NOTE: There Are Both Online and Virtual Events Listed Here
Monday Night Fiction Workshop at Beyond Baroque – Zoom Online Event
This free Monday Night Fiction Workshop led by Raquel Baker is a community writing workshop in which participants are asked to bring copies of 2-3 pages of fiction to read, and to use for critique and discussion. Registration is required.
Raquel Baker earned a PhD in English Literary Studies from the University of Iowa and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. She is currently Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Studies and Transnational Literatures at CSU Channel Islands. She has published poetry and nonfiction and done readings with the Ventura Poetry Project.
Where: Beyond Baroque – Online event (tickets at Eventbrite) (check to verify)
Date: Monday the 5th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online
Website: https://beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-411567458347
Under the Mic Influence & Open Mic featuring Dig Wayne – In-Person Event
Join host Kuahmel Alyeeus KuahAllah and DJ Kev Jam for poetry, Open Mic, rare grooves, cocktails, tasty bites.
We have a Labor Day plan for you: a plate of home-cooked words from a true renaissance brother, star of TV, film, music, & #LAPoetry, @digwayne! @djkevjam and I will set the table for the electric feature, the open mic, and the rhythm relief inside @lbunified Monday Sept 5. BE THERE!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and details.
Where: LB Unified
Date: Monday the 5th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 2222 E. Anaheim, Long Beach, CA
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1713224235722788&set=a.383136428731582
Anastasia Zadeik & Blurred Fates at Pages Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to welcome Anastasia Zadeik to celebrate the release of her debut novel, Blurred Fates.
Kate Whittier has it all—a loving, even-keeled husband, two great kids, and a beautiful home in Southern California. But Kate is living a lie. In a desperate attempt to create for her children the safe, happy family she never had, she has been hiding dark secrets for decades—things she’s convinced make her unworthy of her wellborn husband, Jacob, and the privileged life he has provided.
Then, one ordinary evening, always dependable Jacob confesses to a drunken sexual indiscretion he doesn’t quite remember, and Kate cracks open. Molten memories rise to the surface: hiding in the dark, her brother’s whisper in her ear; crying out, knowing no one will hear. Along with the memories, volatile emotions swirl—a sign, Kate fears, that the mental illness that took her mother has finally come for her.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Pages Bookstore – in the Courtyard
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/anastasia
Feminist Book Club & As a Woman at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join the Feminist Book Club for a discussion of this month’s selection, As a Woman: What I Learned about Power, Sex, and the Patriarchy after I Transitioned, by author, Paula Stone Williams.
This book is a memoir of a transgender pastor’s transition from male to female.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Create Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/book/9781982153359
The Mic at Micky’s Open Mic, with Hosts Brian Sonia-Wallace & Nate Lovett at Micky’s Nightclub & Bar – In-Person Event
Join The Mic at Micky’s Open Mic and Literary Readings, hosted by West Hollywood Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace and Nate Lovett.
This is a weekly event for creatives to collaborate and write something for the Mic and/or sign up for the Open Mic, limited to 3-5 minutes per person, and offering poems, stories, and music.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Micky’s Nightclub & Bar in West Hollywood
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 6 pm – 9 pm
Address: 8857 Santa Monica, CA 90069
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-mic-mickys-tickets-383607860437?aff=erelpanelorg
Book Talk: Caryn Rose, with Lucretia Tye Jasmine, & Why Patti Smith Matters at Chevalier’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Caryn Rise, in conversation with Lucretia Tye Jasmine, will discuss her book, Why Patti Smith Matters.
Why Patti Smith Matters is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalist Caryn Rose contextualizes Smith’s creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith’s oeuvre, from her first album, Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music. The portrait of a ceaseless inventor, Why Patti Smith Matters rescues punk’s poet laureate from “strong woman” clichés. Of course Smith is strong. She is also a nuanced thinker. A maker of beautiful and challenging things. A transformative artist who has not simply entertained but also empowered millions.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Amy Ephron, Maia Wapnick, Anna Ephron Harari & The Amazing Baby Name Book at Diesel Bookstore – In-Person Event
In this fun, charming, and wonderfully curated collection of baby names, authors Amy Ephron and her daughters, Anna and Maia, share inspired and witty ideas that will spark your imagination, providing parents-to-be with moments of humor, historical context, factual tidbits, and highly opinionated takes on the most creative names from Abacus and Abbie to Zoe and Zuzu!
Celebrating inspiration, inclusion, hope, and love—with a little bit of lighthearted attitude thrown in for good measure—this bundle of joy is the perfect gift for you or someone you love.
Amy Ephron is a best-selling author. She has three children and two step-children. Maia Wapnick is a brand consultant and Amy’s oldest daughter. Maia has two children of her own. Anna Ephron Harari is a writer and Amy’s middle child. Anna also has two children. They all live in the Los Angeles area. Jen Bricking is an illustrator of children’s books and video games. When she isn’t drawing, she likes to skateboard, bike, and travel. She lives in Dallas.
NOTE: See stie for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Amy-Ephron-Amazing-Baby-Name-Book-Author-signing
Lenny Kaye & Lightning Striking: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Lenny Kaye will present and discuss his book, Lightning Strikes: Ten Transformative Moments in Rock and Roll.
Memphis, 1954. New Orleans 1957. Philadelphia 1959. Liverpool, 1962. San Francisco 1967. Detroit 1969. New York, 1975. London 1977. Los Angeles 1984 / Norway 1993. Seattle 1991. Rock and roll was birthed in basements and garages, radio stations and dance halls, in cities where unexpected gatherings of artists and audience changed and charged the way music is heard and celebrated, capturing lightning in a bottle. Musician and writer Lenny Kaye explores ten crossroads of time and place that define rock and roll, its unforgettable flashpoints, characters and visionaries, how each generation came to be, how it was discovered by the world.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/lenny-kaye
At Skylight: Jonathan Ames & The Wheel of Doll at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Although badly scarred and down to his last kidney after the previous caper, Happy Doll is back in business. When a beguiling young woman turns up at his door, it’s Doll’s past that comes knocking. Mary DeAngelo is searching for her estranged mother, Ines Candle—a singular and troubled woman Doll once loved. The last he’d seen her she’d been near-death: arms slit like envelopes. Although she survived the episode, she vanished shortly thereafter. Now, years later, Mary claims Ines is alive and has recently made contact—messaging her on Facebook and calling her from a burner phone—only to disappear once again. Although his psychoanalyst would discourage it, Doll takes the case, desperate to see Ines again. But as the investigation deepens, there are questions he can’t shake. What’s led the flighty Ines to reappear? Is Mary only relaying half the truth? And who is Mary’s strange and mysterious husband?
In this wholly original follow-up to A Man Named Doll, Happy travels through L.A., Washington, Oregon and back again—a journey that gets wilder and woolier with each turn. An irreverent and inventive mystery, The Wheel of Doll is not to be missed.
