rain

As Burning Leaves (Red Hen Press)

Gabriel will be reading from As Burning Leaves and from an in-progress hybrid work Entry for Exits, a book of interlocking prose poems with a floating essay. This new manuscript looks at trauma, trans* embodiment(s) and strategies for resilience and healing.

As Burning Leaves offers spaciousness and breath. Both homesick and sick of home, it chronicles a landscape of longing scored with traces of film, contemporary art, and song. Vivid and vital, Jesiolowski's queer insight lends a critical voice to the fleeting: 'wind moves the leaves across the water / they do not gather / do not cling.' A brave and elegant debut.

Praise for As Burning Leaves

[W]hat if there is no ghost realm? asks Gabriel Jesiolowski in the quietly arresting, steadily confident As Burning Leaves. But what if a ghost realm does in fact exist, and we are the ghosts both haunting and haunted who wander those causeways between/fucking & nothingness that lie in the wake of betrayal, violation, abandonment? These poems speak from and into that very realm, sifting memory's restless evidence in a quest for answers to what leads / / devotion / astray. Add to this a harder quest, for belief itself, the belief that somehow, the body ceases grieving. These poems are at once the enactment and the proof of belief's healing power. They stir; they shine. Carl Phillips, author of The Rest of Love, finalist for the National Book Award

The geography of the body changes; its landmarks temporary; its border shifting, in Gabriel Jesiolowski's As Burning Leaves, a cartography of new forms, new ways of being. These poems constitute a healing atlas, a journey of utmost compassion, marked by both formal elegance and artful eloquence. What a remarkable book; it will astonish and enchant you. D. A. Powell, author of Lunch and A Guide for Boys

What Gabriel Jesiolowski is up to in their life their installation art and their photography and their writing too is built from a push and pull between a politics of accumulation that is full of abandoning and giving away. It makes sense then to think of As Burning Leaves as a sort of writing that takes a life and ties many parts of it together with a thin string to make a beautiful package. This is in many ways a book of love poems. But what it loves is all sorts of things, everything from bark to humans to folk songs to steam and smoke. It is a work that is quiet and a work that is attentive and one that is resonant with care and grace. Juliana Spahr, author of This Connection of Everyone With Lungs

From wordless, our bodies. From nameless, our memories. An image, a yearning every landscape, and certain people. The gesture, the wingspan, in quiet, and all across the page. Each scratch and smudge accrues the diary of As Burning Leaves, Gabriel Jesiolowski s wonderful, haunting, elementally human presence! Ralph Angel, author of Neither World, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets

Kathline Carr is a visual artist and writer living in North Adams, Massachusetts. She has exhibited her work in New York City, New England, and Canada, and her writing and art appear in various publications and online at www.kathlinecarr.com.

Gabriel Jesiolowski works in a research-based practice that uses text, land, the body, installation, print, and film. They were a 2016 MacDowell writing fellow and have shown their work at The Alice Gallery, Flux Factory and Dumbo Arts Center. Their debut collection of poetry, As Burning Leaves, won the Benjamin Saltman Award. Their current work deals with accumulation and distribution, trauma/healing, and civic projects that tangle justice with beauty. New writing is out from Volt, Territory & Milkweed Zine. They live and work in Los Angeles.

JULIE LYTHCOTT-HAIMS DISCUSSES HER MEMOIR REAL AMERICAN

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 12:24:39 -0700

Real American: A Memoir (Henry Holt & Company)

Julie Lythcott-Haims, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, has written a different kind of book this time out – a deeply personal, biting and affecting account of her life growing up as a biracial black woman in America in Real American: A Memoir

Bringing a brisk, poetic sensibility to her prose, Lythcott-Haims stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts. Real American expresses also, through Lythcott-Haims’s path to self-acceptance, the healing power of community in overcoming the hurtful isolation of being incessantly considered "the other" Real American is a fearless and powerful memoir. Lythcott-Haims’s eloquent words deserve to be studied, memorized, and repeated. Here is a book that should be read again and again, and then once more after that.

Praise for Real Americans

“A compelling, incisive and thoughtful examination of race, origin and what it means to be called an American. Engaging, heartfelt and beautifully written, Lythcott-Haims explores the American spectrum of identity with refreshing courage and compassion.” —Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

“Real American is a courageous, achingly honest meditation on what it means to come to consciousness as a mixed race child and adult in a nation where Black lives weren't meant to matter.” —Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness

“Breaks the silence on what it means to grow up mixed-race in America. Her spare but powerful prose has an emotional rawness that will profoundly resonate with all readers and help many feel a little less alone.” ―Heidi W. Durrow, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

“A cathartic and bold truth-telling.” ―Danzy Senna, bestselling author of Caucasia and New People

“A powerful, honest book that should be required reading for everyone.” —Anita Amirrezvani, author of The Blood of Flowers and Equal of the Sun

“To write with such an open heart about race and Blackness takes great courage. To do so in prose that is at once elegant and raw takes great talent.” —Ayelet Waldman, bestselling author of Bad Mother and of A Really Good Day

“A true achievement . . . so much more than a personal memoir . . . [Lythcott-Haims] channels the shrewdness of Eula Biss and the compassion of Ta-Nehisi Coates.” ―Lee Daniel Kravetz, international bestselling author of Strange Contagion and Supersurvivors

“Powerful . . . a memoir that [illuminates] the psychic cost of racism to those who are cast as ‘other.’ The journey of self-healing and the empowerment . . . is a story of triumph from which all of us can learn.” —Beverly Daniel Tatum, author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Can We Talk About Race?

“Stands for, and stands up for, Americans who are questioned, confronted, disregarded and unnerved by our citizen country . . . Real American will be one of those books that is passed from hand to hand, with passages marked where readers find strong words that speak truth.” ―A.J. Verdelle, author of The Good Negress

“. . . shows once again, plainly and unforgettably, that if you are Black in America, it does not matter who you are, racism will come knocking. Lythcott-Haims . . . . Real American is the story of that insidious harm and of a woman who became alert to the American racism within herself and fought back. . . . not only an excellent, satisfying read but a book that can help us “stay woke”—as we must—to the sometimes stealthy and always life-threatening danger of racism, so that we all can fight back.” —U.S.
Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA)

Julie Lythcott-Haims served as dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where she received the Dinkelspiel Award for her contributions to the undergraduate experience. She holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and an MFA in writing from California College of the Arts. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, and resides in the Bay Area with her husband, their two teenagers, and her mother.

JOHN FREEMAN DISCUSSES FREEMAN'S: THE FUTURE OF NEW WRITING WITH HECTOR TOBAR, GARNETTE CADOGAN, AND DIEGO ENRIQUE OSORNO

Sat, 04 Nov 2017 12:12:52 -0700

Freeman's: The Future of New Writing (Grove Press)

Please join us for an evening with John Freeman and Hector Tobar and two contributors to the new issue of Freeman’s, drawing on recommendations from book editors, critics, translators, and authors from across the globe, Freeman’s: The Future of New Writing includes pieces from a select list of poets, fiction writers, and essayists whose work boldly breaks new ground against a climate of nationalism and siloed thinking, influenced by work from outside their region and genre. Aged twenty-five to seventy, the writers in the issue hail from almost twenty countries and writing in almost as many languages. They are shaping the literary conversation right now and will continue to have an impact for years to come.

Freeman will be joined by Hector Tobar, Garnette Cadogan, Diego Enrique Osorno, two contributors from the issue.

In three issues, the literary anthology from leading editor John Freeman has gained an international following and wide acclaim: "fresh, provocative, engrossing" (BBC.com), "impressively diverse" (O Magazine), "bold, searching" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune). Freeman's: The Future of New Writing departs from the series' progression of themes. This special fourth installment instead introduces a list--to be announced just before publication--of more than twenty-five poets, essayists, novelists, and short story writers from around the world who are shaping the literary conversation right now and will continue to impact it in years to come.

Drawing on recommendations from book editors, critics, translators, and authors from across the globe, Freeman's: The Future of New Writing includes pieces from a select list of writers aged 25 to 70, from nearly twenty countries, and writing in almost as many languages. This will be a new kind of list, and an aesthetic manifesto for our times. Against a climate of nationalism and silo'd thinking, writers remain influenced by work from outside their region, genre, and especially age group. Serious readers, this special issue celebrates, have always read this way too--and Freeman's: The Future of New Writing brings them an exciting view of where writing is going next.

John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Cities, and the forthcoming Tales of Two Americas. Maps, his debut collection of poems, is out from Copper Canyon in fall of 2017. He is the executive editor at Literary Huband teaches at the New School and New York University. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the Paris Review.

JESSICA BRUDER DISCUSSES HER BOOK NOMADLAND

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 21:27:06 -0700

Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century (W.W. Norton & Company)

In recent years, many Americans have had to face tough new realities in the midst of massive changes in the economy and a widening wealth gap. One particularly hard-hit demographic is senior citizens, a proportion of whom saw their stable middle-class lives disappear in the wake of the Great Recession and suddenly, in their retirement years, found themselves in need of a job in a new economy low on steady manufacturing and retail jobs and high on short-term seasonal labor. As a result, to survive they join an expanding group of modern nomads: men and women who have given up the stability—and costs—of a home life and have hit the road in RVs, campervans, and trailers.

In Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, award-winning journalist Jessica Bruder delivers a comprehensive and compelling portrait of this set of fighters, idealists, and adventurers trying to carve out a peripatetic existence.

“Millions of Americans are wrestling with the impossibility of a traditional middle-class existence,” writes Bruder. “In the widening gap between credits and debits hangs a question: What parts of this life are you willing to give up, so you can keep on living?” The answer, Bruder finds, can vary tremendously, but for those who abdicate the
comforts of home for life on the road, there is both risk and reward in the undertaking, as well as an affirming side effect: an eclectic community that comes together both online and in person to commiserate over the struggles of living on the road, to tell jokes and share puns (their vans get names like “Vansion,” “Van Go,” “DonoVan,” and “Vantucket”), and to support one another in their alternative lifestyles.

They work for employers seeking them out for low-wage seasonal gigs, from picking fruit to staffing roadside stalls that sell Halloween pumpkins, Christmas trees, or Fourth of July fireworks; scrubbing toilets in National Forest campgrounds; guarding the gates of Texas oil fields and running the rides at theme parks. (Adventureland in Altoona, Iowa, made headlines last year after one workamper, a former pastor in his sixties, was killed in an on-the- job accident.) And some serve the community, by blogging or by arranging places to gather, organizing teach-ins and potluck meals.

To write this affecting book, Bruder immersed herself in this diverse community, buying a van she dubbed “Halen” and driving more than 15,000 miles over the course of two years, meeting modern nomads. She worked alongside them in Amazon’s CamperForce team of low-wage, seasonal workers at the company’s fulfillment centers and at the grueling annual sugar beet harvest in North Dakota. And she followed them through stints of precarious employment in national parks, where they served as campground custodians in exchange for a place to park their houses-on- wheels and a near-minimum wage.

As Bruder discovers, much of the population of Nomadland is made up of resourceful Americans with a strong spirit of independence, and many of them are single women, as well as senior citizens, reflecting some of the hardest-hit members of the middle class. They gather in places like Quartzsite, Arizona, where the land is vast and available, and the local authorities are generally tolerant of long-term campers and their vehicles. But these modern nomads can also be found living in Walmart parking lots, and even on city streets, hoping that no police officer will come knocking.

On her travels Bruder meets a fascinating collective of colorful itinerants, people like Linda, a 65-year- old grandmother who lives in a trailer called “the Squeeze Inn,” and LaVonne, a 67-year- old former journalist who “found her people” among the nomads, “a ragtag bunch of misfits who surrounded me with love and acceptance.”

They all have a story, a clear reason for their transition from middle-class lives to the open road, for living out of a traveling box, for driving and working and persevering in a permanent state of flux in a world where homelessness is frowned upon, if not actually considered criminal behavior.

Elegantly crafted and compassionate in its approach, Nomadland is a singular work of in-depth narrative journalism, a view from the inside of the new American heartland—a land without a physical center, scattered across the country, in nearly constant motion.

Praise for Nomadland

“What photographer Jacob Riis did for the tenement poor in How the Other Half Lives (1890) and what novelist Upton Sinclair did for stockyard workers in The Jungle (1906), journalist Bruder now does for a segment of today’s older Americans forced to eke out a living as migrant workers. . . . [A] powerhouse of a book. . . . Visceral and haunting reporting.”—Booklist, STARRED review

“Excellent. . . . Engaging, highly relevant immersion journalism.”—Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review

“A must-read that is simultaneously hopeless and uplifting and certainly unforgettable.”—Library Journal, STARRED review

“Tracing individuals throughout their journeys from coast to coast, Bruder conveys the phenomenon’s human element, making this sociological study intimate, personal, and entertaining, even as the author critiques the economic factors behind the trend.”—Publishers Weekly

“People who thought the 2008 financial collapse was over a long time ago need to meet the people Jessica Bruder got to know in this scorching, beautifully written, vivid, disturbing (and occasionally wryly funny) book. Nomadland is a testament both to the generosity and creativity of the victims of our modern-medieval economy, hidden in plain sight, and to the blunt-end brutality that put them there. Is this the best the wealthiest nation on earth can do for those who’ve already done so much?”—Rebecca Solnit, author of The Mother of All Questions

“In the early twentieth century, men used to ride the rails in search of work, sharing camps at night. Today, as Bruder brilliantly reports, we have a new class of nomadic workers who travel in their RVs from one short-term job to another. There’s a lot to cringe at here—from low pay and physically exhausting work to constant insecurity. But surprisingly, Nomadland also offers its residents much-needed camaraderie and adventure, which makes this book a joy to read.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed

“The campsite as the home of last resort, the RV used not for vacation but for survival: these are the makings of a new dystopia. Nomadland is a smart road book for the new economy, full of conviviality and dark portent.”—Ted Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere and Immersion

Jessica Bruder is an award-winning journalist whose work focuses on subcultures and the dark corners of the economy. She teaches at the Columbia School of Journalism and is the author of Burning Book.

EMILY GEMINDER READS FROM HER DEBUT COLLECTION DEAD GIRLS AND OTHER STORIES WITH BRANDI WELLS

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 20:13:03 -0700

Dead Girls and Other Stories (Dzanc Books)

With lyric artistry and emotional force, Emily Geminder’s debut collection charts a vivid constellation of characters fleeing their own stories. A teenage runaway and her mute brother seek salvation in houses, buses, the backseats of cars. Preteen girls dial up the ghosts of fat girls. A crew of bomber pilots addresses the ash of villagers below. And from India to New York to Phnom Penh, dead girls both real and fantastic appear again and again: as obsession, as threat, as national myth and collective nightmare.

Praise for Dead Girls

“An eerie convergence of female identities and experiences across time and space. [...] Startling, far-reaching tales of women who haunt and are haunted.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Geminder’s stories are refreshing, surprising, and evocative.”—Publisher's Weekly

“Geminder showcases an acute sensitivity to worlds both inside and out. There’s real delicacy to the craft but underneath all the skill is a shaking sense of purpose, and a great love of the brokenness and beauty of humanity. This is a substantive, memorable debut.”—Aimee Bender, author of The Color Master and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“An electrifying read. Written in dreamy prose, these stories take the world we know and turn it inside out, making us question everything we think we know about our places in it. But don’t let the dream-like quality fool you: These stories have teeth. Seductive but fierce, full of keen insights and tenacious questions, Geminder’s fearless and utterly original debut collection will haunt and nourish you.”—Dana Johnson, author of In the Not Quite Dark and Elsewhere, California

“The stories in Geminder’s mesmerizing Dead Girls seamlessly weave gender and geopolitics and the dreamlike worlds of characters struggling to find hope and reason within their near apocalypses. The thread of unease that runs through the collection is insightful, rebellious, and righteous.”—Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Disappearance at Devil’s Rock

“Emily Geminder’s stirring collection explores death-haunted scenarios from unexpected angles. Whether the characters are caught in the currents of Cambodian history or the private mythologies of an American summer, they’re often plunged into moments that dissolve all certainties about identity, consciousness, and the body. Etched with a matter-of-fact lyricism, Dead Girls will haunt you, sure, but that’s barely half the story.”—Jeff Jackson, author of Mira Corpora

Emily Geminder’s short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in AGNI, American Short Fiction, Mississippi Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Tin House Open Bar, Witness, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an AWP Intro Journals Award and a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and her work was noted in Best American Essays 2016. She has worked as a journalist in New York and Cambodia, and is a Provost’s Fellow in creative writing and literature at the University of Southern California.

Brandi Wells is the author of This Boring Apocalypse (Civil Coping Mechanisms), Please Don’t Be Upset (Tiny Hardcore Press), and Poisonhorse (Dzanc Books). Her writing appears in Denver Quarterly, Sycamore Review, Paper Darts, Folio, Chicago Review and other journals. She has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, where she served as editor of the Black Warrior Review.

NINA WEIJERS READS FROM HER DEBUT THE CONSEQUENCES WITH MEREDITH ALLING

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 20:03:37 -0700

The Consequences (DoppelHouse Press)

Dutch author Niña Weijers took the world of European literature by storm in 2014 with her debut novel The Consequences, which has sold over 30,000 copies in Holland and garnered critical praise for its maturity and ambition.

