Zine-Making Workshops at Central Library–Teen Event
The Teen’Scape program invites you back to work on the DIY art of writing poetry, drawing mini-comics, collaged illustration, self-publishing, and making zines.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 30th
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/zine-making-workshops-0
Coyote America at ALOUD Reading Series, Central Library
With a brilliant blend of environmental and natural history, Dan Flores’ Coyote America traces the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the “wolf” in our backyards. Illuminating this legendary creature, Flores will be joined onstage for a conversation with playwright and chronicler of urban wildlife Melissa Cooper, and actor Laura Innes, who will also perform an excerpt from her play, New York City Coyote Existential.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 30th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 630 West 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: http://lfla.org/event/coyote-america/
Mental Monday Open Mic at House of Brews
Mental Mondays are back at House of Brews and we are happy to welcome the usual suspects and new artists back to the stage for 2017! Bring a poem or two (7 minutes max) or your 2 songs (10 minutes max) and come and get Mental with us!
Sign-ups begin at 6:30 pm.
Where: House of Brews
Date: Monday the 30th
Time: 7 pm – 10 pm
Address: 231 North Maclay Ave., San Fernando, CA 91340
Website: http://www.facebook.com/events/235590523552449/
Poetry at the Annenberg Beach House in Santa Monica
Join us for a Beach=Culture event presenting Poetry & the Art of Listening, an evening of readings and discussion with: Billy Burgos, Teresa Mei Chuc, Daniel Romo, and writer-in-residence Dinah Berland. Our artists/guests will discuss the theme of “how poetry can spark empathy across difference.”
Although this event is FREE, please RSVP at website.
Where: Annenberg Beach House
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 415 Pacific Coast Hwy., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: http://www.annenbergbeachhouse.com/activities/cultural-programs-events-and-tours.aspx#BEACH=CULTURE
April Smith Book Launch at Diesel Bookstore
April Smith will discuss and sign her historical novel, Home Sweet Home, and all are invited to her publication party. Calvin Kusek, a WWII pilot and attorney and his wife Betsy, relocate from 1950s New York conformity to a close-knit town in South Dakota. Life isn’t easy, but it is full and rewarding, and Calvin enters politics to repay the community. After three popular terms he runs for U.S. Senate, and things change. An FBI investigation ties them to the Communist Party, and mass hysteria takes over. Their American Dream falls apart. Years after their vindication they are brutally attacked, and a deeper mystery unfolds.
April Smith is the author of six previous novels, including her first bestseller, North of Montana. She is also an Emmy-nominated TV writer and producer.
Where: Diesel Bookstore, Brentwood
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
The Creation of Inspector Gadget at Chevalier’s Bookstore
Join us to welcome Andy Heyward, the mastermind behind Inspector Gadget, reading and signing his book Go Go Gadget: The Creation of Inspector Gadget. He will answer your questions from A-Z, including the history, early drawings and ideas behind the creation of Inspector Gadget. Heyward began his career in 1977 at Hanna Barbera, and now produces animated programs whose goal is to enrich as well as entertain at Genius Brands International.
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: http://chevaliersbooks.com
Music History at Book Soup
Tony Fletcher will discuss and sign his book, In the Midnight Hour: The Life & Soul of Wilson Pickett. Wilson Pickett was considered by many to be the greatest, the most visceral and sensual of the classic 1960s soul singers, and the embodiment of soul. Pickett’s downfall, precipitated by the move towards softer soul and then disco, led to heavy alcohol and drug addiction, violence and gun use, and two jail terms. He overcame these depths to end his career with a Grammy-nominated album before his death in 2006.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Rachel Cusk Reading at Hammer Museum
Rachel Cusk’s new work Transit delves deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed novel Outline, offering a penetrating reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, and the mystery of change. Cusk is the author of three memoirs and several novels.
A book signing with the author will follow the presentation.
Where: Hammer Museum, Billy Wilder Theater
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: http://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2017/01/rachel-cusk/
Best Women’s Erotica Reading at Skylight Books
Join us for a night of readings from The Best Women’s Erotica of the Year series, featuring contributors from volumes 1 & 2: Rachel Kramer Bussel, Jocelyn Bringas, Melina Greenport, and Jade A. Waters.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 31st
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Viet Thanh Nguyen at Manhattan Beach Library
Please join us to hear Viet Thanh Nguyen, who will be skyping in to discuss his books, which are available for sale at this free event. Nguyen is the author of the novel, The Sympathizer, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, His other books are: Nothing Ever Dies: Viet Nam and the Memory of War (finalist for the National Book Award in Nonfiction) and Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America. His next book is a short story collection, The Refugees, forthcoming in February 2017.