NOTE: See stie for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-jonathan-ames-presents-wheel-doll
Book Launch: Carolyn Huynh, with Jes Vu, & The Fortunes of Jaded Women at Stories Books & Cafe– In-Person Event
A multi-narrative novel brimming with levity and candor, Carolyn Huynh‘s The Fortunes of Jaded Women is about mourning, meddling, celebrating, and healing together as a family. It shows how Vietnamese women emerge victorious, even if the world is against them.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Stories Books & Cafe
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with Jennifer Elisa Wang – Virtual Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest Jennifer Elisa Wang.
Jennifer Elisa Wang is a poet and writer in Southern California, and has been published on Medium, among others.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html
Da Poetry Lounge Tuesday Open Mic at Greenway Court – In Person Event
The nation’s largest weekly Open Mic event is 24 years strong. It takes place every Tuesday and is open to all ages. Third Tuesdays are SLAM NIGHTS! A slam is a poetry competition.
$10 donation. Do NOT lineup prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to theatre.
See sites for details.
Where: Greenway Court Theatre and YouTube Live Stream
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 9 pm – 11 pm
Address: 544 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/ChLUBSRPCFb/ https://www.dapoetrylounge.com/admission
SOM Tuesdays Open Mic at Di Piazza’s Pizza, Long Beach – In-Person Event
SOM Open Mic Tuesdays at Di Piazza’s takes place in a casual setting with a lunch & dinner menu that includes pizzas, pastas, salads, sandwiches, burgers and more. Come and share music, comedy, and poetry with SOM and Di Pizza.
Where: Di Piazza’s Pizza (Check to verify)
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 9 pm – 12 am
Address: 5205 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach, CA
Website: Facebook and https://dipiazzas.com/tickets-%26-events
Mystery Book Group: The Last Flight, by Julie Clark at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us at the Bookstore’s Mystery Book Club discussion of Julie Clark’s novel, The Last Flight.
Claire Cook has a perfect life. Married to the scion of a political dynasty, with a Manhattan townhouse and a staff of ten, her surroundings are elegant, her days flawlessly choreographed, and her future auspicious. But behind closed doors, nothing is quite as it seems. That perfect husband has a temper that burns bright and he’s not above using his staff to track Claire’s every move.
What he doesn’t know is that Claire has worked for months on a plan to vanish. A plan that takes her to the airport, poised to run from it all. But a chance meeting in the airport bar brings her together with a woman whose circumstances seem equally dire. Together they make a last-minute decision.
The two women switch tickets, with Claire taking Eva’s flight to Oakland, and Eva traveling to Puerto Rico as Claire. They believe the swap will give each of them the head start they need to begin again somewhere far away. But when the flight to Puerto Rico crashes, Claire realizes it’s no longer a head start but a new life. Cut off, out of options, with the news of her death about to explode in the media, Claire will assume Eva’s identity, and along with it, the secrets Eva fought so hard to keep hidden.
Whether you loved it, hated it, or haven’t finished it, they want to see you at their Mystery Book Group at America’s Oldest Children’s Bookstore!
They will be meeting to discuss the book outside of the shop in the circle in front of Star Cafe. You may still email your thoughts to share with their club if you are unable to attend in-person.
NOTE: See site for guidelines, book purchase, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 9 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Avenue, Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/mystery-book-group-last-flight-julie-clark
Washington Irving Book Club Discussion: Gathering Blossoms Under Fire at Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL – Online Adult & YA Event
The Washington Irving Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker 1965-2000, by Alice Walker.
Please call (323) 734-6303 for more information.
NOTE: See site for guidelines, and details.
Where: Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 12 pm
Address: 4117 W. Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/washington-irving-book-club-2
Denise Williams & Do You Take This Man at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – Online Event
Join us for the launch of Do You Take This Man, by author Denise Williams.
After butting heads, an event planner and a wedding officiant begin an “enemies with benefits” arrangement as wedding bells chime around them.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: Online ticketed event (see site)
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Palms-Rancho Park Mystery Book Club Discussion: The Fallen at Palm=Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – Online Adult & YA Event
The Palms-Rancho Park Mystery Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, The Fallen, by T. Jefferson Parker.
A former San Diego police officer, Robbie Downlaw investigates an apparent suicide that quickly turns complicated as shady politicians, dodgy deals and local politics move to the fore.
Please call 310-840-2142 or prncho@lapl.org.for more information.
NOTE: See site for link, and details.
Where: Palms-Ranch Park Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-discussion-2
The Gathering Dark: An Anthology of Folk Horror Group Event at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Event participants include: Aden Polydoros, Alex Brown, Olivia Chadha, Shakira Moise, and Tori Bovalino.
A cemetery full of the restless dead. A town so wicked it has already burned twice, with the breath of the third fire looming. A rural, isolated bridge with a terrifying monster waiting for the completion of its summoning ritual. A lake that allows the drowned to return, though they have been changed by the claws of death. These are the shadowed, liminal spaces where the curses and monsters lurk, refusing to be forgotten.
Hauntings, and a variety of horrifying secrets, lurk in the places we once called home. Written by New York Times bestselling, and other critically acclaimed, authors these stories shed a harsh light on the scariest tales we grew up with.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/the-gathering-dark-group-event
Author Event: Natalie Molina & A Place at the Nayarit and George Sanchez & Boyle Heights at Bel Canto Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Natalie Molina, in conversation with author George Sanchez, in celebration of Latinx Heritage Month, and to discuss her book, A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community.
In her book, A Place at the Nayarit, USC Professor Natalie Molina unveils the hidden history of the Nayarit, a restaurant in Los Angeles that nourished its community of Mexican immigrants with a sense of belonging.
In 1951, Doña Natalia Barraza opened the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles. With A Place at the Nayarit, historian Natalia Molina traces the life’s work of her grandmother, remembered by all who knew her as Doña Natalia––a generous, reserved, and extraordinarily capable woman. Doña Natalia immigrated alone from Mexico to L.A., adopted two children, and ran a successful business. She also sponsored, housed, and employed dozens of other immigrants, encouraging them to lay claim to a city long characterized by anti-Latinx racism. Together, the employees and customers of the Nayarit maintained ties to their old homes while providing one another safety and support.
George J. Sánchez is the author of Boyle Heights, and the award-winning book Becoming Mexican American and is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California. He currently serves as Director of the Center for Diversity and Democracy at USC, which focuses on issues of racial/ethnic diversity in higher education and issues of civic engagement.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Bel Canto Bookstore at The Hangout
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2122 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://shopthehangout.com/products/bcb-author-event-natalia-molina-wed-9-7-7pm
At Skylight: Robin D.G. Kelley & Freedom Dreams at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Robin D.G. Kelley will present and discuss his new book, Freedom Dreams. Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA.
The 20th-anniversary edition of Kelley’s influential history of 20th-century Black radicalism includes new reflections on current movements and their impact on the author, and a foreword by Aja Monet, an activist poet of Cuban-Jamaican descent from Brooklyn, New York.
First published in 2002, Freedom Dreams is a staple in the study of the Black radical tradition. Unearthing the thrilling history of grassroots movements and renegade intellectuals and artists, Kelley recovers the dreams of the future worlds Black radicals struggled to achieve.
Focusing on the insights of activists, from the Revolutionary Action Movement to the insurgent poetics of Aimé and Suzanne Césaire, Kelley chronicles the quest for a homeland, the hope that communism offered, the politics of surrealism, the transformative potential of Black feminism, and the long dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow.