Using deft and captivating prose, Weijers tells the story of Minnie Panis, a young and talented conceptual artist, as she navigates love affairs, her unexpected success in the art world, and her relationship with an emotionally distant mother. Beginning with Minnie’s near-death experience falling through the ice during her ultimate artwork, Weijers takes readers on a rollercoaster ride as Minnie uncovers the truth behind her premature birth. The doctor who saves her life, twice, enters Minnie into his clinic, whose motto All the fish needs is to get lost in the water helps her arrive at the border of life’s ebb, where meaningful art and revelations occur. An intimate, often humorous exploration of the intertwining cycles of death, rebirth and coincidence, The Consequences is a Bildungsroman that echoes far beyond the last page.

Praise for The Consequences

“The Consequences attempts something that's not easy, and succeeds. A person thinks about herself exhaustively, yet doesn’t become a bore. She writes about what she’s doing and you want to know all about it because it’s so vividly told. The temptation not to exist, to disappear from the world you're walking around in, the art you come upon and live with—when you write it down it sounds like heavy going; When you read it it’s light. So read it.” —Cees Nooteboom, Award-winning author of The Following Story and Rituals

“In this novel, tingling with ambition and fascinating ideas, the life and art of the main character revolve around loss, existence and disappearance. A determined tone characterizes this crazy book.” —NRC Handelsblad, 5 stars (Netherlands)

“The novel grates and creaks, and is loaded with questions, leaps and side paths, but that is one of its charms. Up to the last disturbing sentence the writer holds the reader in her manipulative grip.” —De Groene Amsterdammer (Netherlands)

“Niña Weijers’ remarkable, inventive novel depicts a contemporary conceptual artist at the height of her fame whose blasé art project has unintended consequences. Weijers invokes Kurt Vonnegut in the course of the narrative, and this novel shares Vonnegut’s sense of how things can be simultaneously real and absurd. Movies and books notoriously fail to capture the social and spiritual atmosphere of the contemporary art world, but Weijers nails it. Her book is beautifully written, surprising and often profound.”
—Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, and Aliens and Anorexia

Niña Weijers studied literary theory in Amsterdam and Dublin. She has published short stories, essays and articles in various Dutch literary magazines. She is a regular contributor to the weekly magazine De Groene Amsterdammer, and an editor of De Gids.

Her debut novel The Consequences (De consequenties) was first published in Dutch in May 2014. It won the 2014 Anton Wachter Prize for best first novel, the Opzij Feminist Literature Prize, the Lucy B. & C.W. van der Hoogt Prize, and was shortlisted for the Libris Prize and the Golden Boekenuil, the two most important Dutch and Flemish literary awards. So far, it has sold over 30,000 copies, and has been published in five languages.

Meredith Alling is a writer based in Los Angeles. Her debut collection of short stories, Sing the Song, is available from Future Tense Books (futuretensebooks.com).

EILEEN MYLES DISCUSSES THEIR MEMOIR AFTERGLOW

Tue, 24 Oct 2017 19:29:54 -0700

Afterglow (a dog memoir) (Grove Press)

Prolific and widely renowned poet, novelist, and essayist Eileen Myles is a trailblazer whose decades of literary and artistic work “set a bar for openness, frankness, and variability few lives could ever match” (New York Review of Books). Afterglow (a dog memoir), Myles’ first foray into memoir, paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of a beloved confidant: the pit bull called Rosie.

In 1990, Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and their connection instantly became central to the writer's life and work. During the course of their sixteen years together, Myles was madly devoted to the dog’s wellbeing, especially in her final days. Starting from the emptiness following Rosie’s death, Afterglow launches a heartfelt and fabulist investigation into the true nature of the bond between pet and pet-owner. Through this lens, we witness Myles’s experiences with intimacy and spirituality, celebrity and politics, alcoholism and recovery, fathers and family history, gender, romance, memory, as well as the fantastical myths we invent to get to the heart of grief.

Afterglow joins a grand literary tradition of writers paying homage to a beloved dog—J. R. Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip, Virginia Woolf’s Flush, Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs, Amy Hempel’s stories, as well as Mark Doty’s Dog Years, and even Abigail Thomas’s A Three Dog Life—but as one might suspect, Myles’ entry in the canon subverts both genre and tradition and stands apart as resolutely its own thing. Combining screenplay, monologue, science fiction, and lucid memory, the text is animated with photos, diagrams, drawings, and poems to craft a mosaic of their life together.

Moving from an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles’s childhood puppet, to a critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull; from lyrical transcriptions of their walks, to Rosie’s enlightened narration from the afterlife, Afterglow illuminates the surreal and familiar aspects of what it means to dedicate your existence to a dog.

Praise for Afterglow

“A rare new breed of dog memoir; think Patti’s Smith’s Just Kids, not John Grogan’s Marley and Me, absinthe not saccharine” –Library Journal (starred review)

“Myles’ work is a perfect example of what happens when you mix raw language with emotion, pets with loss, and sexuality with socioculturalism. . . A captivating look at a poet’s repeated attempt ‘to dig a hole in eternity’ through language.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“For more than 16 years, Myles was companioned by a pit bull named Rosie until Rosie did what dogs do and left the author to navigate a post-Rosie world, solo. In the after of Rosie, poet Myles . . . . writesthis unconventional, uncontainable, phantasmagoric memoir of dog and owner. . . . Poetic, heartrending, soothing, and funny, this is a mind-expanding contemplation of creation, the act and the noun, and the creatures whose deaths we presume will precede ours but whose lives make our own better beyond reason. To this, readers should bring tissues, pencil and paper, even their dogs.”–Annie Bostrom, Booklist (starred review)

“Myles uses a pastiche approach to explore the bodily, cerebral, and esoteric/religious aspects of the grieving process, all of which is portrayed with meditative poignancy . . . Myles depicts the raw pathos of loss with keen insight.” –Publishers Weekly

“A ravishingly strange and gorgeous book about a dog that’s really about life and everything there is, Eileen Myles’s Afterglow is a truly astonishing creation.”–Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk

Eileen Myles—who prefers to use a gender-neutral pronoun—is the author of more than twenty books, including Chelsea Girls, Cool For You, and most recently, I Must Be Living Twice: New & Selected Poems 1975-2014. Their many honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, four Lambda Literary Awards, the Clark Prize for Excellence in Art Writing, the Shelley Memorial Award from The Poetry Society of America, Creative Capital’s Literature Award as well as an Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers’ Grant, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. They live in Marfa, TX and New York City. Their poems were featured in seasons 2 and 3 of the Emmy-winning show Transparent.

CARI LYNN WITH SAUL SARABIA, ANTOINETTE CARTER, AND TIFFANY JOHNSON DISCUSS BECOMING MS. BURTON

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:33:55 -0700

Becoming Ms. Burton (New Press)

Becoming Ms. Burton is one woman's remarkable odyssey from tragedy to prison to recovery--and recognition as a leading figure in the national justice reform movement

Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine, then crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over fifteen years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction. On her own, she eventually found a private drug rehabilitation facility. Once clean, Susan dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. Her organization, A New Way of Life, operates five safe homes in Los Angeles that supply a lifeline to hundreds of formerly incarcerated women and their children--setting them on the track to education and employment rather than returns to prison. Becoming Ms. Burton not only humanizes the deleterious impact of mass incarceration, it also points the way to the kind of structural and policy changes that will offer formerly incarcerated people the possibility of a life of meaning and dignity.

Praise for Becoming Ms. Burton

"Susan Burton is an angel among us. Her journey is a story of courage, compassion, and conviction. At turns harrowing and inspiring, Becoming Ms. Burton provides a valuable new perspective on the consequences of mass incarceration." -- Howard Schultz, executive chairman, Starbucks Coffee Company

"Susan Burton's life and work are a testament to the power of second chances and the impact one person can have on the lives of others. Her book is a stirring and moving tour-de-force--a beautiful inspiration for all of us to continue to fight for justice." -- John Legend, actor, singer, and songwriter

"More than just a memoir, this account provides an intimate glimpse into the problems that plague the U.S. prison system." -- Library Journal

"Burton has helped thousands of formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals, and now, by telling her story, she continues to advocate for a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity." -- Booklist (starred)

"The book documents Burton's tireless efforts to effect change---first helping individual women, released from prison with few resources, to make a new start, and then snowballing advocacy efforts at the state and national level to reshape how the United States treats those with criminal records." --Publishers Weekly

"A dramatic, honest, moving narrative of how hard life can get and how one can still overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity to do good in the world." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Susan Burton is someone who inspires while she educates. Her powerful and compelling memoir is an unforgettable journey and also an extraordinary light for all who are looking for answers on how we must recover, restore, and redeem those who have been incarcerated. This is a must-read." -- Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy

" Becoming Ms. Burton eloquently shows why the voices of formerly incarcerated women must be at the center of efforts to reconstruct the criminal legal system. Too often this nation criminalizes the trauma of black women; Susan Burton exposes this terrible truth by sharing her astounding story of redemption. This is critical reading for champions of justice everywhere."-- Monique W. Morris, author of Pushout

"For almost two decades Susan Burton has been a trailblazing advocate for ending mass incarceration, especially as it relates to poor women of color. Becoming Ms. Burton details her remarkable personal transformation as well as the larger structural changes this country must make in order to achieve racial and economic justice. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about these issues."-- Daryl V. Atkinson, civil and human rights advocate, lawyer, and member of the Leadership Council of the Formerly Incarcerated Convicted People and Families Movement

"Susan's life story is one our nation desperately needs to hear and understand. This is a story about personal transformation and collective power. It is about one woman's journey to freedom, and in the process helping to free us all."-- Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

Co-author of Becoming Ms. Burton, Cari Lynn is a journalist who’s written several books of nonfiction, including The Whistleblower, Leg the Spread, and the historic novel Madam. Cari has written for numerous publications, including O, the Oprah Magazine, Health, the Chicago Tribune, Deadline Hollywood and the Hollywood Reporter. She has taught and guest lectured around the country. She received an M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Maryland. A longtime Chicagoan, she currently lives in Los Angeles.

For over 20 years, Saúl Sarabia has participated in social movements to transform society and has worked to end structural racism and discrimination by developing leaders, changing laws, and teaching. As the director of UCLA School of Law’s Critical Race Studies Program, Saul trained students to fight injustice by partnering with organizations working for social change. Along with challenging racism in the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, and helping undocumented college students build a voice an a social movement, Saúl and his students worked with Susan Burton to create the UCLA Law-A New Way of Life Legal Re-enty Clinic to assist formerly incarcerated people fighting employment discrimination. Saúl holds both a B.A. and J.D. from UCLA.

The daughter of criminal-justice activist Susan Burton, Antoinette Carter’s life story features heavily in Becoming Ms. Burton. A South Los Angeles native, Antoinette is a human resources executive at a Fortune 500 company.

Tiffany Johnson first heard about A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project (ANWOL) on the grounds of Central California Women’s Facility while serving a 15-to-life sentence. On April 28, 2010, she walked through the doors of ANWOL to start her new life. Through ANWOL’s guidance and connections, she went on to claim a career and live on her own. In December of 2013, she joined ANWOL’s staff as a full-time community organizer for All of Us or None-Southern California. As of January 2015, Tiffany is now ANWOL’s Associate Director. As a subject matter expert, Tiffany has completed numerous presentations throughout the country and offers a unique perspective on the intricacies of overcoming re-entry barriers after years of incarceration.

MICHELLE TEA DISCUSSES HER BOOK MODERN TAROT

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:15:22 -0700

Modern Tarot (HarperElixir)

Literary icon Michelle Tea offers fresh new take on tarot that encourages self-love, personal growth and self-discovery.

With her trademark wisdom and sharp sense of humor, author Michelle Tea shows how tarot offers moments of deep connection during a time when connection is ubiquitous but rarely delves beneath the surface. Based on over 25 years of experience and a deep and abiding love of the cards, Tea’s new book, Modern Tarot brings her charm, authenticity, and knowledge to the tradition of the tarot. Tea brings a fresh approach to the tarot guide infused with her unique insight, dark humor, and pop sensibility. Modern Tarot is a fascinating journey through the cards that teaches how to use this tradition to connect with our higher selves.

Whether you’re a full believer of the cards or a digital-age skeptic-- or a little of both-- the power of tarot is open to everyone. This guide doesn’t ask you to believe in magic or insist upon using tarot as a divination tool. Instead, fiercely insightful descriptions of each of the 78 cards in the tarot system (each illustrated in the charmingly offbeat style of cartoonist Amanda Verwey) and specially designed card-based rituals that can be used with any deck help take readers on a path toward radical growth and self-improvement.

PEN CENTER USA PRESENTS THE 2018 EMERGING VOICES MEET AND GREET

Mon, 25 Sep 2017 20:52:57 -0700

PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship Meet and Greet Los Angeles

Join Emerging Voices Fellows, Alumni, and Mentors in Conversation for the 2018 Application Cycle at Skylight Books. PEN Center USA presents summer cocktails, short readings, a fellowship overview and audience Q&A.

Featuring: Patrick O’Neil, Jian Huang, Mike Padilla, Peter H.Z. Hsu, Kirin Khan and Soleil David

JENNIFER ROMOLINI DISCUSSES HER BOOK WEIRD IN A WORLD THAT'S NOT

Sun, 24 Sep 2017 22:04:06 -0700

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures (HarperBusiness)

Are you “awkward?” Do you often feel like a spiky misfit at work? Does overthinking, anxiety and crippling self-doubt stand between you and the path to success? Have you taken so many wrong turns that it feels like you’ll never find the way forward, towards a truly rewarding career?

Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures, Jennifer Romolini’s wise, witty, and straight-talking how-to, asserts that being outside-the- norm and achieving real, high-level success are not mutually exclusive, even if the perception of the business world often seems otherwise, even if it seems like only office-politicking extroverts are set up for reward.

In this indispensable guide designed for oddballs, the popular speaker, former editor-in- chief of HelloGiggles, and self-professed weirdo shares essential information about navigating the workforce when you’re unconventional — and retaining your authenticity in the process. Romolini is an outsider who’s been there and done it; she started her career late, climbed the New York media ladder and, in just a few years, went from being a broke, divorced, college dropout to running some of the biggest websites in the world. As her inspiring story demonstrates, outliers are more than capable of excelling in the conventional business world, where weirdness can actually serve as an asset rather than a handicap.

Part memoir, part real-world guide, Weird in a World That's Not provides relatable, practical advice for readers at any stage in their careers. With real-life anecdotes and challenges interwoven throughout, this invaluable manual addresses a range of situations, including:

Discovering the career that’s right for you
Acing an initial interview and how to rebound if you don’t get the job;
Surviving intense office politics;
Knowing how and when to leave a sh*tty job;
Becoming a great leader when managing people is often the worst;
Staying true to who you are while accomplishing all of the above.

Jennifer Romolini is the former editor-in- chief and Vice President of Content at HelloGiggles, a site for millennial women founded by actress Zooey Deschanel. She was previously the editor-in- chief of Yahoo Shine, the deputy editor of Lucky Magazine, and held editorial positions at Time Out New York and Talk Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles, California.

ISRAEL CENTENO READS FROM HIS NEW NOVEL THE CONSPIRACY

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 19:21:10 -0700

The Conspiracy (Phoneme Media)

When leftist revolutionary Sergio's sniper shot misses the President of Venezuela, he's thrown into a sudden tailspin. As he attempts to escape the increasingly militarized regime, he winds up taking residence in a bohemian beachside commune, where he keeps a low profile until Lourdes, his former comrade, the object of his desire, and his possible betrayer, turns up one evening. Pursued by their former trainer in guerrilla warfare on the orders of the newly appointed Minister of the Interior, the two team up with unlikely partners to hatch a new plan for their survival. This poetic thriller, the second in Phoneme Media's City of Asylum imprint, challenges the origin myth of South America's radical left, resulting in its author's exile from Venezuela.

Praise for The Conspiracy

"A rare voice from Venezuela. In this fever dream of a novel shot through with dark humor, Centeno grapples with the fallout from generations of violence and corruption." —Natasha Wimmer, translator of Roberto Bolaño'sThe Savage Detectives and 2666

"His fleshy, psychologically penetrating work is one of the great undiscovered literary experiences of Latin America." —Aurelio Major, co-founding editor of Granta en Español

"The alleyways and hideaways of Israel Centeno's Venezuela are as real and visceral as the streets of Pasolini's Rome." —Dermot Bolger, author of The Journey Home

Israel Centeno was born in Venezuela in 1958. He has published 14 books, primarily novels but short story and poetry collections as well. He is regarded as on of the most important Venezuelan literary figures of the last fifty years. He has won the Federico García Lorca Award in Spain and the National Council of Culture Award in Venezuela. Since 2011 he has lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two daughters, as an exiled writer-in-residence at City of Asylum Pittsburgh.