Where: Manhattan Beach Library
Date: Wednesday the 1st
Time: 12 pm
Address: 1320 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: http://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/viet-thanh-nguyen-mb-library
The Fifth Petal at Vroman’s Bookstore
Brunonia Barry discusses and signs The Fifth Petal, and returns to the world of The Lace Reader with this spellbinding new thriller, a complex brew off suspense, seduction and murder. When a teenage boy dies suspiciously on Halloween night, Salem’s chief of police wonders if there is a connection between his death and Salem’s most notorious cold case, a triple homicide on Halloween 1989.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 1st
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/brunonia-barry-discusses-and-signs-fifth-petal
Greyson Bryan at Chevalier’s Bookstore
Political thriller author Gregson Bryan, in conversation with film maestro Richard Kletter, discusses his sequel to Big: Beginnings with his new novel Big: Crisis, Blackmail, Corruption and Murder amid Global Upheaval, set around the events of the Arab Spring. This is part two of his planned trilogy in the Duncan Luke series.
Bryan is an international lawyer with O’Melveny & Myers, an expert in the field of international business intelligence, and has taught at Harvard Law and UCLA.
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 1st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: http://chevaliersbooks.com
3 Writers on Fear & Loathing at ALOUD, Central Library
Writers and artists routinely reckon with anxiety and loathing as part of their creative process. Author and comedian Sara Benincasa, writer and illustrator MariNaomi, and novelist Shanthi Skaran, in conversation with writer and literacy organizer Michelle Tea, discuss with humor and honesty the role fear has played in their work and their creative process. Be part of a larger discussion of how we learn to manage the stress of daily life.
Event is free, but RSVP at website.
Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: http://lfla.org/event/3-writers-fear-loathing/
Gillian Hadfield at Book Soup
Join us to hear Gillian Hadfield discuss and sign Rules for a Flat World: Why Humans Invented Law and How to Reinvent It for a Complex Global Economy. The economy of the twenty-first century has ever-expanding global supply chains and communication systems. In 2005 Thomas Friedman reduced this phenomenon to one phrase: The World Is Flat. Hadfield picks up where he left off, peeling back the technological layer to look beneath our legal infrastructure and outdated systems, to re-envision our global legal system and how to best achieve a sustainable and vibrant global economy.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: http://lastbookstorela.com/#events
Debut Crime Novelists at Chevalier’s Books
Join us to hear debut crime novelists Joe Ide, author of IQ, and Scott Reardon, author of The Prometheus Man, in discussion and signing their books. Why do the best crime writers often live volume one of their lives before they write that breakout novel? Joe Ide is a 58-year old Japanese American whose upbringing in South Central inspired IQ, named for its title character Isaiah Quintabe, a “hip-hop Sherlock Holmes.” Scott Reardon took time from his day job running an LA investment firm to pen his book, a techno-thriller which is compared to Michael Crichton and Robert Ludlum. Meet this nova-star pair!
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: http://chevaliersbooks.com
Kevin Wilson at Vroman’s Bookstore
Join us to hear Kevin Wilson discuss and sign The Perfect Little World, his anticipated follow-up to The Family Fang, a warm-hearted and emotional story about a young woman charting her own course. Kevin Wilson shows us with grace and humor that the best families are the ones we make for ourselves.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/kevin-wilson-discusses-and-signs-perfect-little-world
Susan Sherman, with Natashia Deon, at Skylight Books
Please join us as we welcome Susan Sherman to present and discuss her new book, If You Are There, with Natashia Deon. Set in the early 1900s, this book follows young Lucia, who thanks to the influence of her beloved grandmother, escapes the Warsaw ghetto to work as a kitchen maid in Paris. Lucia ends up working for an eccentric couple, two poor married scientists who rise to fame as the great Marie and Pierre Curie.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Thursday the 2nd
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Current Events Book Club at Studio City Library
Join our brand new Current Events Nonfiction Book Club, which meets the first Friday of each month! Our February book is Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 3rd
Time: 1 pm – 2 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/current-events-nonfiction-book-club
Lucky Boy at Vroman’s Bookstore
Join us to welcome Shanthi Sekara, who will discuss and sign Lucky Boy, a gripping tale of adventure and searing reality, which gives voice to two mothers bound together by their love for one lucky boy. One boy is steeped in love, but his destiny and that of his two mothers, his birth mother and the one who cares for him, teeters between two worlds. This is an ode to the ever-changing borders of love.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Friday the 3rd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/shanthi-sekaran-discusses-and-signs-lucky-boy
Crazy Underneath the Trees at Beyond Baroque
This is a collaborative poem written and performed by Darrell Larson and Rob Sullivan, which investigates parallel career breakdowns which lead both men to savage insights, overwhelming despair, and a fragile sense of hope.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday the 3rd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: http://beyondbaroque.org/calendar.html
The Green Umbrella at Flintridge Books-Kids Event
Storytime presents Jackie Azua Kramer’s children’s book The Green Umbrella, with guest illustrator Maral Sassouni. Things aren’t always what they seem in this charming tale of imagination, sharing and friendship.