In this edition, Kelley includes a new introduction reflecting on how movements of the past 20 years have expanded his own vision of freedom to include mutual care, disability justice, abolition, and decolonization, and a new epilogue exploring the visionary organizing of today’s freedom dreamers.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-robin-dg-kelley-presents-freedom-dreams
Anansi Virtual Writers Workshop at The World Stage – In-Person Event
The Anansi Writers Workshop was founded in 1990 by Kamau Daáood, Akilah Oliver, Nafis Nabawi and Anthony Lyons. In 1993, Michael Datcher initiated the development of a three-part format for the workshop. Our tradition of a community workshop began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers’ Workshop, where World Stage co-founder Kamau Daáood started his writing career. For general information and booking, contact V. Kali, the Anansi Writers Workshop Coordinator, at vkaliflowers@gmail.com.
• 7:30p.m.–8:30p.m. — Formal workshop;
• 8:30p.m.–9:00p.m. — Featured reader;
• 9:05p.m.–10:00p.m. — Open mic
Suggested: $5.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.
NOTE: See site for further details, and any change in the schedule. Contact kaliflowers@gmial.com or call (323) 293-2451
Where: The World Stage
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Dengan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.theworldstage.org/events.html
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop via Beyond Baroque – Zoom Online
Join Beyond Baroque’s longest running free poetry workshop via Zoom online as we welcome new and seasoned poets to share their work and provide feedback. Facilitators are rotated quarterly, and the current facilitator is Jose Hernandez Diaz.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology 2011. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets and information.
Where: Online event
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-411963402627?aff=erelexpmlt
Flight School Open Mic Has Returned! at Playground Hookah Lounge – In-Person Event
Join us for the return of the weekly Flight School Open Mic, offered every Wednesday from 8pm – 12pm.
All arts are welcome: singing, dance, poetry, improv, comedy, music, and we learn to fly together, all balanced by host O. Smith and a full live band and DJ D-Major.
$10 Entry at the door. $8 tickets at Eventbrite.
NOTE: Check site for further details, updates, and information.
Where: Flight School Open Mic at the Playground
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 8 pm – 12 am
Address: 630 N. La Brea Ave., Inglewood, CA 90302
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/flight-school-open-mic-tickets-362732902877?aff=erelpanelorg
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry & Luivette Resto at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Join Ben Trigg and Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Night for our Reading & Open Mic, featuring Luivette Resto.
The format is to welcome a featured poet for a reading, and an Open Mic reading. Tonight’s featured reader is Luivette Resto.
Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, a mother of 3 revolutionary humans, a Wonder Woman, and a middle school English teacher. She was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. She is a CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her two books of poetry Unfinished Portrait and Ascension have been published by Tía Chucha Press. Her third poetry collection Living on Islands Not Found on Map, published by FlowerSong Press, is a finalist for the 2022 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award at the International Latino Book Awards. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles.
$4 cover fee, cash only. Masks are required unless eating or drinking.
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines & information.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday the 7th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/Two-Idiots-Peddling-Poetry/ or https://www.facebook.com/events/1051420838690673
Elena Armas, with Austin Siegmund-Broka and Emily Wibberly, & The American Roommate Experiment Launch at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for the launch of The American Roommate Experiment, by author Elena Armas, in conversation with husband and wife writing duo Austin Siegmund-Broka and Emily Wibberly.
From the author of the Goodreads Choice Award winner The Spanish Love Deception, the eagerly anticipated follow-up featuring Rosie Graham and Lucas Martín, who are forced to share a New York apartment.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
History Book Club & Bad Mexicans: Race, Revolution, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join the History Book Club for a discussion of this month’s selection, Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands, by author Kelly Lytle Hernandez.
In this historical reframing of our history of the borderlands, the author tells he dramatic story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Led by a brilliant but ill-tempered radical named Ricardo Flores Magón, the magonistas were a motley band of journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers—and American dissidents—to their cause. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists such as Guggenheim and Rockefeller, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U. S. authorities vested in protecting the Diaz regime. The U.S. Departments of War, State, Treasury, and Justice as well as police, sheriffs, and spies, hunted the magonistas across the country. Capturing Ricardo Flores Magón was one of the FBI’s first cases.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Create Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/history-book-club-bad-mexicans
Anfitrionas: Curating Community through the Literary Arts at LibroMobile – In-Person Event
Join us for a live reading & discussion with community-based writers & literary advocates Cynthia Alessandra Briano, Sarah Rafael Garcia, Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley, & Ellen Webre, moderated by the main anfitriona herself Lisbeth Coiman!
Learn about the organizing they do & hear from them first-hand how they build community & visibility for diverse voices in Southern California.
Cynthia Alessandra Briano is the founder of LoveOnDemand.org, director and curator of Frist Fridays at Rapp Saloon Reading Series, Lecturer at CSUF, and college counselor and poet.
Sarah Rafael Garcia is an author, community educator, and performance ethnographer from Santa Ana. She also is founder of LibroMobile in Santa Ana, CA.
Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley is a writer and filmmaker, author of Your Body Is a Battleground, and contributor to Somewhere We Are Human and contributor to Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology.
Ellen Webre is an Orange County poet, and author of A Burning Lake of Paper Suns.
Lisbeth Coiman, bilingual author, educator, and speaker, is the author of I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir and the chapbook Uprising/Alzamiento.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, further details, guidelines & information.
Where: LibroMobile Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1150 S Bristol St A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/anfitrionas-curating-community-through-the-literary-arts
At the Skylight Arts Annex: Matthew Klickstein & See You at San Diego by Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join Matthew Klickstein at the Skylight Arts Annex when he will sign his new book, SEE YOU AT SAN DIEGO: An Oral History of Comic-Con, Fandom, and the Triumph of Geek Culture, before a special screening of SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD at American Cinematheque.
A comprehensive chronicle of Comic-Con International and modern geekdom itself as told through countless intimate, hilarious, and often-thought provoking stories by nearly fifty of the most integral members of today’s convention and fandom community.
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines & information.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 1814 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-arts-annex-mathew-klickstein-signs-see-you-san-diego
Ramzi Fawaz, with Maurice Harris, & Queer Forms at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Ramzi Fawaz, in conversation with Maurice Harris, discuss his paperback book release of Queer Forms.
Against the ideal of ceaseless gender and sexual fluidity and attachments to rigidly defined identities, Queer Forms argues for the value of shapeshifting as the imaginative transformation of genders and sexualities across time. By taking many shapes of gender and sexual divergence we can grant one another the opportunity to appear and be perceived as an evolving form, not only to claim our visibility, but to be better understood in all our dimensions.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/ramzi-fawaz
CLASH Books Presents: Marston Hefner, with Eugenio Volpe, Francesca Lia Block and M. Steven S. at Stories Books & Cafe – In-Person Event
CLASH Books Presents Marston Hefner reading from his debut collection High School Romance with Eugenio Volpe, Francesca Lia Block and M. Steven S.