DANIEL RILEY READS FROM HIS NOVEL FLY ME AND ROSECRANS BALDWIN READS FROM HIS NOVEL THE LAST KID LEFT

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 19:15:44 -0700

Fly Me (Little Brown & Company)

The year is 1972 and Suzy Whitman arrives in Sela del Mar, a debaucherous beach town in the shadows of LAX, lured across the country by the desire for danger and acceptance, and the possibility of escaping her past. Full of startling psychological insight, Daniel Riley’s debut novel, Fly Me is a haunting tour de force. Richly evoking the sights and sounds of the era, Riley paints the vivid portrait of a nation on the verge of a new era—and a girl caught between her past and the ever-expanding present.

Suzy casts aside her recent Vassar degree, following her beloved older sister into the borderless adventures of working as a stewardess for Grand Pacific Airlines. Suzy immerses herself into Southern California culture, meeting the surfers who populate the beaches and the musicians who play in the smoke filled clubs. There is a dark side to this sun-soaked town and Suzy is soon drawn into a drug-trafficking scheme. Between the years of 1961 and 1973, there were over 160 planes hijacked over U.S. airspace, and Suzy is forced to confront those who dominated the headlines and terrorized the skies. Smuggling cocaine in her (often unchecked) luggage is a lucrative side business; thrilling and terrifying, heightened even more so by the skyjacking epidemic of the day. That will all change on one fateful evening, where everything Suzy has come to know and love, goes up in smoke.

For readers of Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, Fly Me is an engaging exploration of being young, navigating expectations and learning to live with your mistakes. Fly Me is an unforgettable novel about family, a young woman on the edge, about drugs and rock ’n’ roll, and the increasingly thin line between freedom and free fall.

Daniel Riley is a Senior Editor at GQ magazine. He grew up in Manhattan Beach, California, and lives in New York City. Fly Me is his first novel.

The Last Kid Left (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

When a scandalous small-town crime goes viral, a teen girl takes center stage in the story of a 21st century Puritan witch-hunt.

After a double-murder kicks off a scandal in a New England beach town, a young woman struggles to create a life for herself and escape the lurid interest of a tight-knit community. No doubt one might sense echoes of The Scarlet Letter, one of Baldwin’s favorite works, in The Last Kid on the Left, his eagerly anticipated new novel. Loosely inspired by a true crime in 1930’s New England so shocking that Life magazine devoted an entire spread to the case, Baldwin sets his explosive, searching novel in the present day of Tumblr and sexting. People are haunted equally by the past and the present as the precarious lives of two teens, a small town sheriff, a retired big-city police officer and an aspiring young journalist desperate to make the pages of the New Yorker, all collide in a media firestorm that threatens to swallow them whole.

Rosecrans Baldwin is the author of Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down and a debut novel, You Lost Me There. His essays and articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including GQ, the New York Times, and the Guardian. He lives in Los Angeles.

ANNE-CHRISTINE D'ADESKY DISCUSSES HER BOOK THE POX LOVER WITH COUNCILMEMBER LINDSEY HORVATH

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 19:00:07 -0700

The Pox Lover: An Activist's Decade in New York and Paris (University of Wisconsin Press)
www.thepoxlover.com

The Pox Lover is a personal history of the turbulent 1990s in New York City and Paris by a pioneering American AIDS journalist, lesbian activist, and daughter of French-Haitian elites. In an account that is by turns searing, hectic, and funny, Anne-christine d'Adesky remembers "the poxed generation" of AIDS—their lives, their battles, and their determination to find love and make art in the heartbreaking years before lifesaving protease drugs arrived.

D'Adesky takes us through a fast-changing East Village: squatter protests and civil disobedience lead to all-night drag and art-dance parties, the fun-loving Lesbian Avengers organize dyke marches, and the protest group ACT UP stages public funerals. Traveling as a journalist to Paris, an insomniac d'Adesky trolls the Seine, encountering waves of exiles fleeing violence in the Balkans, Haiti, and Rwanda. As the last of the French Nazis stand trial and the new National Front rises in the polls, d'Adesky digs into her aristocratic family's roots in Vichy France and colonial Haiti. This is a testament with a message for every generation: grab at life and love, connect with others, fight for justice, keep despair at bay, and remember.

Praise for The Pox Lover

“Reminiscent of the luscious lesbian literature of the Parisian past, but propelled into the era of AIDS, ACT UP, and the Lesbian Avengers. D'Adesky's memoir also reveals her family's role in French colonialism, raising compelling questions about privilege, survival, homophobia, and dislocation.”—Sarah Schulman, author of The Cosmopolitans

“A haunting contribution to the record of the AIDS era.”—Laura Flanders, author of Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species

“A necessary book. We need such a chronicle.”—Felice Picano, author of Like People in History

“In a voice both powerful and cool, The Pox Lover takes on a sprawling personal history, deeply aware throughout that it is the politics of anyone's day—and how we respond to it—that shapes a life. Never far from the mad joy of writing, loving, and being alive, even as it investigates our horribly mundane capacity for horror, this book is a masterpiece.”—Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave

Anne-christine d'Adesky is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who reported on the global AIDS epidemic for New York Native, OUT, The Nation, and The Village Voice. She received the first Award of Courage from amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. She was an early member of ACT UP and cofounder of the Lesbian Avengers. Her books include Beyond Shock: Charting the Landscape of Sexual Violence in Post-Quake Haiti, Moving Mountains: The Race to Treat Global AIDS, and a novel set in post-Duvalier Haiti, Under the Bone.

Councilmember Lindsey P. Horvath was elected to the West Hollywood City Council on March 3, 2015. She previously served as a Councilmember for two years from 2009-2011. Councilmember Horvath has a long history of civic and social justice advocacy. She has spearheaded policies to make West Hollywood an “Age-Friendly Community” to better serve residents of all ages. She also champions LGBTQ rights, and has led initiatives to denounce discriminatory legislation against LGBTQ individuals. Councilmember Horvath is also known for her leadership on women’s issues and served as a Global Coordinator for One Billion Rising, a global campaign to end violence against women and girls. Additionally, Councilmember Horvath has worked on a range of transportation and mobility issues. Most recently, she engaged in community advocacy to promote light rail and subway service to West Hollywood and is committed to making West Hollywood both pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly. In addition to her service as an elected official, Councilmember Horvath works as an entertainment advertising executive, and has created award-winning campaigns for both movies and television.

ELIZABETH CRANE READS FROM HER NEW NOVEL TURF

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 18:54:27 -0700

Turf (Counterpoint Press)

Blazing through states, cities, towns, continents, Crane fearlessly pivots from micro to macro, humor to tragedy, past to present, mixing an off-kilter sensibility with a heartbreaking reality, guiding us into the fringed and often fantastical lives of her characters. And that has never been truer than in her new collection, Turf.

The end of the world as seen through a young couple in Brooklyn, who find a baby in a bucket on their front step; a group of geniuses who meet every Wednesday, able to unlock all the secrets of the universe except for the unknowable mystery of love; a woman and her dog walker whose friendship is uprooted by an incident at the park; these are dark, intriguing vistas explored in Crane’s glowing collection. For as places change, and people come and go, these stories in Turf remind us that it is the unchanging nature of the human heart that connects us all.

Praise for Elizabeth Crane:

"The novel flows smoothly, and readers game for offbeat narrative approaches will be well rewarded . . . So much like the relationship they’re borne of, Crane’s deeply realized mother-daughter inventions are therapeutic and ruthless, heartfelt and crushing. A lovely exercise in the wild, soothing wonders of imagination.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“Poignant and hilarious . . . Crane writes about the relationship between a deceased mother and her daughter as they tell each other’s stories to understand each other.” —Los Angeles Times

“Imagine sitting at a leisurely dinner with two intelligent women, a mother and daughter . . . The format may be experimental, but the emotions the book will stir in readers are moving and heartbreakingly familiar.” —Library Journal

“I cannot remember the last time I simultaneously cried and laughed as hard as I did while reading Elizabeth Crane’s glorious, tender knockout of a novel, The History of Great Things. Wait, yes I can. It was the last time I spoke to my mom about life.” —Amber Tamblyn, author of Dark Sparkler

“A poignant dual narrative . . . Alternating between laugh-out-loud humor and heart-rending melancholy, Crane gives us a mother and daughter who never quite grasp each other’s life stories, but who find truth through unconditional love.” —Bookpage

“Ultimately, The History of Great Things is a story of perception, one well worth reading. It serves as a reminder that what truly matters to each of us is not what actually happens, but how we remember it.” —The Rumpus

“An important work, fearless in both structure and vision, with Crane’s razor-edge fusion of intelligence, humor, and emotion informing every chapter. Get ready, world: this one’s going to be huge.” —Jamie Quatro, author of I Want to Show You More

“Like everything Elizabeth Crane writes, The History of Great Things is wonderful fun to read—smart, insightful, and witty—but it will break your heart, too. It stares down the poignant question so many daughters want to ask: How well did my mother really know me?” —Pamela Erens, author of Eleven Hours and The Virgins

“The Copelands would feel right at home in a Noah Baumbach movie . . . Our narrator is an omniscient ‘We’ who reports the goings-on of the family with the breathless glee of an incurable gossip.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Its style is literary, with an edge: The point of view is wicked, the characters prickly, the language not quite quotable here. I can’t wait to read past the first chapter.”—Los Angeles Times

“Like any good story writer, she had me in the first two paragraphs . . . A treat to read. The characters are crisp and enjoyable; the narrator is smart and witty.”—Iowa Press-Citizen

“This is an irresistible and winsome read. A truly astute tale of love neglected and reclaimed, family resiliency, spiritual inquiries, and personal metamorphoses.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“Crane delivers a unique and dizzying tale that delves into the emotional life of a family teetering on the brink of everything . . . The beauty in Crane’s novel is her sweep from acid commentary to heartfelt portrayal of real-life loves and losses.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Crane’s novel is filled with deliciously idiosyncratic characters, humorous and distinct narration, and a whole lot of personality. Each character’s emotional growth is just enough to satisfy, without being overbearing . . . Crane’s summer novel has undeniable heart.” —Publishers Weekly

“At last a novel from Elizabeth Crane! With her expert humorist’s eye for detail, she gives us a playful, passionate story of longing, heartbreak, and of the gargantuan human will. You won’t be able to stop reading.” —Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution

“Not since The Royal Tenenbaums have I loved a family so much. The Copelands of We Only Know So Much are wonderfully eccentric, hilariously not self-aware and strangely adorable. They seemed so real, I felt like I was reading my own family story.” —Jessica Anya Blau, author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home

“This is the kind of book that inspires a person to see the beauty in the ordinary, to stop concentrating on others’ failings long enough to see their spark and maybe rediscover his or her own.”—Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue

“A beautiful, warmhearted, ferociously honest debut that will pull you in with its chorus of true voices and catch you off guard with its playful, restless edginess.” —Patrick Somerville, author of The Cradle and This Bright River

Elizabeth Crane is the author of the novels The History of Great Things and We Only Know So Much and three collections of short stories. Her stories have been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company. She currently lives in Newburgh, New York

RAFE BARTHOLOMEW DISCUSSES HIS MEMOIR TWO AND TWO

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 18:27:20 -0700

Two and Two (Little, Brown and Company)

McSorley’s Old Ale House is not just a bar—it’s a home to all walks of life that has stood the test of time. For over 160 years, since 1854, the saloon has been a safe haven for regulars and tourists, workingmen and businessmen, writers and artists, old-timers and barely legal college drinkers. It has witnessed the Civil War, two world wars, the Great Depression, Prohibition, the September 11th attacks, Hurricane Sandy. It was even the subject of a Supreme Court decision—famously a men only pub, the bar finally allowed access for women in 1970 after the Court’s decision!

In Two and Two, Rafe chronicles his life growing up at McSorley’s—a place where tradition is not just implemented for nostalgia’s sake, but is a vital component of the lifeblood. McSorley’s patrons read like a Who’s Who of 20th century icons, including Babe Ruth, Teddy Roosevelt and John Lennon. Today, you might spot Mick Jagger, Matt Damon, Kevin Spacey or even Leo DiCaprio there. Two ale pours, sawdust-strewn hardwood floors, and the company of good folks are always to be expected when one crosses the threshold of McSorley’s—and these were the things that Rafe came to look forward to when he was just seven years old.

Bestselling author James McBride (a long-time patron of McSorley’s) who praised “wonderful, young writer Rafe Bartholomew’s forthcoming memoir” in the New York Times Book Review’s Year in Reading said, “Many a day I have sat in McSorley’s amidst the sawdust and beer and said to myself, ‘You’d have to be a child of this place to make these ghosts speak.’ And that is exactly what Rafe Bartholomew is. His is the voice of ages, the shouts of thousands of fireman, cops, soldiers, drunks, bums, wayfarers, liars, and good souls whose hard luck brought them to McSorley’s, and whose good spirit still reign over the place. He hoists this wonderful piece of Americana into the air with all the humor, joy, humility and love that it deserves.”

Rafe’s father Bart, a poet and bartender extraordinaire, strove to be a better man than his own abusive father and that he did. They also went through losing Rafe’s mom to cancer together. Rafe was always protected and loved and knew that the pub was a natural extension of his home. The pub also became his library—a history lesson on Irish immigration as he inspected the photographs hanging from the walls, an anthropological study on the interactions between thirsty patrons and a gruff wait staff and an etiquette course in the gift of gab. The walls of the pub are living history—with memorabilia dating back to the turn of the century.

In Two and Two, Rafe expertly pours over his and his father’s legacy in one of the last vestiges of a world that is quickly vanishing—that of old New York. As to why people still flock to McSorley’s after all these years, Bart has the answer: “People can buy a mug of ale for cheap all over the city. They come to McSorley’s because it still feels real.”

Praise for Two and Two

“There is no bar in New York City—perhaps even all of America—with as much history as McSorley's Old Ale House which opened on East 7th Street in 1854. It was a campaign stop for Abraham Lincoln, a gathering spot for Boss Tweed and his Tammany Hall cronies, and a hangout for decades of artists, poets, and musicians. As a child, Bartholomew would spend magical weekend mornings at the bar with his father, playing with the mouser cat in the basement, eating hamburgers in the kitchen, and doing odd jobs. Bart never wanted to see his son behind the bar; he was a working-class kid from Ohio who'd nearly been killed by his drunk of a father and a long-suffering aspiring writer who'd never seen his literary dreams actualized. The author expertly weaves together entertaining stories from his nights behind the bar (note: never work at an Irish pub on St. Paddy’s Day) with more poignant moments between father and son. Bartholomew does both his father and McSorley’s proud with this touching, redolent memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[A] big-hearted memoir of a lifelong romance with New York City’s oldest saloon….Bartholomew chronicles this history and demonstrates how a crude, unforgiving, and extremely macho camaraderie sustained his family through suffering and loss….His description of his mother’s harrowing death from cancer jarringly shifts the register and introduces pathos and intensity that infuse the following pages. Bartholomew never ignores the darkness inherent in public drunkenness and jobs without health care or pensions, so his portrayal of the rough humor and blue-collar warmth feels completely earned.”—Publishers Weekly

“I gobbled up a galley of the wonderful young writer Rafe Bartholomew’s forthcoming 2017 memoir, Two and Two. It’s about McSorley’s, New York’s oldest saloon. I’ve tipped many a glass at that joint, hoping some of the literary magic of the great writers who once got oiled up there would rub off. It hasn’t.”—James McBride, New York Times Book Review’s “The Year in Reading”

Rafe Bartholomew is the author of Pacific Rims. His writing has appeared in Grantland, Slate, The New York Times, the Chicago Reader, Deadspin and other leading online and print publications. His stories have twice been honored in the Best American Sports Writing series.

JESS ARNDT DISCUSSES HER NEW SHORT STORY COLLECTION LARGE ANIMALS, WITH MAGGIE NELSON

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 17:04:54 -0700

Large Animals (Catapult)

Jess Arndt's striking debut collection confronts what it means to have a body. Boldly straddling the line between the imagined and the real, the masculine and the feminine, the knowable and the impossible, these twelve stories are an exhilarating and profoundly original expression of voice. In "Jeff," Lily Tomlin confuses Jess for Jeff, instigating a dark and hilarious identity crisis. In "Together," a couple battles a mysterious STD that slowly undoes their relationship, while outside a ferocious weed colonizes their urban garden. And in "Contrails," a character on the precipice of a seismic change goes on a tour of past lovers, confronting their own reluctance to move on. Arndt's subjects are canny observers even while they remain dangerously blind to their own truest impulses. Often unnamed, these narrators challenge the limits of language--collectively, their voices create a transgressive new formal space that makes room for the queer, the nonconforming, the undefined. And yet, while they crave connection, love, and understanding, they are constantly at risk of destroying themselves. Large Animals pitches toward the heart, pushing at all our most tender parts--our sex organs, our geography, our words, and the tendons and nerves of our culture.