Where: Flintridge Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 4th
Time: 10:30 am
Address: 1010 Foothill Blvd., La Canada, CA 90291
Website: http://www.flintridgebooks.com/
The Prison School at Skylight Books
Please join us when Lizbet Simmons discusses her book The Prison School: Educational Inequality and School Discipline in the Age of Mass Incarceration. Public schools across the nation have turned to the criminal justice system as a gold standard of discipline. Nowhere has the growing War on Crime been more influential in broadening racialized academic and socioeconomic disparity than in New Orleans, where in 2002 the sheriff opened his own public school at the Orleans Parish Prison. This school enrolled low-income African American boys removed from public schools because for disciplinary issues, such as tardiness and insubordination. Simmons asks how schools and prisons became so intertwined, and how do we unravel these ties?
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 4th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave.., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/lizbet-simmons-discusses-her-book-prison-school
Trio of Writers at the Last Bookstore
Come see a trio of writers reading from new and forthcoming books linked by themes of feminism, addiction, and family.
Kait Heacock is the author of the collection Siblings and Other Disappointments, which delves into the ways that families fight, forgive, or fall apart. This debut collection explores loneliness and isolation, which exist both apart and within our families.
Tara Jepson is a writer and actor living in Los Angeles, and has a role in Transparent. She has a novel titled Like a Dog coming out on the Sister Spit imprint of City Lights Publishers, and has also been published elsewhere.
Michelle Tea’s most recent book is Black Wave. In 1994 Tea created Sister Split, an all-girl open mic that ran weekly for two years in San Francisco. She is the former editor of Sister Split Books imprint at City Lights, and current curator of Amethyst Editions series at Feminist Press.
Where: The Last Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 4th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 453 S. Spring St., Ground Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Website: http://lastbookstorela.com/#events
Ours is a City of Writers at Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
The public opening of Ours is a City of Writers begins with a reception on Sunday February 5th from 2 pm- 5 pm, and with a performance by Young Joon Kwak and Kim Ye from 3 pm- 5 pm. The purpose of this series is to find new approaches to writing in the contemporary art world.
Visit the website to find details on additional artists and writers to be featured on future dates, including: Robin Coste Lewis, Amy Gerstler, Douglas Kearney, Terry Wolverton, and more.
Where: Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery
Date: Sunday the 5th
Time: 2 pm – 5 pm
Address: 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: http://www.lamag.org/?page_id=3349
Women’s Voices in Poetry at Book Soup
Please join us to hear Leslie Monsour and Georgia Heard discuss and sign The Women in this Poem: Women’s Voices in Poetry. This will be a poetry reading and discussion about truth, beauty, ferocity, family, forgiveness, mom bodies, and more as they delve into a groundbreaking new anthology that highlights a diverse range of women’s voices.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Sunday the 5th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
First Sunday Open Reading at Beyond Baroque
Our popular monthly open reading is hosted by Steve Goldman, and sign-ups begin at 4:30 pm. FREE, but donations are always appreciated.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Sunday the 5th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: http://www.beyondbaroque.org/calendar.html
Silver Lake Bohemia at Skylight Books
Authors Michael Locke and Vincent Brook discuss their book Silver Lake Bohemia (History Press). Since the early 1900s Silver Lake has been a magnet for iconoclastic writers, architects and political activists. The authors chronicle many of the people and places that helped make Silver Lake the bohemian epicenter of Los Angeles.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 5th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Los Angeles Literature 