In his debut collection, Marston Hefner brings a unique voice and playful style to meditations on self-acceptance, the folly of youth, and how love can lead to actualization and destruction. Through moments of family intimacy, work presentations, vacations, doomed relationships, or businessmen chasing the ephemeral, Hefner shows we are lovable and acceptable despite the shame we accumulate through the years. Sometimes it’s only through stories that we can make sense of who we are and where we are going.
Eugenio Volpe is the author fo the novella The Message. His writing has appeared in Post Road, Salamander, BULL, VICE, and other publications. He is a PEN Discovery winner. Born in raised in the Boston area, he now resides in Los Angeles with his wife and son
Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, most recently is. She received the Spectrum award, the Phoenix award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association to the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly.
M. Steven S. is the author of Ill Behavior, in which a notorious Los Angeles graffiti writer, SOBR, finds himself wanted for a murder he didn’t commit. With the help of a childhood friend, an LAPD Magistrate Inquirer, SOBR sets out to clear his graffiti name while haunted by a foretelling of his impending death. Set in a familiar version of LA located somewhere in the multiverse where the United States has become ruled by a king, the people worship the Greek and Roman gods, and society is on the brink of a proletarian revolution, ILL BEHAVIOR is an unorthodox take on LA noir and a modern extension of ancient mythology.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Stories Books & Cafe
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Writing Workshop with Carlos Allende Gonzalez, PhD at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Carlos Allende Gonzalez, PhD present a tow-day writing workshop on how to turn your story into a page-turner by applying principles from prevalent theories of motivation and gamification. The course is FREE with any book purchase from Village Well!
Carlos Allende Gonzlez has a PhD in Media Psychology from Fielding Graduate University. He teaches the Psychology of Compelling Storytelling in the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension. His research focuses on narrative persuasion and narrative engagement. As Carlos Allende, he writes dark comedy and social satire. His newest book, Coffee, Shopping, Murder Love, from Red Hen Press, came out last June.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, book purchase, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/18915
Richard T. Rodriguez & A Kiss Across the Ocean at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Richard T. Rodriguez discuss his book, A Kiss Across the Ocean: Transatlantic Intimacies of British Post-Punk an US Latinidad.
Melding memoir with cultural criticism, Rodríguez spotlights a host of influential bands and performers including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Adam Ant, Bauhaus, Soft Cell, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Pet Shop Boys. He recounts these bands’ importance for him and other Latinx kids and discusses their frequent identification with these bands’ glamorous performance of difference. Whether it was Siouxsie Sioux drawing inspiration from Latinx contemporaries and cultural practices or how Soft Cell singer Marc Almond’s lyrics were attuned to the vibrancy of queer Latinidad, Rodríguez shows how Latinx culture helped shape British post-punk. He traces the fandom networks that link these groups across space and time to illuminate how popular music establishes and facilitates intimate relations across the Atlantic. In so doing, he demonstrates how the music and styles that have come to define the 1980s hold significant sway over younger generations equally enthused by their matchlessly pleasurable and political reverberations.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/richard-rodriguez-discusses-a-kiss-across-the-ocean
At Skylight: Group Reading of South Central Noir at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join Skylight to hear readers and contributors from South Central Noir, in which The Akashic Noir Series’ forensic study of Southern California sharpens its focus on one of Los Angeles’s most recognized neighborhoods. Contributors include:
Gary Phillips has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including Orange County Noir and the award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles.
Emory Holmes II is a Los Angeles–based novelist, children’s story writer, and journalist. His stories on American crime and the arts have appeared on the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Sentinel, The Los Angeles Daily News, The New York Amsterdam News, Los Angeles Magazine, Essence and other publications.
Jeri Westerson, born and raised in Los Angeles, California, originally had designs on a career as an actress but changed her major in college to graphic design. 17 years after graduating, she began writing seriously for publication two years after that. She is the author of the LGBTQ mysteries featuring Skyler Foxe, under the pen name Haley Walsh.
Nikolas Charles is a writer, journalist and editor.
Désirée Zamarano is a Pushcart prize nominee, and award-winning short story writer and author of the novel The Amado Women (Cino Punto Press, 20014).
From the Introduction by Gary Phillips:
“Within these pages you’ll find stories of those walking the straight and narrow—until something untoward happens. Maybe it’s someone taking a step out of line, getting caught up in circumstances spiraling out of their control. Maybe they’re planning the grift, the grab…whatever it is to finally put them over. Other times the steps they take are to get themselves or people they care about out from under. You’ll find the offerings in these pages are a rich mix of tone—tales told of hope, survival, revenge, and triumph. Excursions beyond the headlines and the hype.
The settings herein reflect South Central today or chronicle its colorful past, such as the days of the jazz joints along Central Avenue…From South Park to East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, from the borderlands of Watts to the one-time Southern Pacific railroad tracks paralleling Slauson Avenue, take a tour of a section of Los Angeles that may be unfamiliar to you but you will get to know, at least a little, by the time you finish reading this entertaining and engaging anthology.”
NOTE: See site for guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-south-central-noir-group-reading
Fos–Thursday & FOST Artistic Collective Presents: Freedom of Speech Open Mic with Sabor y Cultura Café – In-Person & Online IG Event
Please help FOS’s in-person venue Sabor y Cultura with the link in the bio. Open Mic is currently only on IG Live at 8 pm, with sign-ups open on Wednesday at 3pm.
NOTE: See site for cost, event details.
Where: Freedom of Speech (FOS) Open Mic – In-Person & Online IG event
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 665 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.instagram.com/fos_thursdays/
Spectacular Storytime for Children at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Spectacular Storytime is offered every Friday morning at 9:30 am. It is ready to delight and dazzle with troubadour Maddie, it and is geared for children ages 3-6.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/spectacular-story-time-4
Your Author Series: Anoosha Syed & That’s Not My Name at Central Library, LAPL – Online Kids Event
Join the Your Author Series to discuss this presentation of the children’s book, That’s Not My Name and meet author Anoosha Syed.
Anoosha has illustrated a number of books for children, including Bug Girl and I Am Perfectly Designed, written by Karamo Brown. She has a passion for creating cute characters with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion, and when she isn’t drawing for work, she’s drawing for fun!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/your-author-series-anoosha-syed
LAIH Fellows Poetry & Prose Readings at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – Hybrid Event
Join the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellows for a poetry and prose reading, featuring LAIH Fellows:
Peter J. Harris Timothy Steele, Dana Johnson, Shonda Buchanan, Janice Littlejohn, Josh Kun, Lynne Thompson & Cody Cisco.
Peter J. Harris, Altadena Poet Laureate Editor in Chief (2022-2024), is the author of Safe Arms: 20 Love & Erotic Poems (w/an Ooh Baby Baby moan), with Spanish translations by Francisco Letelier (FlowerSong Press), and SongAgain (Beyond Baroque Books). In 2015, his book of poetry, Bless the Ashes (Tia Chucha Press), won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award, and his book of personal essays, The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My ‘Unalienable Right,’ won the American Book Award. Harris is founding director of The Black Man of Happiness Project, a creative, intellectual, and artistic exploration of Black men and joy. He writes the blog WREAKING HAPPINESS: A Joyful Living Journal: www.inspirationcrib.com.