Praise for Large Animals
"Reading Arndt is like walking toward a shimmering desert mirage and being met with a cloud of acid instead of an oasis of cool water. . . . A deeply transgressive, riveting shot out of the gate. Arndt is one to watch."--Kirkus Reviews

"Arndt's short stories are delicious flights of fancy, or obsession, or fertile curiosity--or, more accurately, some beguiling combination of all three...This is a playful and provocative collection, full of sly, deft turns of phrase and striking imagery."--Publishers Weekly

"Arndt tells stories that resemble handfuls of ribbons--vibrant, overlapping, tangled, seemingly more middles than beginnings and endings. . . . Arndt's keen, wild stories are truly original, and readers will hope for more."--Booklist

Jess Arndt received her MFA at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and was a 2013 Graywolf SLS Fellow and 2010 Fiction Fellow at the New York Foundation of the Arts. Her writing has appeared in Fence, Bomb, Aufgabe, Parkett, and Night Papers, and in her manifesto for the Knife's Shaking the Habitual world tour. She is a co-founder of New Herring Press, dedicated to publishing prose and polemics. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Maggie Nelson is the author of nine books of poetry and prose, many of which have become cult classics which defy classification. Her nonfiction titles include the National Book Critics Circle Award winner and New York Timesbestseller The Argonauts (2015), The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011; a New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Bluets (2009; named by Bookforum as one of the top 10 best books of the past 20 years), The Red Parts: Autobiography of a Trial (2007, reissued in 2016), and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (2007). Her poetry titles include Something Bright, Then Holes (2007) and Jane: A Murder (2005; finalist for the PEN/ Martha Albrand Art of the Memoir). She has also been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction, an NEA in Poetry, an Innovative Literature Fellowship from Creative Capital, and an Arts Writers Fellowship from the Andy Warhol Foundation. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and has taught literature, writing, art, criticism and theory at the New School, Pratt Institute, Wesleyan University, and CalArts. In 2016 she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” Fellowship. She lives in Los Angeles.

UC IRVINE MFA STUDENTS READ FROM THEIR WORK 2017

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 15:42:50 -0700

Please join us as students from the MFA Program at UC Irvine read from their work.

Readers include:

Jack Foraker is from Davis, California.

Corinna Rosendahl is most recently from Seattle and Portland and Corvallis.

William Hawkins grew up in Louisiana. He is a third year in fiction in the MFA program at UC Irvine.

Megan Grant grew up in Reedley, California. She went on to get her BA in Literature and Creative Writing and a minor in Jewish Studies at Cal State Long Beach. She enjoys writing, sarcasm, pineapple, and occasionally, drawing ninja turtles on the sidewalk.

TOMMY PICO READS FROM HIS NEW BOOK OF POETRY NATURE POEM, TOGETHER WITH MELISSA BRODER

Sun, 10 Sep 2017 15:35:29 -0700

Nature Poem (Tin House Books)

Nature Poem follows Teebs―a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet―who can’t bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He’d slap a tree across the face. He’d rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he’d rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he’s adamant―bratty, even―about his distaste for the word “natural,” over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the “natural world,” he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice.

Praise for Nature Poem

“I love this work. Unpredictable & sweet & strong...” —Eileen Myles

“A thrilling punk rock epic that is a tour of all we know and can't admit to. Pico is a poet of canny instincts, his lyric is somehow so casual and so so serious at the same time. He is determined to blow your mind apart, and . . . you should let him.”—Alexander Chee

*A Most Anticipated Book of 2017 at Publishers Weekly, Buzzfeed, and more.*

Tommy "Teebs" Pico is the author of Nature Poem (Tin House Books), IRL(Birds LLC), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and a 2016 Tin House summer poetry scholar. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.

Melissa Broder is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Last Sext (Tin House Books). She is also the author of the essay collection So Sad Today (Grand Central). Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the Iowa Review, Tin House, Guernica, Fence, the Missouri Review, and the Awl among others. Broder lives in Venice, California.

GRAHAM CHAFFEE DISCUSSES HIS GRAPHIC NOVEL TO HAVE AND TO HOLD WITH SAMMY HARKHAM

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 21:48:40 -0700

To Have and to Hold (Fantagraphics Books)

Couched in the traditional trappings of a noir heist thriller, Graham Chaffee’s To Have and To Hold is a hard-boiled disquisition on the darker regions of married life and the American Dream. Set in October 1962, while the world holds its collective breath awaiting the possibly apocalyptic climax of the unfolding Cuban Missile Crisis, the banality of everyday life goes on, as Lonnie and Kate Ross confront their own domestic cold war. As Kate, frustrated and disillusioned, looks outside her marriage for satisfaction, Lonnie’s justifiable suspicions of his wife’s infidelity lead him down a deadly road of increasing paranoia and violence as he seeks to reclaim what he’s lost. Possession, jealousy, lust, and betrayal — the classic ingredients for a rocky marriage in an America on the verge of nuclear apocalypse. Masterfully paced and drawn in Chaffee’s fluid, inky brushstrokes, To Have and To Hold captures the pulpy, nocturnal atmosphere of classic noir.

Praise for Graham Chaffee:

"The world does not have nearly enough graphic novels told from the perspective of adorable dogs. Let alone graphic novels that have a good chance of making you feel delighted on one page, then maybe like you might cry a little bit on the next page. Good Dog does those things, and also, did I mention it’s told from the perspective of an adorable dog? Seriously, the dog is so great! I would adopt him in a second and we would do everything together." – Erik Henriksen, Wired, The Best Comic Books of 2013

Graham Chaffee is a professional tattooist and comics artist. His previous books are The Big Wheels (1993), The Most Important Thing & Other Stories (1995), and Good Dog (2013). He lives and works in Los Angeles

Sammy Harkham is an American cartoonist and editor, born in Los Angeles in 1980. He began making his own comics and created the zine Kramers Ergot, which has become one of the most influential comics anthologies published today. He is associated with the bookstore Family and the auteur movie house Cinefamily in Los Angeles.

KELLY LYTLE HERNANDEZ DISCUSSES HER BOOK CITY OF INMATES

Mon, 28 Aug 2017 21:39:28 -0700

City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965 (University of North Carolina Press)

Los Angeles incarcerates more people than any other city in the United States, which imprisons more people than any other nation on Earth. This book explains how the City of Angels became the capital city of the world's leading incarcerator. Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernandez documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration.

But City of Inmates is also a chronicle of resilience and rebellion, documenting how targeted peoples and communities have always fought back. They busted out of jail, forced Supreme Court rulings, advanced revolution across bars and borders, and, as in the summer of 1965, set fire to the belly of the city. With these acts those who fought the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles altered the course of history in the city, the borderlands, and beyond. This book recounts how the dynamics of conquest met deep reservoirs of rebellion as Los Angeles became the City of Inmates, the nation's carceral core. It is a story that is far from over.

Praise for City of Inmates

"In this compelling and comprehensive history of incarceration in Los Angeles, Hernandez demonstrates how authorities whether Spanish, Mexican, or American have long used imprisonment as a tool to control labor and immigration. Covering nearly two centuries of incarceration, Hernandez masterfully synthesizes the history of immigration and deportation, the history of crime and punishment, and the history of settler colonialism."--Margaret Jacobs, author of White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940

"Using settler colonialism as an analytical touchstone, City of Inmates extends arguments about mass incarceration's antiblack violence while challenging its commonly asserted origins in the Deep South or the northeastern United States. Excavating the deep histories of punishment in Los Angeles, Hernandez significantly broadens our understanding of mass incarceration's intersections with immigrant detention and colonial dispossession. Vast in scope and intimate in detail, this book is timely and necessary."--Ethan Blue, author of Doing Time in the Depression

City of Inmates is a pathbreaking work that not only considers together the histories of the regimes of domestic incarceration and immigration detention, the major mechanisms that plague the condition of African Americans and Latino/as in our time. It also incorporates histories of incarceration and removal of Native Americans, Chinese, and poor whites as modes of 'elimination' by white settler colonialism. City of Inmates is a bold work that will surprise and provoke.--Mae Ngai, author of Impossible Subjects

Kelly Lytle Hernandez's City of Inmates is a remarkable book. No historian has ever told California's history with the breadth and depth of its enduring significance quite like this. Since the Spanish colonial period every kind of American--from Native Americans to Mexican and Chinese Americans, to landless whites and African Americans--has passed through California's jailhouse doors with profound implications for the shape of our nation today. No telling or teaching of the past is complete without reckoning with these supremely urgent stories of our carceral history.--Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness

Kelly Lytle Hernandez is associate professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles

PETER ROCK DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK SPELLS

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:40:17 -0700

Spells (Counterpoint Press)

Acclaimed author Peter Rock’s interest in using images for storytelling began while working as a security guard in an art museum. Twenty years later, reminded of the stories he created from the photographs and images he saw on the job, he began to envision a similar project—a project for which he received a Guggenheim scholarship, and which eventually became Spells: A Novel Within Photographs.

First, he asked five photographers he admired to send him images. Then, he used those images as a foundation for his writing—a ship in a lit window gives hope to a dark night, a pair of shadow hands fumble to make a duck or a dog. From a collection of diverse images Rock builds a single narrative that effortlessly weaves between the specific and the universal, dream and reality, prose and poetry.

As he explains: “The images came first. One way to think of it is that the stories herein, and the larger story they become, were already embedded in the photographs. My attention and intuition acted as a kind of excavation that brought them to the surface, into words.”

The texts range from narrative to prose poem, from folktale to rant to reverie to an essay written by a fourth grader. The overarching story follows three friends who have recently graduated from high school; it explores their relationships and how things change when they become entangled with an elderly widower who claims to have dreamt of one of them. The ensuing drama explores the relationship between dreams and waking life, between the head and the heart, between shadows and their bodies, between the living and the dead.

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent novel is Klickitat (Abrams 2016). He is also the author of six other novels, includingThe Shelter Cycle (2013) and My Abandonment (2009), as well as a collection of stories, The Unsettling (2006). The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an Alex Award and others, he currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he is a Professor at Reed College. His novel-within-photographs, Spells, was shown at Blue Sky Gallery in 2015 and is currently traveling around Oregon.

ADA CALHOUN DISCUSSES HER BOOK WEDDING TOASTS I'LL NEVER GIVE WITH DAVY

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 21:16:00 -0700

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give (W.W. Norton & Company)

In July of 2015, the New York Times “Modern Love” column published Ada Calhoun’s essay “The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give,” a strikingly honest rumination on the true challenges—and joys—of marriage. The essay was wildly popular: it stayed in the most-emailed list for a week, inspired hundreds of comments, and became one of the top 50 stories of the year for the entire newspaper.

In Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give, Calhoun builds off of that first essay to provide a funny (but not flip), smart (but not smug) take on the institution of marriage. Weaving intimate moments from her own married life with frank insight from experts, clergy, and friends, she upends expectations of total marital bliss to present a realistic—but ultimately optimistic—portrait of what marriage is really like. There will be fights, there will be existential angst, there may even be affairs; sometimes, you’ll look at the person you love and feel nothing but rage. Despite it all, Calhoun contends, staying married is easy: just don’t get divorced.

Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give offers bracing straight-talk to the newly married and honors those who have weathered the storm. This exploration of modern marriage is at once wise and entertaining, a work of unexpected candor and literary grace.

Praise for Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give

"What a witty, sexy, surprising testimony to the institution of marriage! It's the best essay collection I've read in a long time, just astoundingly honest and insightful about what marriage really means. And I say that as someone who has been married 20 years."—Karen Abbott, New York Times-bestselling author of Sin in the Second City and Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy

"This unflinchingly honest, astutely balanced probe of a most perplexing institution asks all the right questions. It sets up a conversation with the reader, who is challenged to reflect at each point, choosing between 'No, that's not me' and 'How did she know that?' Most of the time, she knows."—Phillip Lopate, Author of The Art of the Personal Essay

“This really spoke to me. It’s a beautiful love letter to what marriage is. Ada Calhoun seems like she’d be a ball to hang out with. Marriage: not so bad, guys.”—Kathryn Hahn, actress (Transparent, Crossing Jordan)

“Ada Calhoun has written the definitive meditation on marriage in all of its mystery and imperfection. It should be required reading for anyone considering it, and highly recommended for those who want to be reminded of why they did it in the first place.”—Molly Ringwald

“Brutally honest, hilarious and unsentimental -- but never unkind-- this is a book for anyone who has ever had a thought (good or bad) about the institution of marriage. I devoured this gem in one sitting. I want to marry this book.”—Susannah Cahalan, New York Times-bestselling author of Brain on Fire

“A warm, tart, corrective to the persistent conviction that a wedding is the neat end of a love story.”—Rebecca Traister, New York Times-bestselling author of All the Single Ladies

“Ada Calhoun is the friend we all need-- the one who lets us behind the curtain of her good marriage to help us better understand our own. She’s smart, funny, and best of all, willing to bare all.”—Emma Straub, New York Times-bestselling author of Modern Lovers

Calhoun’s first book, St. Marks Is Dead, was named a New York TimesEditor’s Choice and a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

Davy Rothbart is a bestselling author and Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, creator of Found Magazine, a frequent contributor to public radio's This American Life, and the author of a book of personal essays, My Heart Is An Idiot, and a collection of stories, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. He writes regularly for GQ and Los Angeles Magazine, and his work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Believer. His documentary film, Medora, about a resilient high-school basketball team in a dwindling Indiana town, aired recently on the acclaimed PBS series Independent Lens, won a 2015 Emmy Award, and can now be streamed online. Rothbart is also the founder of Washington To Washington, an annual hiking adventure for inner-city kids. He lives between Los Angeles, California and his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

JAKE GERHARDT READS FROM HIS NEW BOOK MY FUTURE EX-GIRLFRIEND

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 20:50:30 -0700

My Future Ex-Girlfriend (Viking Books for Young Readers)

In Me and Miranda Mullaly, three eighth-grade boys struggled to win the affections of one girl. In My Future Ex-Girlfriend, the same three boys have landed their perfect matches.

Follow Sam (the class clown), Duke (the intellectual), and Chollie (the athlete) as they fumble their way through boyfriend territory for the very first time. With so much to worry about as the school year comes to a close--finals, commencement speeches, the baseball championship, the end-of-year party--the guys feel ill-equipped to handle the stress of a relationship. But if they're dumped before the last day of school, they'll start high school as losers. The. Pressure. Is. On.

Praise for My Future Ex-Girlfriend

"The gang from Me and Miranda Mullaly returns for more hijinks and heartbreak as eighth grade comes to an end. The storyas dizzying structure rotates narration among the three male leadsa insufferably arrogant Duke, jock Chollie, and class clown Sama intermingled with English class prompts written by the boys and two of their girlfriends, Miranda and Erica. (Only Dukeas girlfriend, Sharon, gets shut out of telling her side, but sheas a seventh grader, and there is a definite hierarchy at Penn Valley Middle School.) Relationships wobble, the canceled class trip is replaced with an ambitious talent show meant to replicate a night in New York City, and graduation looms, bringing anxiety about the prospect of what awaits in high school. The multiple perspectives offer amusing insights into how the boys and girls view the same episode through completely different lenses, but they arenat enough to offset the thin characterizations. Readers in search of light humor about middle school romance will find what the yare looking for."--Publishers Weekly

"Jake Gerhardt s debut novel is sweet, knowing, and a super-fun read."--Patton Oswalt, New York Times bestselling author, comedian, and actor

"Gerhardt s light narrative touch is addictive . . . [Readers will] eat up this satisfying confection where all s fair in love and war."--Booklist

"A strong purchase for middle school libraries that will circulate well."--School Library Journal

"A comedy of errors meets coming-of-age story that will resonate with middle-grade readers."--Bay State Parent

"Full of humor, sweetness, authenticity, engaging storytelling, and likable characters . . . delightful and entertaining."--Word Spelunking

"The characters are developed, distinct and . . . relatable."--VOYA

Jake Gerhardt was born and raised in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania. He attended Elkins Park Middle School, where he played football and basketball, ran track, performed in the school musical, and was a member of the student council. He also found time to attend many school dances, in constant pursuit of a (future ex) girlfriend. Since graduating from West Chester University, he has worked as a teacher. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his pulchritudinous wife and two amazing daughters. My Future Ex-Girlfriend is his second book.

MAT CALLAHAN DISCUSSES HIS BOOK THE EXPLOSION OF DEFERRED DREAMS WITH PAT THOMAS

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 20:32:20 -0700

The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975 (PM Press)

As the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love floods the media with debates and celebrations of music, political movements, “flower power,” “acid rock,” and “hippies”; The Explosion of Deferred Dreams offers a critical re-examination of the interwoven political and musical happenings in San Francisco in the Sixties. Author, musician, and native San Franciscan Mat Callahan explores the dynamic links between the Black Panthers and Sly and the Family Stone, the United Farm Workers and Santana, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the counterculture.

Callahan’s meticulous, impassioned arguments both expose and reframe the political and social context for the San Francisco Sound and the vibrant subcultural uprisings with which it is associated. Using dozens of original interviews, primary sources, and personal experiences, the author shows how the intense interplay of artistic and political movements put San Francisco, briefly, in the forefront of a worldwide revolutionary upsurge.

A must-read for any musician, historian, or person who “was there” (or longed to have been), The Explosion of Deferred Dreams is substantive and provocative, inviting us to reinvigorate our historical sense-making of an era that assumes a mythic role in the contemporary American zeitgeist.