Timothy Steele has published several collections of verse, most recently Toward the Winter Solstice. He is also the author of two prose books about poetry—Missing Measures and All the Fun’s in How You Say a Thing—and has edited The Poems of J.V. Cunningham. His honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University; a Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Dana Johnson is the author of the short story collection In the Not Quite Dark. She is also the author of Break Any Woman Down, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and the novel Elsewhere, California. Both books were nominees for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and Callaloo, among others, and in several anthologies. Her most recent project was Trailblazer: Delilah Beasley’s California. Johnson is a professor of English at the University of Southern California.
Shonda Buchanan, Pushcart Prize nominee, a USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow, and a Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles (COLA) Master Artist Fellow, Shonda Buchanan is the author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, winner the 2020 Indie New Generation Book Award. She currently serves as President of the Board of Trustees at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, and is a recipient of the Brody Arts Fellowship from the California Community Foundation, a Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and several Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grants. Shonda is currently a Writing Instructor for First Year Seminar and a Senior Lecturer for the Department of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University, and recently completed a collection of poetry about Nina Simone and is working on her second memoir and a novel. Shonda lives and writes in her adopted home on Tongva and Chumash land in Los Angeles, California.
Janice Littlejohn is the 2022 L.A. Press Club SoCal Journalism Awards (Race & Culture) finalist for her LMU Magazine article, “Crowning Achievement,” highlighting the issues Black people face in the workplace for wearing naturally textured hairstyles. The previous year, Janice was selected as a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation 2021 Summer Writers Non-fiction Fellow. A former columnist for the Associated Press, Janice has been published in more than 60 consumer and trade publications including the Los Angeles Times, Ms. Magazine, Shondaland, Essence, EMMY, USA Today and the Los Angeles Review of Books where was a senior editor and director of special projects. In addition to her work in journalism, Janice is an author, editor, screenwriter and social justice advocate. She is an alumna of Loyola Marymount University and the University of Southern California where she received an MA. She’s currently the Associate Director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC where she is also an adjunct instructor at the Annenberg School’s Specialized Journalism graduate program.
Josh Kun is an author and editor of several books including Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, Songs in the Key of Los Angeles, The Tide Was Always High: The Music of Latin America in Los Angeles, Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez, and The Autograph Book of L.A.: Improvements on the Page of the City. As a curator and artist, he has collaborated with The Los Angeles Public Library, California African American Museum, The Grammy Museum, SFMOMA, Prospect New Orleans, among many others. His next book, Beats Across Borders: A Migrant Songbook, will be published by MCD Books/FSG. He is interim Dean of the Thornton School of Music at USC, where he is a Professor in the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and Chair in Cross-Cultural Communication. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Berlin Prize, and an American Book Award.
Lynne Thompson is Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and a 2022 Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. Thompson is the author of three collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon, Start With A Small Guitar, and most recently Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize. The recipient of multiple awards and fellowships including several Pushcart Prize nominations, Thompson sits on the Boards of Cave Canem and the Los Angeles Review of Books and recently completed her term as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College. Her recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, New England Review, Black Warrior Review, Massachusetts Review, The Common, and Copper Nickel, among others.
Cody Cisco is an author, editor, publisher, and literary community organizer. His LGBT psychological science fiction series includes two novels thus far, Broken Mirror and Tortured Echoes. He is a freelance editor specializing in genre-bending fiction and an editor for Running Wild Press. In 2017, he co-founded Made in L.A. Writers, an indie author co-op dedicated to the support and appreciation of independent authors. His startup, BookSwell, is a literary events and media production company dedicated to lifting up marginalized voices and connecting readers and writers in Southern California and beyond. He serves as a Co-Executive on the Board of Governors for the Editorial Freelancers Association and as a board member at APLA Health.
NOTE: See site for tickets, link, and hybrid event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 7 pm reception; 8 pm readings
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice CA 90291
Elena Armas, with Austin Siegemond-Broka and Emily Wibberly, at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
We are hosting an IN-PERSON book launch for Elena Armas’ new book, The American Roommate Experience.
She will be in conversation with husband and wife writing duo, Austin Siegemund-Broka and Emily Wibberley. There will be a book signing to follow.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 7 pm
Address: Main St., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Margaret Kerrison, with Nancy Seruto, & Immersive Storytelling at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Margaret Kerrison discuss her book, Immersive storytelling: For Real and Imaginary Worlds.
How do you take an idea from inspiration to manifestation? How do you move from telling a story to creating a world? In this richly illustrated book, the first of its kind written specifically for writers, Kerrison lays out the craft of immersive storytelling. She uses case studies to show what works and highlights the essential role of the writer on a complex creative team. Ready to take the kernel of an idea and turn it into a full-fledged experience? This book gives you the blueprint. (Michael Wiese Productions)
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/margaret-kerrison-presents-immersive-storytelling
Something New Reading: Bridgette Bianca at Writ Large Projects at Elinor Drinkery – In-Person Event
Join us to hear poet and professor Bridgette Bianca discuss and perform her work in a Something New reading event. She is the author of the collection, be/trouble.
Where: Writ Large Projects at Elinor Drinkery
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 250 North Tribune Court, Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://www.writlargeprojects.com/calendar/something-new
At Skylight: Janice Lee, with Andrea Quaid, & Separation Anxiety at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear acclaimed prose writer Janice Lee, in conversation with Andrea Quaid, discuss and sign her new poetry collection, Separation Anxiety.
A complex and entangled text that explores inherited trauma, the presence of ghosts, interspecies communication, the dream world, grief, and human/animal separation.
Weaving wisdom from her shamanic practice and the interstices of language, and in the difficult moments anticipating the deaths of her beloved dog companions, Separation Anxiety marks the first collection of poetry from acclaimed prose writer Janice Lee, and it is a meditation on inhabitation and existence beyond the human.
Janice Lee is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021) and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Incorporating shamanic and energetic healing, she teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and practices in several lineages, including the medicine tradition of the Q’ero, Zen Buddhism, plant & animal medicine, and Korean shamanic ritual. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Friday the 9th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-janice-lee-presents-separation-anxiety-andrea-quaid
Janice Lee Writing Workshop: The Dandelions Are Prophesizing at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join Beyond Baroque to welcome Janice Lee, who will offer a Writing Workshop titled: The Dandelions Are Prophesizing: A Workshop in Listening & Letting Go.
This non-traditional workshop will encourage you to expand your awareness and language, focus on letting go of control and linear time, and move towards living in the present moment with presence, awareness, and gratitude, and to imagine new futures that don’t depend on replicating the energies of the systems we seek to dismantle or the patterns we seek to heal from. We will investigate the speculative potentialities of futures beyond capital and justice-oriented systems, imagine identity and being through the lens of assemblage and permeability, and explore new and porous ways of working towards individual and collective change.
In this generative and healing-focused workshop, we will be supported by writing prompts, guided meditations, intuition exercises, personal medicine work, divination, communing with plant and animal beings, Buddhist teachings, and a communal ceremony (that will be finished on your own at home).
NOTE: Please bring writing tools and a small object that represents what you need to let go of, or a small stone, that will be buried in the ground after the workshop.