Praise for The Explosion of Deferred Dreams:

“Mat Callahan was a red diaper baby lucky to be attending a San Francisco high school during the ‘Summer of Love.’ He takes a studied approach, but with the eye of a revolutionary, describing the sociopolitical landscape that led to the explosion of popular music (rock, jazz, folk, R&B) coupled with the birth of several diverse radical movements during the golden 1965–1975 age of the Bay Area. Callahan comes at it from every angle imaginable (black power, anti–Vietnam War, the media, the New Left, feminism, sexual revolution—with the voice of authority backed up by interviews with those who lived it.” —Pat Thomas, author of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965–1975

“All too often, people talk about the ’60s without mentioning our music and the fun we had trying to smash the state and create a culture based upon love. Mat Callahan’s book is a necessary corrective.” —George Katsiaficas, author of The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968

“Something very special took place in San Francisco in the Sixties, generating waves of social and aesthetic motion that still ricochet around this planet. The Explosion of Deferred Dreams takes a clear-eyed, politically engaged view that separates truth from propaganda. Grasping why the time became legendary and how society dealt with the challenges it created is what Explosion is about—and it accomplishes this critical task with intelligence and clarity.” —Dennis McNally, author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead

“In this landmark work, Mat Callahan painstakingly braids disparate threads of the rich tapestry of San Francisco—music, politics, race, culture. In this vast, panoramic portrait, Callahan digs out social/political undercurrents that have never been more thoroughly explored.” —Joel Selvin, Summer of Love: The Inside Story of LSD, Rock & Roll, Free Love and High Times in the Wild West

Mat Callahan is a musician and author originally from San Francisco, where he founded Komotion International. He is the author of three books, Sex, Death & the Angry Young Man, Testimony, and The Trouble with Music as well as the editor of Songs of Freedom: The James Connolly Songbook. He currently resides in Bern, Switzerland.

Pat Thomas is the author of Listen, Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975 and the author of the forthcoming book Did It! Jerry Rubin – An American Revolutionary (both published by Fantagraphics). As a reissue producer, he has overseen the release of vintage recordings from Public Image Limited, Allen Ginsberg, and Judee Sill amongst others. He has appeared multiple times on the BBC and NPR discussing the impact of the Black Panther Party on popular music and served as a consultant to the PBS documentary: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

GUY DELISLE DISCUSSES HIS NONFICTION GRAPHIC NOVEL HOSTAGE, WITH DAVID ULIN

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 20:25:24 -0700

Hostage (Drawn + Quarterly)

Join award-winning cartoonist Guy Delisle (Pyongyang, Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Burma Chronicles) for the launch of his highly anticipated, non-fiction page-turner: Hostage. Set in the Caucasus region in 1997, Hostage tells the true story of Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe Andre who was held captive for over three months. Recounting his day-to-day survival while conveying the psychological effects of solitary confinement, Delisle’s storytelling doesn’t just show André’s experiences, but brings you into the room alongside him. Hostage is a thoughtful, intense, and undeniably moving graphic novel that takes a profound look at what drives our will to survive in the darkest of moments.

Guy Delisle is a cartoonist and animator from Québec City, Canada. Delisle spent ten years working in animation, which allowed him to learn about movement and drawing. He is best known for his bestselling travelogues about life in faraway countries, Burma Chronicles, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, Pyongyang, and Shenzhen. In 2012, Guy Delisle was awarded the Prize for Best Album for the French edition of Jerusalem at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Delisle now lives in the south of France with his wife and two children.

David L. Ulin is the author, most recently, of the novel Ear to the Ground. A 2015 Guggenheim Fellow, his other books include Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay; The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time; and the Library of America's Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He is the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times.

David Ulin photo by Noah Ulin

"This tour was supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States."

JANET SARBANES DISCUSSES HER SHORT STORY COLLECTION THE PROTESTER HAS BEEN RELEASED, WITH MAGGIE NELSON

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:46:21 -0700

The Protester Has Been Released (C&R Press)

Populated by wise animals and hapless humans, Protester brilliantly evokes an end-of-the-world feeling that is equal parts dread and hilarity. In nine precisely rendered stories and a novella featuring the American president’s daughter, Sarbanes takes on the big questions with gallows humor: What is freedom? What is love? What is art? And what does it matter now?

In “Meet Koko,” the famous signing gorilla spends her nights secretly typing a hilarious “counter-narrative” onto her researcher’s laptop. “The First Daughter Finds Her Way” chronicles the quest of a president’s daughter to keep her father from invading the world’s nations in reverse alphabetical order. Sibling rivalry turns lethal in “Who Will Sit with Maman?” And in “Ars Longa,” a Colorado town riddled with cancer turns to art making in order to cope with the chaos of the present and the sins of the past.

Whether chiseled into discretely titled chunks, or rendered via extended interior monologues, Sarbanes’ witty, affective prose deftly locates the promise of a new society within the shell of the old. A fierce, funny primer for our time.

Praise for The Protester Has Been Released

“The Protester Has Been Released is a spectacular and subversive collection, made even more so by its deceptive calm and supremely wry style.”--Maggie Nelson

“Exploring the subtle and not-so-subtle disjunctions between the so-called animal and the so-called human world, between police and citizens, between the resident and its electorate, between rich and poor, and between humans and the world, The Protester Has Been Released is a funny, humane, and scalpel-sharp collection. Only after you finish do you realize how close these worlds are to our own, and how implicated you are.”--Brian Evenson

“This is a profound book and necessary to the times we are living in now. Sarbanes explores the boundaries between ourselves and animals and Americans and the wider world in ways that illuminate the true issues behind the false ones. We need this book now.”--Danzy Senna

“The Protester Has Been Released gives yet more proof that Janet Sarbanes is a comic genius. She’s also some other kind of genius: these stories and novella range over broad territory, but in every case, Sarbanes is artful, precise, and prescient. Unfortunately, her apocalypse is ours, too. But as the end approaches, she’s terrific company.”--Rachel Kushner

Janet Sarbanes is the author of the short story collection Army of One, hailed by Bomb as a “stingingly funny fiction debut.” Her new collection, The Protester Has Been Released, will be published by C & R Press in February 2017. Recent short fiction appears in Black Clock, P-Queue, Entropy and North Dakota Quarterly. Sarbanes has also published art criticism and other critical writing in museum catalogues, anthologies, and journals such as East of Borneo, Afterall, Journal of Utopian Studies and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at CalArts.

RACHEL NAGELBERG READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL THE FIFTH WALL WITH STEPHEN BEACHY

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 19:36:02 -0700

Eartha (Fantagraphics)

Eartha is Cathy Malkasian’s fourth graphic novel — a metaphorical fable that resonates with contemporary themes. For a thousand years the unfinished dreams from the City Across the Sea came to Echo Fjord to live out their lives. Sex fantasies, murder plots, wishful thinking, and all manner of secrets once found sanctuary in Echo Fjord. Emerging from the soil, they took bodily form and wandered the land, gently guided by the fjord folk who treasured their brief and wondrous lives. But recently, city dreams have stopped coming to Echo Fjord, and without their ethereal tourists the fjord folk suddenly feel lost. Has their ancient way of life ended for good? Has something happened to the city? Are all the dreamers gone? One of Echo Fjord’s inhabitants wants answers: The story’s eponymous protagonist Eartha wants to visit the City Across the Sea, but how will she get to a place no one’s gone to for a thousand years? The city isn’t on any map, or in anyone’s memory. Without thought or hesitation she ventures into the limitless waters, hoping to find the City and solve the mystery.

Cathy Malkasian’s Eartha is an expansive tale of pastoral life, city corruption, greed, and addictions, and reverberates with questions plaguing us today, such as the alienating effects of hyper-connectivity and the self-destructive obsession with novelty. Malkasian’s drawing is notable for its rigorous draftsmanship, stunning landscapes and depictions of nature, the gestural nuances of her characters, and her sophisticated storytelling, all of which are on display in Eartha, making this the author’s lushest and most impressive graphic novel yet.

The Fifth Wall (Black Sparrow Books)

In this debut novel by Rachel Nagelberg, conceptual artist Sheila B. Ackerman heeds a mysterious urge to return to her estranged family home and arrives at the exact moment of her mother’s suicide. In an attempt to cope with and understand her own self destructive tendencies, Sheila plants a camera on the lawn outside the house to film 24/7 while workers deconstruct the physical object that encases so many of her memories. Meanwhile, as she begins to experience frequent blackouts, she finds herself hunting a robot drone through the San Francisco MOMA with a baseball bat, part of a provocative, technological show, The Last Art, and resuming a violent affair with her college professor. With a backdrop of post-9/11 San Francisco, Sheila navigates the social-media- obsessed, draught-ridden landscape of her life, exploring the frail line between the human impulse to control everything that takes place around us and the futility of excessive effort to do so. The Fifth Wall allows readers to explore from a safe distance the recesses of their own minds, leaving the haunting feeling of depths that yet remain unknown.

Praise for The Fifth Wall

Set into motion by an inexplicable, traumatic and violent real-life event, Rachel Nagelberg’s brilliant first novel begins at the limits of contemporary art, as it attempts to reflect the ungraspable present. Born in 1984 into a familiarly frayed American family, her protagonist Sheila B. Ackerman, a former art student, is neither especially likable or unlikeable: that is, she’s incredibly real. A close artistic cousin to Joni Murphy’s Double Teenage and Natasha Stagg’s Surveys, The Fifth Wall is a new kind of novel. Female and philosophical, emotion flows through the book across a dense and familiarly incomprehensible web of information, from satellite selfies to awkward sex to internet beheadings and shamanic tourism in the third world. Nagelberg's engrossing narration is littered with stunning perception: We look into the distance to be able to see what’s right in front of us. She writes without affect, and with unselfconscious acuity.That is, she writes really well. – Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick

"Nagelberg has a true gift, able to write gorgeously on the line level with unctuous images. And simultaneously, there's a readable page-turner here. Most of us are lucky to do one of those, which is a testament to the singular talent. This book cascades beauty and meaning and truth.– Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life and Termite Parade, a New York Times Editor’s Choice pick

"The Fifth Wall crackles with braininess and sex. It's hallucinatory and interactive and funny and sad and it has something incandescent to show you." – Stephen Beachy, author of The Whistling Song and Distortion, and professor at the University of San Francisco

Rachel Nagelberg is an American novelist, poet, and conceptual artist living in Los Angeles. The Fifth Wall is her debut novel.

Stephen Beachy is the author of the novels boneyard, Distortion, and The Whistling Song, and the twin novellas Some Phantom/No Time Flat. He has also written and is continuing to write the “Amish Terror” sci-fi series that begins with Zeke Yoder vs. the Singularity, and his newest novel Glory Hole will be published by FC2 fall of 2017. He is Prose Editor of the journal Your Impossible Voice, teaches in the MFA Program at the University of San Francisco, and lives in San Diego.

OTIS COLLEGE GRADUATE WRITING STUDENTS READ FROM THEIR WORK

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 18:22:59 -0700

Join us as students from the Otis College of Art and Design MFA Writing Class of 2017 read their work.

Readers will include:
George Fekaris grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and has an M.A. in English, from Cal State Northridge.

Aside from her fascination with the human body, Esther S. Lee is an MFA candidate in Otis College’s Graduate Writing Program. She is currently working on a collection of short stories centered on the practice of divination and how it affects the human psyche, though she occasionally flirts with the idea of writing poetry. She is currently located in Los Angeles, where she would like to stay put for a while after years of nomadic living.

Regis Peeples is a philosopher and poet from Cleveland, Ohio who received his BA in English & Philosophy from Howard University. He is fascinated with the idea of the self and what it is to ‘be.’ His writing focuses on humans and unveiling their limitlessness as beings. He is a writer of all genres and aspires to create a work that is timeless and simultaneously destroys language and genre. He is currently applying for PhD programs in philosophy and working on finishing his Long Poem, Ouroborose, a poem that tells the tale of God wandering the universe until it decides to create life, erase their memories, and venture to earth, where the God interacts with various characters and locations throughout literary history such as Doctor Victor Frankenstein, The Wizard of OZ and even Plato’s Cave allegory. Aside from writing, Regis is also a dedicated hip-hop emcee who goes by the alias Phusis. His obsession with the metaphysical & music allows him to create works that bounce between phonetic games and playfully restructured language.

Krystle May Statler received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, Merced and will earn a Master of Arts degree in Graduate Writing from Otis College of Art and Design where she worked on her thesis entitled "A Life Around" Her work utilizes collage to explore tensions of responsibility in sexual trauma, family dysfunction, and religion. While at Otis, she was a member of the Otis Books | Seismicity Editions publishing team where she completed typesetting and book design of Alan Loney's Beginnings (2016) and Amelia Rosselli's Hospital Series, translated by Diana Thow (2017). Continuing her passion for life as a writer, athlete and humanitarian, she plans to establish her small-press, May Be Books, with its first edition to be published by the end of 2017 that celebrates experimental works in chapbook form.

Kevin Thomas was born in Portland, Oregon, and moved to Los Angeles ten years ago in order to make tons of money as a screenwriter. After being wildly unsuccessful in Hollywood, Kevin decided to channel his depression into prose. He has had short stories published in a few obscure magazines no one's heard of; recently completed his first novel, Parkrose, which one reader called “soul-crushingly depressing”; and was awarded The Board of Governor's First Book Fellowship at Otis College of Art and Design, where he will be completing a Master's in Writing this spring.

Justin Wilson is a southern California native and Naval Special Warfare veteran. He served 12 years, completing multiple combat deployments in support of the Global War on Terror. Afterleaving the Navy in 2010, Justin decided to pursue his passion for tattooing and the Arts. He received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2015, and is currently a second year MFA candidate at Otis.

DOREE SHAFRIR READS FROM HER NOVEL STARTUP WITH JADE CHANG

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:58:13 -0700

Startup (Little Brown and Company)

Doree Shafrir’s hilarious, smart debut Startup is set in the heart of New York City’s tech industry, where 36 is considered past your prime and a pole-dancing workshop is an acceptable Thursday evening activity with your co-workers. A veteran online journalist, Doree has written a hilarious and sharply observed novel about the difficulties of real-life connection in our hyper-connected world.

Startup assembles a cast of indelible characters: Mack, the it-boy visionary of the moment trying to take his app to the next level; Isabel, a social media hero working for him a bit too closely; Katya, an ambitious Russian emigre journalist desperate for a scoop; and Sabrina, an exhausted mother of two whose inattentive husband happens to be Katya's boss. When a scandal erupts in the lower Manhattan loft building where all four work, they quickly discover just how small a world the Big Apple's tech community can be.

A senior culture writer at BuzzFeed, Doree was inspired to write this novel by the follies and foibles of the startup world, and also in part by some of the scandals that plagued the tech industry in the last few years. Camille Perri, author of The Assistants, notes Startup “is chock-full of strong women transcending the workplace drama, sexual politics, and all-around dumb stuff the men in their life are doing. It’s a novel that just might spark the official feministing of startup culture.”

This debut, already praised by Rumaan Alam, Joanna Rakoff, and Nick Bilton, is a sharp, hugely entertaining story of youth, ambition, love, money and technology's inability to hack human nature.

Praise for Startup

“Is there a satirist alive more brilliant—and more insightful—than Doree Shafrir? That I tore through Startup in a single day—ignoring the cries of my children and the dinging of my phone, laughing with recognition at her characters’ foibles—is perhaps not nearly as significant as the fact that this ridiculously compelling novel has haunted me, every minute, in the weeks that followed. If you have ever lived in New York or worked in an office, you will love this novel. If you love the novels of Tom Perotta, you will love this novel. But also: If you are a sentient human, you will love this novel.”--Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

"Don't buy this book. Don't open. Don't start reading it. Because if you do, I can assure you, you won't be able to put it down. I was hooked from the first page and found myself lost in a beautifully-written fiction that so succinctly echoes today's bizarre reality."— Nick Bilton, Special Correspondent, Vanity Fair and author of Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

“This funny, empowering debut is chock-full of strong women transcending the workplace drama, sexual politics, and all-around dumb stuff the men in their life are doing. It’s a novel that just might spark the official feministing of startup culture. If I were a tech bro, I’d be shaking in my hoodie.”–Camille Perri, author of The Assistants

Doree Shafrir has also been on staff at Rolling Stone, the New York Observer, Gawker, and Philadelphia Weekly, and has contributed to publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Slate, The Awl, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, and Wired. She grew up outside of Boston, lived in New York for nine years, and now resides in Los Angeles with her husband Matt Mira, a comedy writer and podcaster.

Jade Chang has covered arts and culture as a journalist and editor. She is the recipient of a Sundance Fellowship for Arts Journalism, the AIGA/Winterhouse Award for Design Criticism, and the James D. Houston Memorial scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. The Wangs VS. The World is her first book.

ZACHARY MASON READS FROM HIS NEWEST BOOK VOID STAR

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:35:16 -0700

Void Star (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

A riveting, beautifully written, fugue-like novel of AIs, memory, violence, and mortality,

Not far in the future the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, but it’s still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn’t rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It’s a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging.

Kern has no such access; he’s one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city’s periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely—the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he’s fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.

A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop’s screen in her employer’s eyeglasses. None are safe as they’re pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Vivid, tumultuous, and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason’s mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut, The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

Praise for Void Star

"Void Star is an extraordinary novel. The hallucinatory beauty of the prose is matched only by the book's velocity and mystery, and the story—of mortality, memory, and what it means to be human—holds all the force and power of mythology."—Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

"Code becomes flesh in Zachary Mason's sentences. He shows us the near future of technological experience, where death becomes a 'stillness in memory,' and God is a pattern of numbers. This is the best and most beautiful book about computers since Neuromancer." —Michael Clune, author of Gamelife: A Memoir

Zachary Mason is a computer scientist and the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey. He lives in California.

BRIAN MCGREEVY READS FROM HIS NOVEL THE LIGHTS WITH GRACE PARRA

Mon, 14 Aug 2017 17:17:31 -0700

The Lights (Rare Bird Books)

A broken love letter to an ex-boyfriend, The Lights navigates the self-destruction and hopeful redemption of a writer who relocates to Austin, TX, for an MFA program. While there, she immerses herself into a new obsession: Jason, a younger MFA student with dreams of Hollywood screenwriting and the intended audience to the narrator’s twelve steps of AA.

Grappling with mental illness, alcoholism, and her own difficult behavior, her battle boils down to the question: can a person love another while hating herself?

The Lights is an endeavor in the psyche of a writer and a damaged woman. Against a backdrop of changing cities from New York to Austin to Los Angeles, the narrator must learn the only person she cannot outrun is herself.

Brian McGreevy grew up new Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and now lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of Hemlock Grove and the companion book Desire. He is a writer on the TV show The Son based on Philipp Meyer's novel of the same name, and the head writer and executive producer of the Netflix adaptation of Hemlock Grove.

Grace Parra is known for her work on The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (2015), Pretty Strong Opinions with Grace Parra (2014) and Planes (2013).

LINDSAY HUNTER READS FROM HER NOVEL EAT ONLY WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY WITH ROXANE GAY

Sun, 13 Aug 2017 18:11:40 -0700

Eat Only When You're Hungry (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)

A father searches for his addict son while grappling with his own choices as a parent (and as a user of sorts)

Praise for Eat Only When You're Hungry

"[A] commanding narrative . . . A savage tale of parenthood and squandered hope from an author whose unsparing eye never ceases to subvert the mundane." —Kirkus

Lindsay Hunter is the author of the story collections Don’t Kiss Me and Daddy’s and the novel Ugly Girls. Originally from Florida, she now lives in Chicago with her husband, sons, and dogs.

WRITERS AT WORK 20TH ANNIVERSARY READING

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 21:35:27 -0700

Writers At Work--20th Anniversary Reading, Celebrating National Poetry Month featuring Poets At Work and alumnae.

MEMBERS OF POETS AT WORK READ NEW AND PROVOCATIVE POEMS
Yvonne M. Estrada
Dylan Gailey
Brett Guitar Hofer
Ann Pibel
Helen Yeoman
Terry Wolverton

MEMBERS AND ALUMNAE CELEBRATE THE PUBLICATION OF THEIR POETRY COLLECTIONS
Kim Dower — Last Train to the Missing Planet
Eric Howard – Taliban Beach Party
Angela Peñaredondo — All Things Lose Thousands of Times
Sharon Venezio — The Silence of Doorways

Writers At Work: Inspiring, Encouraging and Empowering Writers since 1997 (writersatwork.com)

CECIL CASTELLUCCI AND JOSE PIMIENTA READ THEIR NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL SOUPY LEAVES HOME

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 21:11:44 -0700

Soupy Leaves Home (Dark Horse Books)

Two misfits with no place to call home take a train-hopping journey from the cold heartbreak of their Eastern homes to the sunny promise of California in this Depression-era coming-of- age tale.

When Pearl runs away from her abusive father, she has nowhere to go—until she stumbles upon a disguise that gives her the key to a new identity. Reborn as a boy named Soupy, she hitches her star to Ramshackle, a hobo who takes her under his wing.

Ramshackle’s kindness and protection go a long way toward helping Soupy heal from her difficult past. But he has his own demons to wrestle with, and he’ll need Soupy just as much as she needs him.

Praise for Soupy Leaves Home:

“Soupy Leaves Home tells the story of a time no longer familiar to us—a time of living the rails and simmering Mulligan Soup, a time of chosen names and secret languages—yet a tale that anyone with a longing heart and a restless spirit can relate to. It transports you magically to a place long gone, but its tale of poverty and survival are still as relevant as they ever were—the characters may be penniless, but they are so emotionally wealthy that this book leaves you filled with warmth, hope, and love.”—Gerard Way

“Castellucci’s heartfelt odyssey is a reckoning with death and identity on the tracks, brought to life by Pimienta’s patient, ever-evolving use of color. Soupy Leaves Home is for all restless souls hungry to start again.”—Nate Powell (March, Swallow Me Whole)

“A charming and optimistic slice of Americana.”—Hope Larson (Wrinkle in Time, Batgirl)

"I love Cecil Castellucci, she is crazy and cool and full of energy and heart, and so is all of her work. And Soupy Leaves Home may be one of her finest and most effecting works yet!”—Jeff Lemire

“Soupy's journey comes alive through richly color-saturated, usually monochromatic panels that orient readers to a bygone era. Castellucci has created a strong heroine who both defies conventionality and embodies empowerment; as her transformative journey nears its denouement, she makes a resolute decision: 'I have to go and face my things or else I'll never be free' a message still highly relevant to today's world. A compelling graphic offering that explores relevant gender roles and self-identity through a historical lens.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A well-researched and richly illustrated runaway tale that will appeal to fans of escapist fiction and thoughtful readers.”—Anna Murphy, Berkeley Carroll School, Brooklyn (School Library Journal Reviews)

Cecil Castellucci is the author of books and graphic novels for young adults including Boy Proof, The Plain Janes, First Day on Earth, The Year of the Beasts, Tin Star, Stone in the Sky, and the Eisner-nominated Odd Duck. In 2015 she coauthored Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure, and in 2016 she worked on Shade, the Changing Girl, an ongoing comic for Gerard Way’s Young Animal imprint at DC Comics. Her picture book Grandma’s Gloves won the California Book Awards Gold Medal. Her short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, YARN, Tor.com, and various anthologies, including Teeth, After, and Interfictions 2. She is the children’s correspondence coordinator for The Rumpus, a two-time MacDowell Fellow, and the founding YA editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles.

Jose Pimienta grew up in Mexicali, Mexico, watching a lot of cartoons and listening to as much music as possible. After finishing high school, he studied visual storytelling in Georgia, where he made friends and drank a lot of coffee. Eventually, he headed back to Southern California, where he currently resides. He draws on a regular basis and still listens to as much music as he can. He also enjoys recreational walks and whistling. Sometimes he goes by “Joe.”

KRISTEN RADTKE DISCUSSES HER NEW GRAPHIC MEMOIR IMAGINE WANTING ONLY THIS WITH JORDAN CRANE AND LIBBY FLORES

Sun, 06 Aug 2017 20:36:38 -0700

Imagine Wanting Only This (Pantheon Books)

When Kristen Radtke was in college, the sudden death of a beloved uncle and, not long after his funeral, the sight of an abandoned mining town marked the beginning moments of a lifelong fascination with ruins and with people and places left behind. Over time, this fascination deepened until it triggered a journey around the world in search of ruined places. Now, in this genre-smashing graphic memoir, she leads us through deserted towns in the American Midwest, Italian villas, islands in the Philippines, New York City, and the delicate passageways of the human heart.

At once narrative and factual, historical and personal, Radtke's stunning illustrations and piercing text never shy away from the big questions: Why are we here, and what will we leave behind?

Praise for Imagine Wanting Only This:

“Cities, ambitions, romances, and bodies come to ruin before our eyes, as Kristen Radtke invites us, in her beautifully understated way, to be disturbed, fascinated, and yes, even attracted to that ruin. A remarkable bildungsroman!” —Eula Biss, author of On Immunity

“Kristen Radtke leads us through a bleak and beautifully crafted story of heart and heartbreak—creation, connection, decay, and loss. Imagine Wanting Only This is challenging and inspiring.” —Ellen Forney, New York Times bestselling author of Marbles

“Kristen Radtke’s Imagine Wanting Only This doesn’t tell a single story but a chorus of histories, personal and familial and historical, and invents its own marvelous language for their telling—a language forged from interior thought and visual imagination, bringing together words and illustration in continually surprising and moving ways. The voice in these pages is eloquent in so many ways at once, like a shape that exists in three dimensions rather than two, and it’s utterly singular: visually alive, attentive to details, self-questioning and tender as it surveys variously haunted terrains of heart and landscape. Radtke’s world is so immersive, and so sensitively conjured, that once I entered the sketched chamber of her pages, I didn’t want to leave again—or even pause for breath—until I reached the end.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

"Riveting and glorious. A book of sorrow filtered through intellect. In Kristen Radtke's hands, nonfiction becomes poetry. A tremendous achievement.” —Tom Hart, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Rosalie Lightning

Kristen Radtke is a writer and illustrator based in Brooklyn. She is the managing editor of Sarabande Books and the film and video editor of TriQuarterly magazine. She holds an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program.

Jordan Crane is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his graphic novella The Last Lonely Saturday (2000), his graphic novel The Clouds Above(2005) and his ongoing solo anthology comic book series Uptight (2006-present). His comics have received two Ignatz awards, a Xeric grant, an AIGA book design award, and have been included in the The Best American Comics 2012. As editor and publisher, Crane produced the influential comics anthology NON (1997-2000), and the anthology website What Things Do (2010-2016). His illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s and elsewhere. His large format screen printed editions hang in private collections across the world. Crane lives in Los Angeles, where he currently nearing completion of the graphic novel Keeping Two, to be published in 2018.

Libby Flores is a 2008 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow. Her short fiction has appeared in Post Road Magazine, The Open Bar at Tin House, The Rattling Wall, Paper Darts, Bridge Eight, FLASH: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. She lives in Los Angeles, but will always be a Texan. Libby is the Director of Literary Programs at PEN Center USA. She can be found at libbyflores.com.

SELFISH LAUNCHES ISSUE FIVE: VOID OF COURSE

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:24:13 -0700

Selfish Issue Five: Void of Course

True to its name, “void of course” leaves the familiar for the uncertain, the inconclusive, the esoteric. featuring the work of twenty three contributors, our fifth issue explores the shadow realm, the twelfth house, and the rays of light in between.

Join us for a panel discussing the importance of feminist art, followed by a good ol’ fashioned party celebrating two years of life and the magazine’s newest issue: Void of Course.

ALESHEA HARRIS AND ALEXANDER BORINSKY READ FROM AND DISCUSS THEIR NEW PLAYS IS GOD IS AND BRIEF CHRONICLE: BOOKS 6-8

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 17:18:06 -0700

Is God Is, Brief Chronicle (Books 6-8) (3 Hole Press)

3 Hole Press is a small press bringing new audiences to new plays in printed formats. To celebrate the publications of its two newest books, 3 Hole Press presents short readings from each play, followed by a conversation with the authors.

Winner of the 2016 Relentless Award from the American Playwriting Foundation, Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is is a classic revenge tale about two sisters that blends tragedy, typography, the Spaghetti Western, hip-hop and Afropunk. In this necessary new work, emotions are laid bare through gaps in language and characters are a window into the canon as well as our own broken times.

In Brief Chronicle (Books 6–8), Alexander Borinsky delivers a quietly heartbreaking new play that grounds epic themes—unabated longing, violence and imperialism, and the bond between mother and son—in the small ways we hurt and love one another and decide where to go on vacation.

Praise for IS GOD IS

A rigorous new work that unearths our deepest fears about humanity and who we think we are in relation to ourselves and the divine.—Dawn Lundy Martin

Family, as the old tragedians knew, is our first country. Therefore, it’s the earth from which we forge our first weapons, the fields of our first wars, the very turf over which we fight. With Is God Is, Aleshea Harris audaciously scours tragedy down with the rough edge of a rock. To read this merciless play is to get blood in your eye — and in Harris’ sure grip, you’ll recall that blood washes and stains, can run hot or cold, means both violence and family. —Douglas Kearney

Praise for BRIEF CHRONICLE, BOOKS 6-8

Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8 is a remarkable creature of our shattered and shuttered time. Borinsky’s theater examines everything that it encounters—including the various artifices of theater itself, i.e. character, costumes, boxes, supposed emotions (real or imagined), action as it would have its way, place/s, and all the supposed ends and means of the theater making apparatus—with a scrupulous but loving attentiveness. There is no one quite like him writing and making theater today.—Mac Wellman

In this big, small play, people learn who they are as they say things, punctuation makes gaps where lonely spirits and dances live, and stuff gets sticky between tender, selfish hearts. This is a battle cry for doing the daily work of becoming better in America.—Jennie Liu

If the world feels a little unknowable after reading this play, if you feel unknowable to yourself, how do you talk about that, how do you narrate what it was like? Still, I will tell you what I thought about when I finished Alexander Borinsky’s Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8, though it changed when I read it again, and it may be different for you too. Intimacy. The many ways (sometimes strange or uncomfortable) in which it’s possible to know another person. What it means to appear. What it means to live.—Amina Cain

Alexander Borinsky is a playwright, born in Baltimore in 1986.

Aleshea Harris is a playwright, poet and educator who received an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. Her work has been presented at the Costume Shop at American Conservatory Theater, Playfest at Orlando Shakespeare Theater, freeFall Theatre Company, VOXfest at Dartmouth, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, La Comédie de Saint-Étienne- National Drama Center in France, the Skirball Center, The Theatre @ Boston Court, REDCAT and in the 2015 anthology, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop. Harris is a MacDowell Fellow and winner of the 2016 Relentless Award from the American Playwriting Foundation for Is God Is.

CALARTS MFA STUDENTS READ FROM THEIR WORK

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 16:09:38 -0700

Join us for NEXTWORDS, the annual reading series organized, curated by and featuring graduating MFA students of CalArts' Creative Writing Program.

Erik Alessandro Mondrian is a writer, artist, and scholar who makes work about place, belonging, love, longing, and madness. He holds an MA in Mass Communication & Media Studies from San Diego State University, focusing on virtual worlds as new media, and will be graduating this year from CalArts with an Interschool MFA in VoiceArts & Creative Writing and supplemental concentration in Integrated Media. He lives wherever the dreams take him.

Leann Lo Young Adult/ New Adult Fiction Writer. From Fresno, CA. Raised by her mom and grandma. B.A. in English, Communication, and Classics from Fresno Pacific University. #Ravenclaw

Jesse Garrett VanDenKooy is a composer, graphic designer, computer technician and author of Fae: The Book of Faolan, The World is Among Us, The Midnight Orchestra, Fae: The Book of Keane, and Trout are Selfish: Short Fictions and Transitions.

Chelsea Dright is a writer, aesthetician, and tricoteuse hailing from Los Angeles. She writes fiction. Her hobbies include resurrecting long-dead literary genres, watching HBO, and discussing the consequences of fictional political systems. She's watched The Empire Strikes Back 847 times and has 16 opinions on it, so don't try her. Her favorite Disney movie is Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

ANNABELLE GURWITCH LAUNCHES HER NEW COLLECTION OF ESSAYS WHEREVER YOU GO, THERE THEY ARE, WITH JONATHAN GOLD

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:59:53 -0700

Wherever You Go, There They Are (Blue Rider Press)

There’s an old adage: You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. But is that true in the world we live in now? New York Times bestselling author Annabelle Gurwitch, asks this question in her latest collection of essays, Wherever You Go, There They Are, where she writes about her own family of bootleggers, gamblers, and philanderers, as well as the sisterhoods, temporary tribes, communities, and cults who have become surrogates along the way.

“When I stepped into the role of care giving for my aging parents, it was the last thing I ever expected,” explains Gurwitch. “These stories are about the family I tried to run away from and the ones I’ve joined accidentally and on purpose. Writing about family gave me a chance to look at: Who is our tribe? Is it our blood relations? Our friends? Our pets? The people we work with or pray with? What I’ve learned is that no matter how hard you try to get away from your crazy family, you end up in another family just as crazy as the one you tried to leave.”

Gurwitch explores family mythology, her immigrant southern Jewish clan and an inheritance on an ill-fated sliver of sand disappearing due to climate change known as Massacre Island; theater folk, secular humanists, Furries, a UFO cult, how corporations use sisterhood as a recruiting tool, the ladies who brunch at Tel Aviv Gardens Retirement Home in Miami, Florida, and finds common ground with her Syrian Uber driver’s kin.

A timely paean to tribes over tribalism, Wherever You Go, There They Are is inspired by historian Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, Sebastian Junger’s Tribe, Star Trek and her secret desire to be the long lost daughter of Joni Mitchell.

Annabelle Gurwitch delivers a provocative treatise on the importance and insanity of family. This is a must-read for anyone who's ever been even occasionally frustrated by the people they share carbohydrate-laden meals with every year.