Janice Lee is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021) and Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? Incorporating shamanic and energetic healing, she teaches workshops on inherited trauma, healing and writing, and practices in several lineages, including the medicine tradition of the Q’ero, Zen Buddhism, plant & animal medicine, and Korean shamanic ritual. She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.
NOTE: See site for tickets, costs, and event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice CA 90291
Donuts for David Shannon Launch of Gold! at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Join us for donuts with children’s author David Shannon, who will present his new book, Gold!
From the creator who brought you classic story time favorites like No, David!, Bad Case of Stripes, and Duck on a Bike comes a retelling of Midas and his golden touch. As part of our over-the-top celebrations we will have donuts made of gold…golden dough that is and encourage everyone to wear their silliest slippers. Best for silly folks ages 4+.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 11 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/gold
Early Readers Book Club & Rise of Zombert via Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Join our Early Readers Book Club to discuss this month’s selection, Rise of Zombert, by Kara LaReau, Ryan Andrews (illustrator)
From the Zombert mystery series, Rise of Zombert asks could Bert really be a zombie cat?
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Saturday 10th
Time: 1 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/early-readers-book-club-rise-zombert
Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, with Diana Biller, & Skirts at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
We are hosting an IN-PERSON book launch for Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell and new book, Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century.
She will be in conversation with Diana Biller. There will be a book signing to follow.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 2 pm
Address: Main St., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
At Dynasty Typewriter: Betty Gilpin, with Alison Brie, & All the Women in My Brain at Skylight Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Betty Gilpin, in conversation with Alison Brie, discuss and sign her debut book, Separation All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns.
A lightning-strike dispatch of hilarious, intimate, luminous essays from the brain of Emmy Award-nominated actress and writer Betty Gilpin.
Betty Gilpin is an Emmy, Critic’s Choice, and SAG Award–nominated actress and writer whose credits include GLOW, Gaslit, Roar, and Three Women, among others. She has—bravely—fake cried and fake died on your television with many different grasping-at-relevance hair colors. The blonde giveth, and the ginger taketh away. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Glamour, Lenny Letter, The Hollywood Reporter, and Vanity Fair.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Dynasty Typewriter
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 2 pm (doors at 1 pm)
Address: 2511 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
Cassie Holmes & Happier Hour at Diesel Bookstore, Brentwood – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Cassie Holmes discuss and sign her book, Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.
The antidote to overscheduling and feeling like your days aren’t your own, Happier Hour reframes your time around life’s happiest moments to build days that aren’t just full—but fulfilling. Our most precious resource isn’t money. It’s time. We are allotted just twenty-four hours a day, and we live in a culture that keeps us feeling “time poor”—like we never have enough. Since we can’t add more hours to the day, how can we experience our lives as richer? Based on her wildly popular MBA class at UCLA, Professor Cassie Holmes demonstrates how to immediately improve our lives by changing how we perceive and invest our time. Happier Hour provides empirically based insights and easy-to-implement tools that will allow you to: optimally spend your hours and feel confident in those choices; sidestep distractions; create and savor moments of joy; design your schedule with purpose; look back on your years without regrets. Enlivened by Holmes’s upbeat narrative and groundbreaking research, Happier Hour teaches you how small changes can have an enormous impact, helping you feel less overwhelmed, more present, and more satisfied with your life overall. It all starts by transforming just one hour into a happier hour.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore
Date: Saturday 10th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/cassie-holmes-september-10-author-signing
Saturday Afternoon Poetry & Deep Critique Workshop – Online Event Via Zoom
Join us at Saturday Afternoon Poetry online for a Deep Critique Workshop led by G. T. Foster, and submit up to three poems for SPECTRUM: September Song, per instructions given at site.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Skylight Treehouse Presents: Sally Deng & Warrior Princess at Skylight – In-Person Children’s Event
Join us for a children’s event to hear author Sally Deng, in conversation with Marcelo Veredad, introduce her children’s book, Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun.
Just like the fourteen brothers that came before her, Khutulun, princess of her tribe, learned from an early age how to ride horseback, shoot arrows at full gallop and, most importantly, to wrestle. But as she grew older, her people wondered why their beloved princess had not yet married. So Khutulun vowed to marry any man that could defeat her at wrestling. Though she remained undefeated, Khutulun felt duty bound to throw a match to end the rumors and restore honor to her family. But when the day arrives, Khutulun’s heart is torn. In the heat of battle, would she–could she–make the decision to become a wife and not a warrior?
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Saturday 10th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Rasheed Newson, with TJ Brady, & My Government Means to Kill Me at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author Rasheed Newson, in conversation with TJ Brady, to discuss his book, My Government Means to Kill Me: A Novel.
A queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young gay Black man in 1980s New York City, from the television drama writer and producer of The Chi, Narcos, and Bel-Air.
Rasheed Newson is an author, a television drama writer, an executive producer, and a showrunner. My Government Means to Kill Me is his debut novel.
Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, Earl “Trey” Singleton III leaves his overbearing parents and their expectations behind by running away to New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/rasheed-newson-discusses-my-government-means-to-kill-me
Obsidian Tongues Open Mic Night & James Coates Book Launch at Café con Libros, Pomona – In-Person Event
Join us for Obsidian Tongues Open Mic Night, every 2nd Saturday of the month, where the spoken word is celebrated, and Ceasar hosts! This week’s featured poets include:
James Coates begins his book release tour to promote his new collection, Midnight & Mad Dreams. He is a poet and performer and educator from the Inland Empire. He directs the monthly Be the Change: Social Justice Writing Workshop.
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual writer, educator, cultural commentator, and rezandera from Venezuela. She is the author of two books, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir, 2017. And Uprising / Alzamiento, from Finishing Line Press.
Anastasia Fenald is the author of the debut collection, Help Me, I’m Here: Poems to Myself. Part lonely and raw childhood poems and part ultimate self-love that blooms because of growing up and surviving, this collection is the conversation that people are too afraid to have with themselves.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, $10 cost, and event details.
Where: Cafe con Libros
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 280 W. 2nd St., Pomona, CA 91766
Website: https://cafeconlibrospress.org/event-calendar/
Susan Branch & Distilled Genius: A Collection of LIfe-Changing Quotations at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Susan Branch present her new book, Distilled Genius: A Collection of Life-Changing Quotations.
This is a book of quotations like no other from Susan Branch, the New York Times best-selling author of 16 books since 1986, including Martha’s Vineyard – Isle of Dreams and A Fine Romance – Falling in Love with the English Countryside. Like all of Susan’s books, Distilled Genius is charmingly handwritten, and water colored in Susan’s inimitable style, and, as with her other books, it tells a story. This is not just any quote book, but a forty-year carefully curated collection of quotes from Susan’s lifelong search for deeper meaning, joy, and fulfillment in life and her desire to share from Mark Twain, to the Bhagavad Gita, from Anne Frank, and George Patton, to Marcus Aurelius, and Louisa May Alcott; from Rosa Parks, Abraham Lincoln, Maya Angelou, the Bible, and beyond. Reading about the struggles of others who, often against all odds, made something of their lives, gives us strength, and encourages us to make our own dreams a reality. Life-affirming, clever, poetic, heroic, hilarious, and human hopeful words of wisdom, distilled into one book of Genius for all time. Distilled Genius is arranged in themes, such as “Secrets of Life,” “Writing and Writers,” “Creativity, and “Finding your Dreams,” to name a few; it’s 272 pages of joy, just when we need to be reminded of who we are, where we came from, and what our future can be if we choose it.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details. Tickets are now sold out. Standing room only available.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 11 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
To Aid & Abet: A Reading and Fundraiser for Abortion Access at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join co-sponsor Beyond Baroque to hear a Reading Event of poetry, storytelling, and resources in support of Abortion Access, in partnership with Shout Your Abortion, for reproductive justice.