Praise for Wherever You Go, There They Are

Annabelle Gurwitch claims to be related to her nutty family, but I suspect she’s really the secret love child of Nora Ephron and Groucho Marx. She’s an old-fashioned wit for the post-modern age, a curmudgeon with a deep well of empathy and a genuinely good soul. I’m so glad she’s back with another book."— Meghan Daum, New York Times Bestselling author of The Unspeakable

“Annabelle Gurwitch tackles every life passage, with a courageous wit that makes even the darkest moments more bearable. Wherever You Go, There They Are hilariously explores the frustrations, catastrophes, and unforgettable thrills of navigating life with that gaggle of lunatics known as family.”— Heather Havrilesky, Ask Polly advice columnist and author of How to Be a Person in the World

Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and author of The New York Times bestseller and Thurber Prize finalist I See You Made an Effort. Gurwitch gained a loyal following during her years co-hosting Dinner & a Movie on TBS. Her essays and satire have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, and The Los Angeles Times as well as numerous years as a commentator on NPR. Gurwitch hosted programs on HBO, and The Planet Green Network, acting credits include Seinfeld, Boston Legal, Dexter, Daddy Day Care and Melvin Goes to Dinner. She is a prominent figure in the atheist and Jewish communities. Gurwitch’s live appearances include The New York Comedy Festival, The Moth, 92nd St Y and arts centers around the country.

Jonathan Gold is a Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic who currently writes for the Los Angeles Times and has previously written for LA Weekly and Gourmet. He is also a regular on KCRW's Good Food radio program.

SCOT SOTHERN READS FROM HIS NOVEL BIGCITY

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:42:25 -0700

BigCity (Stalking Horse Press)

Scot Sothern’s profane western satire, BigCity, is a novel with an unforgettable cast, including the wild and lethal Bitch Bantam, pulp writer Slab Pettibone, and his sidekick FuzzyWuzzy the bear, in a tale as moving as it is scandalous. In postbellum America, BigCity nutures the birth of feminism, robber barons, media stardom, and motion pictures. Tall-Tale characters are realized with humor and pathos, sex and violence and nail-biting action. Teeming masses have come this dark megalopolis for a new life and a throw of the dice.

Bitch Bantam is a giant of a woman and a living legend. As a tot, she was pitted in back-alley gaming joints, against fighting rats, curs, cocks and hogs. She was victorious in bloody battle yet illiterate and chained to servitude by white slavers. Now, freed of the bonds of slavery, she harbors a quixotic obsession of becoming a refined, civilized, woman like those she sees twirling parasols through the glittering boulevards of BigCity. When Bitch falls in love with the famous hammer-of- justice wielding feminist, Helen Beck, she fears her violent primal instincts will drive her love away.

Pulp writer, performer, and rootin-tootin cowboy, Slab Pettibone, has no legs. He travels about, hither and yon, saddled to the back-side of his trusty, four-hundred seventy-six-pound, pet bear FuzzyWuzzy. When great love and loss come together Slab is forced to accept his legendary status as all too human. He strives to be the action-packed hero he created on the written page, while FuzzyWuzzy just wants to eat and shit in the woods.

Dooley Paradise, a well-meaning lad with a political bent, orchestrates the daily existence of a self-sufficient orphanage, TumbleHouse. The tatterdemalion tikes are tutored in reading, writing, thievery and solicitation. When TumbleHouse is besieged by a gaggle of crusading dowagers led by famous feminist, Helen Beck, young Dooley becomes a pawn in a no-win scheme of city-wide corruption.

Daddy Smithy is a showbiz whiz. He has put together a vaudeville extravaganza with Slab Pettibone, FuzzyWuzzy, and Bitch Bantam topping the bill. Now Daddy needs financing to tackle the new medium of moving-pictures. When he barters his six-year- old daughter to twisted tobacco tycoon Warner Quackenbush, he sets in motion a chain of violence and revenge.

BigCity is a fantastical adventure and love story examining the dynamics of change and the politics of natural selection.

Praise for Scot Sothern:

“Deliciously strange and compelling, delightfully lurid and fun, Scot Sothern’s debut novel reads like a feral mashup of Cormac McCarthy and William Gibson amped on cornjuice and spiderbite.” – Mark Haskell Smith

“Sothern is not a mere voyeur, he wades deeply into zones most never will and renders his subjects with dignity and compassion. Lowlife is a moving and compelling piece of work.”--Henry Rollins

“This is raw life without filter, unsentimental, unsparing, brutally beautiful.” - Tara Ison, author of BALL

Writer/photographer Scot Sothern, best known for his up-close stories and photographs of street prostitutes in Los Angeles, spent forty years making photographs and drifting from job to job. His first exhibit,Lowlife, opened at the notorious Drkrm Gallery in Los Angeles in 2010 and his first book, Lowlife, was published in the U.K. by Stanley Barker in 2011. Scot’s work has since appeared in numerous online and glossy magazines along with gallery shows in LA, NYC, Miami, and London. The British Journal of Photography called Lowlife, “The year’s most controversial photobook.” In 2013 Scot took a two-year gig writing a biweekly column, Nocturnal Submissions, at VICE Magazine. In 2013, Curb Service: A Memoir, was published by Soft Skull Press. In 2016, Streetwalkers, stories and photographs, was published by powerHouse Books. BigCity is his first novel.

CATRIONA WARD DISCUSSES HER NOVEL THE GIRL FROM RAWBLOOD WITH MIKE MIGNOLA AND DEVIN GRIFFITHS

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:18:57 -0700

The Girl from Rawblood (Sourcebooks Landmark)

For generations the Villarcas have died mysteriously, and young. Now Iris and her father will finally understand why...

At the turn of England's century, as the wind whistles in the lonely halls of Rawblood, young Iris Villarca is the last of her family's line. They are haunted, through the generations, by "her," a curse passed down through ancient blood that marks each Villarca for certain heartbreak, and death.

Iris forsakes her promise to her father, to remain alone, safe from the world. She dares to fall in love, and the consequences of her choice are immediate and terrifying. As the world falls apart around her, she must take a final journey back to Rawblood where it all began and where it must all end...

From the sun dappled hills of Italy to the biting chill of Victorian dissection halls, The Girl from Rawblood is a lyrical and haunting historical novel of darkness, love, and the ghosts of the past.

Praise for The Girl From Rawblood

“Wade perfectly balances sensory richness with the chills of the uncanny.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“[an] atmospheric debut.” — Booklist

“Brilliant – The Girl From Rawblood is the old-school gothic novel I have been waiting for. While it delivers everything I want from a ‘haunted house/family curse’ story, it is still stunningly original. I have never read anything like it and that’s saying something.” — Mike Mignola, creator of the Hellboy comic book series

“Ward’s layered and skillfully crafted novel weaves elements of classic gothic and horror into a remarkable story populated by unforgettable characters, palpable atmosphere, and rich lyricism. Imagine the darkest and goriest undertones of Edgar Allan Poe, the Brontës, Charles Dickens, and Shirley Jackson, and you’ll have an idea of what Ward offers here.” — Library Journal, Starred Review

“Elegiac in its prose and haunting in its imagery, The Girl from Rawblood is a precisely and beautifully woven tapestry through which threads of darkness wind their inevitable way. Ward has crafted a sweeping saga of madness in all its forms that will chill you to the bones and draw you into its murky depths.” — Charlie Lovett, New York Times bestselling author of The Bookman’s Tale and First Impressions

“A story to satisfy the most gothic of hearts. I was hooked on the very first page and The Girl from Rawblood never let me go. Sentence by sentence, Catriona Ward made herself one of my very favorite writers.” — Kelly Link, 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Get in Trouble

Catriona Ward was born in Washington DC and grew up in the US, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen and Morocco. She studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford followed by the UEA Masters in Creative Writing. After living in New York for 4 years where she trained as an actor, she now works for a human rights foundation and lives in London.

Mike Mignola is best known as the multiple award-winning creator, writer, and artist of B.P.R.D. and Hellboy, but has fostered several other projects like The Amazing Screw-On Head and Baltimore with Christopher Golden. Although he began working as a professional cartoonist in the early 1980s, drawing 'a little bit of everything for just about everybody' - including characters like Batman and Wolverine - he was also a production designer on the Disney film Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Mignola also acted as a visual consultant to Guillermo del Toro on Blade 2 and the film versions of Hellboy, which were broadly adapted by del Toro from the original comic series. Mike Mignola currently lives in southern California with his wife, daughter, and cat.

Devin Griffiths, a former biologist who studied artificial evolution, is an assistant professor of English at the University of Southern California. His work has been featured in ELH, Studies in English Literature, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Literature Compass, and Book History. He is the author of The Age of Analogy: Science and Literature Between the Darwin’s and The Radical Catalogue.

JONATHAN LETHEM DISCUSSES HIS BOOK MORE ALIVE AND LESS LONELY, WITH JARETT KOBEK

Thu, 03 Aug 2017 15:16:01 -0700

More Alive and Less Lonely: On Books and Writers (Melville House Publishing)

A collection of bestselling, NBCC prize-winning author Jonathan Lethem’s finest writing on the subject of writers and writing.

A readerly wake-up call from one of America’s finest and most acclaimed working writers. Picking up where his NBCC Award finalist collection The Ecstasy of Influence left off, More Alive and Less Lonely collects more than a decade of Lethem’s finest writing on writing, with new and previously unpublished material, including: impassioned appeals for forgotten writers and overlooked books, razor-sharp essays, and personal accounts of his most extraordinary literary encounters and discoveries.

Only Lethem, with his love of cult favorites and the canon alike, can write with equal insight about the stories of modern masters like Lorrie Moore and Salman Rushdie, graphic novelist Chester Brown, science fiction outlier Philip K. Dick, and classic icons like Moby-Dick.

Edited by novelist Christopher Boucher (Golden Delicious), More Alive and Less Lonely deserves a place on every serious reader’s bookshelf. Lethem’s joyful approach to literature will inspire you to dive back into your favorite books and then point you towards what to read next.

Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn; three short story collections; and two essay collections, including The Ecstasy of Influence, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among other publications.

Editor Christopher Boucher is a professor of English at Boston College, editor of Post Road magazine, and author of the novels How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive and Golden Delicious, both from Melville House.

Jarett Kobek is a Turkish-American writer living in California. His novella ATTA was called “highly interesting,” by the Times Literary Supplement, has appeared in Spanish translation, been the subject of much academic writing, and was a recent and unexplained bestseller in parts of Canada. Presently, he's working on a book about the Ol' Dirty Bastard's first album for Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 series. He is the author of the novel I Hate the Internet.

SIEL JU READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL CAKE TIME WITH GUESTS

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 21:37:55 -0700

Cake Time (Red Hen Press)

Daring yet aimless, smart but slightly strange, Cake Time’s young female protagonist keeps making slippery choices, sliding into the dangerous space where curiosity melds with fear and desires turn into dirty messes. In “How Not to Have an Abortion,” the teenaged narrator looks for a ride from the clinic between her AP exams. In “Easy Target,” the now-college-grad agrees to go to a swingers party with a handsome stranger. A decade later, in “Glow,” she is suddenly confronted by the disturbing and thrilling fact of her lover’s secret daughter. Ultimately, this unflinching novel-in-stories grapples with urgent, timeless questions: why intelligent girls make terrible choices, where to negotiate a private self in an increasingly public world, and how to love madly without losing a sense of self.

Joining us will be Jim Ruland, Victoria Patterson, and Janice Lee.

Victoria Patterson is the author of the novel The Little Brother, which Vanity Fair called “a brutal, deeply empathetic, and emotionally wrenching examination of American male privilege and rape culture.” She is also the author of the novels The Peerless Four and This Vacant Paradise, a 2011 New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her story collection, Drift, was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Story Prize and was selected as one of the best books of 2009 by The San Francisco Chronicle. She lives in South Pasadena, California with her family and teaches at Antioch University.

Jim Ruland is the co-author of My Damage with Keith Morris, founding member of Black Flag, Circle Jerks and OFF! (Da Capo 2016) and Giving the Fingerwith Scott Campbell Jr. of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch (Lyons Press 2014). He is also the author of the award-winning novel Forest of Fortune(Tyrus Books 2014) and the short story collection Big Lonesome (Gorsky Press 2005). Jim’s work has appeared in many publications, including The Believer, Esquire, Granta, Hobart, McSweeney’s, Mississippi Review, and Oxford American, and has received awards from Reader’s Digest and the National Endowment for the Arts. He runs the Southern California-based reading series Vermin on the Mount, now in its thirteenth year.

Janice Lee is the author of KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation(Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), and The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016). She is Editor of the #RECURRENT Series for Civil Coping Mechanisms, Founder and Executive Editor of Entropy, Assistant Editor at Fanzine, Contributor at HTMLGIANT, Co-Editor (w/ Maggie Nelson) of SUBLEVEL, the new online literary magazine based in the CalArts MFA Writing Program and CEO/Founder of POTG Design. She can be found online at http://janicel.com.

Praise for Cake Time

“Cake Time is a delicious indulgence. Treat yourself to its dark, seductive intimacies and savor the gritty sugar of its unsentimental humor.”—Jillian Lauren, New York Times bestselling author of Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, and Everything You Ever Wanted

“Siel Ju writes with refreshing candor about sexual appetite and the treacherous difficulty of finding love. There is cruelty in the search and tenderness and a lot of honest fumbling around. Cake Time is our time—a provocative debut.”—Noy Holland, author of BIRD

“Siel Ju’s Cake Time is an astonishing debut. Ju’s novel-in-stories is unsettling and fierce and full of loneliness, sadness, and humor. Her voice is so alive, and her candor—particularly about men and sex—is keenly astute, intimate, and startling. The prose is precise and poetic, and Los Angeles vibrates on the page. Wry and heartfelt and uniquely defiant, Cake Time is like a hard slap I didn’t expect or see coming.”—Victoria Patterson, author of The Little Brother and Drift

“Siel Ju’s stories are not boring because they are about not-boring things, like swingers’ parties and organic fashion company beauty pageants and high school sex and breakups and hook ups. Lots and lots of breakups and hook ups. I worried for Siel Ju reading about all these breakups and hook ups. Then I reminded myself these are fictions Siel Ju is telling us, and Siel Ju is fine. We are all fine, even after all these breakups and hook ups.”—Elizabeth Ellen, author of Fast Machine and Bridget Fonda

Siel Ju's novel-in-stories, Cake Time, is the winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award and will be published in April 2017. Siel is also the author of two poetry chapbooks. Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Missouri Review (Poem of the Week), The Los Angeles Review, Denver Quarterly, and other places. She gives away a book a month at sielju.com.

JENNY NORDBAK DISCUSSES HER BOOK THE SCARLETT LETTERS

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 21:22:59 -0700

The Scarlett Letters: My Secret Year of Men in an L.A. Dungeon (St. Martins Press)

Jenny Nordbak takes us to a place that few have seen, but millions have fantasized about, revealing how she transformed herself from a USC grad lacking in confidence into an elite professional dominatrix who finds her own voice, power and compassion for others.

On an unorthodox quest to understand her hidden fantasies, Jenny led a double life for two years. By day she was a construction manager, but at night she became Mistress Scarlett. Working at LA s longest-running dungeon, she catered to the secret fetishes of clients ranging from accountants to movie stars. She simultaneously developed a career in the complex and male-dominated world of healthcare construction, while spending her nights as a sex worker, dominating men. Far from the standard-issue powerful men who pay to be helpless, Mistress Scarlett s clientele included men whose fantasies revealed more complex needs, from Tickle Ed to Doggie Dan, from the Treasure Trolls to Ta-Da Ted. The Scarlett Letters explores the spectacularly diverse array of human sexuality and the fascinating cast of characters that the author encountered along the way.

While The Scarlett Letters is a window into this largely unknown world, it also showcases Jenny’s unorthodox quest to better understand herself. Transforming into Mistress Scarlett started with the goal of better understanding her own hidden fantasies, and while achieving that goal it also lead to transformations she hadn’t expected. Mistress Scarlett helped empower Jenny and instill confidence in herself outside the dungeon.

The Scarlett Letters shows us how to find your voice as a woman today, and sheds light on the emotional and physical relationships between men and women.

Jenny Nordbak earned a B.A in Interdisciplinary Archaeology from the University of Southern California. After graduating, she worked in healthcare construction. Jenny's alter ego, Scarlett, is a dominatrix. Jenny spent two years leading a double life, secretly working as a professional dominant at a dungeon in Los Angeles. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

RON REGE JR AND MAJA D'AOUST DISCUSS CARTOON UTOPIA AND WHAT PARSIFAL SAW

Mon, 31 Jul 2017 20:58:46 -0700

Cartoon Utopia and What Parsifal Saw (Fantagraphics Books)

Join surreal cartoonist Ron Rege Jr. (The Cartoon Utopia) and author Maja D'Aoust (The Secret Source) as they discuss alchemy, spirituality, and the blending of magic and science for modern audiences. They will read from The Cartoon Utopia as well as his new graphic novel, What Parsifal Saw, both of which include texts written by D'Aoust and illustrated by Rege. Bring a little magic into your life with this book release event.

Ron Regé, Jr began self publishing & distributing his own comics in Cambridge, MA during the early 1990’s. His first Graphic Novel Skibber Bee~Bye was published by Highwater Books in 2000. Since then he has published books with Drawn & Quarterly, McSweeney’s, Buenaventura Press, and Fantagraphics Books. The Cartoon Utopia, originally released in 2012 is out now in paperback along with his newest collection What Parsifal Saw. He lives in Los Angeles.

ELIZA WHEELER READS FROM HER BOOK JOHN RONALD'S DRAGONS

Sun, 30 Jul 2017 21:26:18 -0700

John Ronald's Dragons: The Story of J.R. R. Tolkien (MacMillan Children's Publishing Group)

A captivating picture book biography of a boy who imagined a world full of dragons and grew up to be beloved author J. R. R. Tolkien.

John Ronald loved dragons. He liked to imagine dragons when he was alone, and with his friends, and especially when life got hard or sad. After his mother died and he had to live with a cold-hearted aunt, he looked for dragons. He searched for them at his boarding school. And when he fought in a Great War, he felt as if terrible, destructive dragons were everywhere. But he never actually found one, until one day, when he was a grown man but still very much a boy at heart, when he decided to create one of his own. John Ronald's Dragons introduces the beloved creator of Middle Earth and author of The Hobbit to a new generation of children who see magic in the world around them.

Praise for John Ronald's Dragons

“[B]eautifully illustrated introduction to Tolkien’s life for younger readers.” —School Library Journal

“The dragons of imagination are always there, but sometimes it takes time for them to breathe fire—that’s what McAlister suggests in this thoughtful look at the creative development of John Ronald, aka J.R.R. Tolkien...It’s an ideal lead-in to family readings of The Hobbit.” - Publishers Weekly

Caroline McAlister teaches English at Guildford College and every year takes students to Oxford, England, to study fantasy in the setting where Tolkien lived and wrote. She lives in Greensboro, North Carolina. Eliza Wheeler wrote and illustrated New York Times bestseller Miss Maple's Seeds and enjoys eating Hobbit food and reading Tolkien aloud with her friends. She divides her time between the coast of California and the riverbanks of Wisconsin.

BETH PRATT-BERGSTROM DISCUSSES HER BOOK WHEN MOUNTAIN LIONS ARE NEIGHBORS

Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:57:10 -0700

When Mountain Lions are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out In California (Heydey Books)

Did you know that a mountain lion, known as P-22, lives in the middle of Los Angeles, that on the Facebook campus in Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg and his staff have provided a home for an endearing family of wild gray foxes, or that wolves have returned to California after a ninety-year absence, led by the remarkable journey of the wolf OR-7?

A movement of diverse individuals and communities is taking action to recast wildlife as an integral part of our everyday lives.

When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors explores this evolving dynamic between humans and animals, including remarkable stories like rice farmers sharing their fields with Sandhill Cranes, how California's endangered desert tortoises are getting some much needed protection from a formidable ally: the United States Marines Corps, and how park staff and millions of visitors rallied to keep Yosemite’s famed bears wild, and many more tales from across the state that celebrate a new paradigm for wildlife conservation: coexistence.

Beth Pratt-Bergstrom, wildlife advocate, author and California Director for the National Wildlife Federation, will share tales of wild wonder from her new book, accompanied by LA’s celebrity mountain lion, P-22 (his likeness).

Praise for When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors

“A contemporary and exciting look at wildlife that we all can celebrate.”--Ed Begley Jr.

“This delightful book details our ever-evolving relationship with Earth’s wildest creatures, promising that peaceful coexistence is possible.” Jennifer Holland, author of the best-selling Unlikely Friendships series

"It’s one thing to say we should figure out how to live with other critters and another thing to do it. Beth Pratt-Bergstrom’s new book, When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors, provides a pretty happy litany of species we do still have around, and positive stories about how folks are getting along with them."--Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of Citizen Science, in the Huffington Post

"One comes away from the book with a feeling of domesticity, mostly content that California seems to be one big happy multispecies family, but with underlying concerns, of course, as in any modern family."--Jon Christensen, LA Observed

“At a time when books about conservation often and understandably focus on challenges and failures, Beth Pratt-Bergstrom’s When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors, co-published by Heyday and National Wildlife Federation, beautifully captures a series of successes, all in California. By focusing on individual case studies, and often individual animals, the book turns these examples into effective narrative stories.” Jeff Fleischer, Foreword Reviews

A lifelong advocate for wildlife, Beth Pratt-Bergstrom has worked in in two of the country’s largest national parks: Yosemite and Yellowstone. As the California Director for the National Wildlife Federation, she says, “I have the best job in the world—advocating for the state’s remarkable wildlife.”

She leads the #SaveLACougars campaign to build the largest wildlife crossing in North America—and potentially the world—to help save a population of mountain lions from extinction, and her conservation work has been featured by The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC World Service, CBS This Morning, the Los Angeles Times, and NPR. Her new book, When Mountain Lions are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out In California, was published by Heyday Books in 2016. Beth spends much of her time in LA, but makes her home outside of Yosemite, “my north star,” with her husband, five dogs, two cats, and the mountain lions, bears, foxes, and other wildlife that frequent her backyard.

PEN CENTER USA PRESENTS THE 2018 EMERGING VOICES MEET AND GREET

Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:46:34 -0700

Featuring: Patrick O’Neil, Jian Huang, Mike Padilla, Peter H.Z. Hsu, Kirin Khan and Soleil David

JEFF SOLOMON DISCUSSES HIS BOOK SO FAMOUS AND SO GAY

Sun, 30 Jul 2017 19:05:25 -0700

So Famous and So Gay: The Fabulous Potency of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein (University of Minnesota Press)

How and why, in a time of homophobia and closeted sexuality, did two openly gay writers become mass-market celebrities?

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) and Truman Capote (1924–1984) should not have been famous. They made their names between the Oscar Wilde trial and Stonewall, when homosexuality meant criminality and perversion. And yet both Stein and Capote, openly and exclusively gay, built their outsize reputations on works that directly featured homosexuality and a queer aesthetic. How did these writers become mass-market celebrities while other gay public figures were closeted or censored? And what did their fame mean for queer writers and readers, and for the culture in general? Jeff Solomon explores these questions in So Famous and So Gay.

Celebrating lesbian partnership, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was published in 1933 and rocketed Stein, the Jewish lesbian intellectual avant-garde American expatriate, to international stardom and a mass-market readership. Fifteen years later, when Capote published Other Voices, Other Rooms, a novel of explicit homosexual sex and love, his fame itself became famous. Through original archival research, Solomon traces the construction and impact of the writers’ public personae from a gay-affirmative perspective. He historically situates author photos, celebrity gossip, and other ephemera to explain how Stein and Capote expressed homosexuality and negotiated homophobia through the fleeting depiction of what could not be directly written—maneuvers that other gay writers such as Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams, and James Baldwin could not manage at the time. Finally So Famous and So Gay reveals what Capote’s and Stein’s debuts, Other Voices, Other Rooms and Three Lives, held for queer readers in terms of gay identity and psychology—and for gay authors who wrote in their wake.

Praise for So Famous and So Gay

"In So Famous and So Gay, Jeff Solomon amasses a treasure trove archive—literature, reviews, biographies, photographs, interviews—from which he examines the gayness, strangeness, and celebrity that combusted to create the queer precocity of Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein. At once critically expansive and insightful, this book is also a good story. Like Stein and Capote, Solomon is an engaging stylist in his own right. Read to learn, read to enjoy (imagine that!)." —Ken Corbett, author of A Murder Over a Girl

"Every bit as ‘fabulous’ as the subtitle promises, So Famous and So Gay focuses on two writers—Truman Capote and Gertrude Stein—whose strategies for politicizing questions of sexual identity included the manufacture of public personae as queerly flamboyant ‘geniuses’ and the exploitation of their author photos. Brilliantly exposing of the commodification of authorial identity, Solomon also offers a welcome corrective to strands of queer theory that neglect the specificities of same-sex desire."—Joseph Allen Boone, University of Southern California

"Jeff Solomon’s So Famous and So Gay effectively reinvigorates the single author genre by stretching its scope and preconceived boundaries. Solomon’s magisterial command of twentieth century American literary culture and his provocative use of author photos make this particular two-author study an engaging work of scholarship." —James Penner, author of Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture

Jeff Solomon is assistant professor of English and women, gender, and sexuality studies at Wake Forest University.

RACHEL NAGELBERG READS FROM HER DEBUT NOVEL THE FIFTH WALL WITH STEPHEN BEACHY

Sat, 24 Jun 2017 21:15:20 -0700

The Fifth Wall (Black Sparrow Books)

Praise for The Fifth Wall

Rachel Nagelberg is an American novelist, poet, and conceptual artist living in Los Angeles. The Fifth Wall is her debut novel.

DANIEL JOSE RUIZ READS FROM HIS DEBUT NOVEL COCONUT VERSUS WITH BRUCE BAUMAN

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 19:57:24 -0700

Coconut Versus (Floricanto Press)

This powerful and tempestuous coming-of- age novel follows a young man on the outside looking in, an interloper wherever he goes.

Everyone calls Miguel Reyes a coconut, brown on the outside and white on the inside. Among his family in central California, he’s the too soft city-boy. In Arizona, he’s a brown boy in an upper-class, white neighborhood, with no real friends, while in Los Angeles, he’s a fake Mexican that speaks too good.

Again, and again, Miguel finds himself seething at the injustice a young man feels at every turn of his adolescence. Then, in a moment, he must decide whether or not another man lives or dies.

Praise for Coconut Versus

“Daniel Ruiz, in taut and urgent prose, that often takes your breath away, (like a punch to your gut), reveals the often turbulent life of Miguel Reyes as he navigates his way from confused child to manhood. With a cast of characters ranging from fierce to loving to humorous, Ruiz has given us an essential bildungsroman befitting America in the 21st Century.”—Bruce Bauman, author of the novels And the Word Was and Broken Sleep

“Coconut Versus is a coming of age story that brims with energy and originality as it travels across modern, millennial California. Daniel Ruiz uses his ample gifts as a writer and observer of his generation’s longings to spin tales of love, rage and self-knowledge that are intelligently and passionately told."—Héctor Tobar, author of The Barbarian Nurseries and Deep Down Dark

Daniel Jose Ruiz is a graduate of the CalArts MFA program, and is a Professor of English at Los Angeles City College. Coconut Versus is his first novel.

Bruce Bauman is the award-winning author of the novels And the Word Was and Broken Sleep. Michael Silverblatt, on Bookworm, has called Broken Sleep “funny, heartbreaking and beautiful.” Other reviewers have compared Bauman's work to Saul Bellow, Robert Stone, Thomas Pynchon and John Irving.

MPEN USA PRESENTS YA RESISTS: YOUNG ADULT AUTHORS READ OUT

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 19:38:19 -0700

PEN USA presents YA Resists: Young Adult Authors Read Out

Join PEN Center USA and Skylight Books as we host 12 young adult authors reading about resistance and hope in troubled times. They will each read from books for young people that highlight, protest, suggest action and resistance.

Guests will include:
Cecil Castellucci
Cherry Cheva
Brandy Colbert
Cylin Busby
Lilliam Rivera
Maureen Goo
Kristen Kittscher
Lindsey Klingele
Mark London
Gretchen McNeil
Sherri L Smith
Janet Tashijan
Diana Wagman

DEEPAK UNNIKRISHNAN READS FROM HIS DEBUT NOVEL TEMPORARY PEOPLE

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 18:54:49 -0700

Temporary People (Restless Books)

In the United Arab Emirates, foreign nationals constitute over 80 percent of the population. Brought in to construct and serve the towering monuments to wealth that punctuate the skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this labor force is not given the option of citizenship. Some ride their luck to good fortune. Others suffer different fates. Until now, the humanitarian crisis of the so-called “guest workers” of the Gulf has barely been addressed in fiction. With his stunning, mind-altering debut novel Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan delves into their histories, myths, struggles, and triumphs.

Combining the linguistic invention of Salman Rushdie and the satirical vision of George Saunders, Unnikrishnan presents twenty-eight linked stories that careen from construction workers who shapeshift into luggage and escape a labor camp, to a woman who stitches back together the bodies of those who’ve fallen from buildings in progress, to a man who grows ideal workers designed to live twelve years and then perish—until they don’t, and found a rebel community in the desert. With this polyphony of voices, Unnikrishnan maps a new, unruly global English and gives personhood back to the anonymous workers of the Gulf.

Praise for Temporary People

"Guest workers of the United Arab Emirates embody multiple worlds and identities and long for home in a fantastical debut work of fiction, winner of the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.... The author's crisp, imaginative prose packs a punch, and his whimsical depiction of characters who oscillate between two lands on either side of the Arabian Sea unspools the kind of immigrant narratives that are rarely told. An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, this debut novel employs its own brand of magical realism to propel readers into an understanding and appreciation of the experience of foreign workers in the Arab Gulf States (and beyond). Through a series of almost 30 loosely linked sections, grouped into three parts, we are thrust into a narrative alternating between visceral realism and fantastic satire.... The alternation between satirical fantasy, depicting such things as intelligent cockroaches and evil elevators, and poignant realism, with regards to necessarily illicit sexuality, forms a contrast that gives rise to a broad critique of the plight of those known euphemistically as “guest workers.” VERDICT: This first novel challenges readers with a singular inventiveness expressed through a lyrical use of language and a laserlike focus that is at once charming and terrifying. Highly recommended.” —Henry Bankhead, Library Journal, Starred Review

“Deepak writes brilliant stories with a fresh, passionate energy. Every page feels as if it must have been written, as if the author had no choice. He writes about exile, immigration, deportation, security checks, rage, patience, about the homelessness of living in a foreign land, about historical events so strange that, under his hand, the events become tales, and he writes tales so precisely that they read like history. Important work. Work of the future. This man will not be stopped.”—Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution

“Unnikrishnan’s debut novel shines a light on a little known world with compassion and keen insight. The Temporary People are invisible people—but Unnikrishnan brings them to us with compassion, intelligence, and heart. This is why novels matter.” —Susan Hans O’Connor, Penguin Bookshop

“From the strange Kafka-esque scenarios to the wholly original language, this book is amazing on so many different levels. Unlike anything I've ever read, Temporary People is a powerful work of short stories about foreign nationals who populate the new economy in the United Arab Emirates. With inventive language and darkly satirical plot lines, Unnikrishnan provides an important view of relentless nature of a global economy and its brutal consequences for human lives. Prepare to be wowed by the immensely talented new voice.” —Hilary Gustafson, Literati Bookstore

“Absolutely preposterous! As a debut, author Unnikrishnan shares stories of laborers, brought to the United Arab Emirates to do menial and everyday jobs. These people have no rights, no fallback if they have problems or health issues in that land. The laborers in Temporary People are sewn back together when they fall, are abandoned in the desert if they become inconvenient, and are even grown from seeds. As a collection of short stories, this is fantastical, imaginative, funny, and even more so, scary, powerful, and ferocious.”—Becky Milner, Vintage Books

Deepak Unnikrishnan was raised in the United Arab Emirates. He is a resident of Chicago and a lecturer at the Chicago Art Institute, and he has taught at New York University Abu Dhabi. Temporary People, his first book, was the inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

BEN BLATT DICUSSES HIS BOOK NABOKOV'S FAVORITE WORD IS MAUVE

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 18:16:12 -0700

Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing (Simon & Schuster)

Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve is a playful and informative look at what the numbers have to say about our favorite authors and their classic books. It’s How Fiction Works or Eats, Shoots & Leaves meets Nate Silver.

There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use ‘ly’ adverbs. It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the ‘ly’ adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?

In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which contemporary writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

Blatt draws upon existing analysis techniques and invents some of his own. All of his investigations and experiments are original, conducted himself, and no math knowledge is needed to understand the results. Blatt breaks his findings down into lucid, humorous language and clear and compelling visuals. This eye-opening book will provide you with a new appreciation for your favorite authors and a fresh perspective on your own writing, illuminating both the patterns that hold it together and the brilliant flourishes that make it unforgettable.

Praise for Nabokov's Favorite Word is Mauve

“What fun this is! Ben Blatt’s charming book applies numerical know-how to questions of literary style, teasing out insights about cliffhangers, adverbs, and whether Americans write ‘more loudly’ than the British. (Spoiler: WE DO!!!)”—Jordan Ellenberg, author of How Not to Be Wrong

“Ben Blatt’s delightful book gives us an original big data perspective on great writers’ work. Its humor, insights, and statistical displays are fascinating to behold, even as it helps us develop our own writing.”—Carl N. Morris, Professor Emeritus of Statistics, Harvard University

“Blatt provides amiable and intelligent narration, and literature enthusiasts will enjoy the hypotheses he poses and his imaginative methods.”—Publishers Weekly

Ben Blatt is a former staff writer for Slate and The Harvard Lampoon who has taken his fun approach to data journalism to topics such as Seinfeld, mapmaking, The Beatles, and Jeopardy! His previous book, co-written with Eric Brewster, is I Don't Care if We Never Get Back, which follows the duo’s quest to go on the mathematically optimal baseball road trip, traveling 20,000 miles to a game in all thirty ballparks in thirty days without planes. Blatt’s work has also been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and Deadspin.