Readings by bridgette bianca, Briana Muñoz, Lynne Thompson, Karla Lamb, Lisbeth Coiman, Alice Fulmer, Luivette Resto, Sam Chanse, Janine Lum, Shonda Buchanan, Alicia Voegl Sáenz, Cynthia Guardado and more! Mc’ed by writer and organizer Suhasini Yeeda. Keynote speaker, Amelia Bonow, co-founder of Shout Your Abortion, will also be sharing more on the resources SYA has been providing and what community members can do to remain involved.
Amelia Bonow is the founding director of Shout Your Abortion, an organization working to normalize abortion and elevate paths to abortion access regardless of legality. In 2015, Bonow’s abortion disclosure inspired a viral outpouring of abortion stories on social media, receiving front page coverage from The New York Times, LA Times, as well as The New Yorker, ABC’s Nightline, The BBC, Al Jazeera, and CNN. Bonow left her graduate program and began developing SYA into a nationwide movement geared towards creating places for people to discuss their abortions in art, media, and at community events. Bonow also serves on the board of directors of Abortion Care Network, which serves and represents independent abortion providers all over the country.
Alice Fulmer (she/they) is a poet from southern California. After finishing her BA through community college and then at UCLA, she started an English MA/PhD over at UCSB emphasizing in medieval literature, media studies and the history of gender/sexuality. She believes in a world where people of all creeds and identities have equal access to care and autonomy over their bodies. Her debut poetry collection, Faunalia, is out through Gods and Radicals Press this December.
Alicia Vogl Sάenz, born in Los Angeles, is a poet, meditation instructor, and art museum educator who brings her queer and mixed immigrant background to her writing and teaching. Her work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Grand Street, Poets & Writers, Pratik, and Mischief and Other Poetic Strategies. She is the author of the chapbook The Day I Wore the Red Coat and translated poet Mariano Zaro’s book, Tres Letras into English. She is a member of Macondo Writers Workshop, the Lezerati Writer’s Group, and has been in residence at Hedgebrook. Currently, Alicia is working on book of poems and short prose, “Wildlife Lives Here” inspired by Los Angeles as an ecosystem and natural habitat. She blogs at aliciabird.me
Shonda Buchanan is a daughter of mixed bloods, a USC Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities Fellow and a Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles (COLA) Master Artist Fellow, and is the author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian. She serves as President of the Board of Trustees at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center.
Briana Muñoz is a poet, author, Indigenous traditional dancer, and literary event coordinator from Southern California. She is the author of Loose Lips, a full-length poetry collection, published by Prickly Pear Publishing (2019) and of Everything is Returned to the Soil, a bilingual full-length poetry collection, published by FlowerSong Press (2021). She has performed poetry at the UNEAC (The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) by invitation from the International Poetry Festival of Havana, Cuba, the CECUT (The Tijuana Cultural Center) by invitation from the 2015 Festival de Poesia, as well as in Quito, Ecuador by invitation from the XXI Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispanicos.
bridgette bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was released by Writ Large in 2020. When she is not sharing her poetry, she hosts two instagram series, Young, Black, and Tenure-Track where she documents her experiences in higher education and We Be Readin! Wednesdays where she discusses her romance reading obsession! Find her online at @bridgettebianca on instagram and bridgettebianca.com.
Sam Chanse is a theater and tv writer. Recent productions include MONUMENT, OR FOUR SISTERS (A SLOTH PLAY) (Magic Theatre); DISTURBANCE SPECIALIST (NAATCO/The Public Theater’s OUT OF TIME); WHAT YOU ARE NOW (Ensemble Studio Theatre/Civilians), and P.S. (Ars Nova). A past fellow at MacDowell, Sundance, and Djerassi, and recipient of the Lark Venturous Fellowship, she’s also developed work with Ma-Yi and New York Stage and Film, and is published by Kaya Press (Lydia’s Funeral Video) and TCG (The Kilroys List). She currently writes on ABC’s The Good Doctor, is a member of Ma-Yi Writers’ Lab, and is a resident playwright at Neramatists.
Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual poet and educator, and a native Spanish speaker. She has a Masters in Education and over 25 years experience teaching both English as a Second Language and Spanish to children and adults in different settings. Her debut book, I Asked the Blue Heron: A Memoir (Independently published in 2017) narrates her immigration journey. Her first bilingual poetry collection, Uprising / Alzamiento, published by Finishing Line Press in 2021, brings attention to the unprecedented humanitarian crisis in her homeland. She is an active member of several writing communities, Women Who Submit, the Community Literature Initiative, and the Wayward Writers.
Cynthia Guardado is a Salvadorian-American poet and Professor of English at Fullerton College. She is the managing editor of LiveWire, a literary arts magazine at Fullerton College. Her debut poetry collection, ENDEAVOR was published in 2017 by World Stage Press. Cenizas is her latest poetry collection. Cynthia also translated and transcribed interviews with journalist and Cuban exile, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez which were published in The Madrid Conversations (New Orleans Press 2013).
Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of four books of poems, most recently A Tinderbox in Three Acts (BOA Editions, 2022) and Fire Is Not a Country (Northwestern University Press, 2021). A recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency, Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Oprah Daily, POETRY, Academy of American Poets, Hyperallergic, Andscape, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, New Mexico State University, Blue Stoop, and Voices of Our Nations (VONA). She lives in Los Angeles.
Karla Lamb (she/hers) is a multidisciplinary Chicana poet & artist, with work appearing or forthcoming in A Women’s Thing Magazine, The Shallow Ends, Yes Poetry, Word Riot, Coal Hill Review, Fine Print Press, Dream Boy Book Club, & elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology 2019, & translated in Revista La Peste. She co-hosts Charla Cultural, a bilingual podcast centering underrepresented literary artists. Lamb earned an MFA from Carlow University, & is currently working on a full-length manuscript. Lamb lives in Los Angeles with her cat Fulano.
Janine Lim is a multi-disciplinary artist currently living in Los Angeles, California, whose work has been featured in YO! Youth Outlook Magazine, The Bold Italic, Light Bringer’s Literature for Life magazine, and the Prairie Schooner. In 2021, she was selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the Periplus Collective Fellowship, a mentorship program for emerging BIPOC writers. She is currently focusing her creative efforts in literary fiction exploring themes of the Philippine diaspora, motherhood, generational trauma, magic, and the effect of the internet on the youth.
Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, a mother of 3 revolutionary humans, a Wonder Woman fan, and a middle school English teacher. She was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico but proudly raised in the Bronx. She is a CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her two books of poetry Unfinished Portrait and Ascension have been published by Tía Chucha Press. Her third poetry collection Living on Islands Not Found on Map, published by FlowerSong Press, won the 2022 Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award at the International Latino Book Awards. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley.
In 2021, Lynne Thompson was appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. She is the author of Start With a Small Guitar and Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Book Award and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award, and Fretwork, winner of the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize in 2018. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in New York Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Massachusetts Review and the 2020 Best American Poetry, among others. Thompson sits on the Boards of Cave Canem and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
LA native, Pam Ward just released her poetry book BETWEEN GOOD MEN & NO MAN AT ALL, World Stage Press, 2022. She’s published two novels, WANT SOME GET SOME, and BAD GIRLS BURN SLOW, Kensington. A UCLA graduate, recipient of a California Arts Council Fellow, a Pushcart Poetry nominee, Pam has published in Calyx, Voices of Leimert Park and the LA Times. She’s currently working on a novel about the jazz of Central Ave and the Black Dahlia Murder, an event that happened in Pam’s own backyard. http://www.pamwardwriter.com
Suhasini Yeeda is a first-generation queer Indian American from Dallas, Texas. Her work can be found at Ms. Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Indian Review, Madcap Review, Packingtown Review, and the Arroyo Seco Press Anthology Redshift 5. Suhasini is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a one-time nominee for The Best American Short Stories and Best of the Net. She is the owner of NITI Communications, an independent consultancy dedicated to uplifting QTBIPOC small businesses and creatives. She holds her MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Texas Wesleyan University. Suhasini is a 2021 California Arts Council Fellow. She is looking forward to her residencies at Dorland Arts Colony and Yefe Nof this fall, where she’ll HOPEFULLY finish her first book.
NOTE: See site for tickets, costs, and event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice CA 90291
Cellar Door Book Club & Hell of a Book: A Novel at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join the Cellar Door Book Club for a discussion of this month’s selection, Hell of a Book: A Novel, by author Jason Mott.
In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Create Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/cellar-door-book-club-hell-book
David Milch, with Special Guests, & Life’s Work: A Memoir at Diesel Bookstore, Brentwood – In-Person Event
Join Diesel Bookstore to hear David Milch, in conversation with special guests, discuss and sign his book, Life’s Work: A Memoir.
Betting on racehorses and stealing booze at eight years old, mentored by Robert Penn Warren and excoriated by Richard Yates at twenty-one, Milch never did anything by half. He got into Yale Law School only to be expelled for shooting out streetlights with a shotgun. He paused his studies at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to manufacture acid in Cuernavaca. He created and wrote some of the most lauded television series of all time, made a family, and pursued sobriety, then lost his fortune betting horses just as his father had taught him.
Like Milch’s best screenwriting, Life’s Work explores how chance encounters, self-deception, and luck shape the people we become, and wrestles with what it means to have felt and caused pain, even and especially with those we love, and how you keep living. It is both a master class on Milch’s unique creative process, and a distinctive, revelatory memoir from one of the great American writers, in what may be his final dispatch to us all.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Diesel Bookstore
Date: Sunday 11t h
Time: 2 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/David-Milch-Lifes-Work-september-11-Author-signing
Slow Lightning Lit Open Mic Presents: Ellen Webre & Gustavo Hernandez at The Book Jewel Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join curator Peggy Dobreer for the Slow Lightning Lit Open Mic and literary reading event, offered every 2nd Sunday of the month. Come early to sign up or RSVP to assure a spot at adhocink@yahoo.com and come out to hear Ellen Webre and Gustavo Hernandez, our featured readers
Gustavo Hernandez is the author of the poetry collection Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press). He holds a degree in creative writing from California State University Long Beach and is a poetry editor for The Cortland Review. His poems have been published in Reed, Acentos Review, Sonora Review and other publications. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico and lives in Southern California.
Ellen Webre is a Taiwanese-American poet, currently acting as a social media marketing specialist for Moon Tide Press. She a co-host of Two Idiots Peddling Poetry, and an editor for Freezeray Magazine. Her debut book, A Burning Lake of Paper Suns, was released in October 2021 with Moon Tide Press.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Book Jewel Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/453153906690304/
Fantasy Romance Book Club & Youngblood at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us for our Fantasy Romance Book Club to discuss Youngblood, by Sasha Laurens.
Bookseller Taylor C. leads The Ripped Bodice’s fantasy and paranormal romance book club! If witches, vampires, ghosts, and other worlds are your jam, please join them!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 3 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Skylight Treehouse Presents: Vivian Krishman & Kula in the Sky at Skylight – In-Person Children’s Event
Join us for a children’s event to hear author Vivian Krishnan, introduce her children’s book, Kula in the Sky.
Kula and Yasi are sisters who have spent their whole world together, but when Yasi enters womanhood and her responsibilities change, she no longer has time to play with her little sister and Kula feels left alone in the dark. Kula goes on an emotional journey with her clever bat friend as she realizes that even though things will never go back to the way they used to be, it doesn’t mean she is less loved by the ones close to her.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Skylight Bookstore
Date: Sunday 11th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-treehouse-vivian-krishnan-presents-kula-sky
Second Sunday Poetry Series: Kristine Rae Anderson & Alex M. Frankelat Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building – In-Person Event
Join us for the Second Sunday Poetry Reading Series to hear Kristine Rae Anderson and host Alex M. Frankel at Studio Theatre at St. Denis Building.
Kristine Rae Anderson is author of the chapbook Field of Everlasting (Main Street Rag, 2022). Her poetry has appeared in American Writers Review, About Place Journal, Copperfield Review, and Reed, among other publications. She has received Tomales Bay and Fishtrap fellowships as well as first place award in the Mary C. Mohr Poetry Contest (Southern Indiana Review). Currently, Kristine lives with her family and three-legged rescue dog in Southern California, where she writes and volunteers as a literacy tutor for children and adults.
Alex M. Frankel left Spain in the 1990s to settle in Southern California. In addition to poetry, he writes plays and nonfiction. During his youth he mostly wrote short stories, many of which were eventually published in little magazines. After a long delay, his (perhaps only?) short story collection, Flame at Door and Raisin, has come out. Kirkus has praised it: “Powerfully haunting tales of love, betrayal, and heartbreak in the Europe of decades past.”
NOTE: See site for guidelines and event details.
Where: Studio Theatre at. St. Denis Building
Date: Sunday 11th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 3433 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles, CA 90068
Website: https://www.secondsundaypoetry.com/index.html
Book Launch: Anarchy at the Circle K, by Patrick O’Neil at Stories Books & Cafe – In-Person Event
Join Stories Books & Café for the book release of Anarchy At The Circle K: On The Road With Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, Subhumans and…Heroin by Patrick O’Neil, who will be in conversation with Todd Taylor. Featuring Iris Berry of Punk Hostage Press.
Anarchy At The Circle K is literally a punk tour-de-force. An in your face gut-wrenching, and at times humorous, tale of Patrick O’Neil’s stint as a roadie, road manager, and drug addict during punk’s heyday of the 1980’s. Crisscrossing the highways of America, on tour with such influential punk bands as Dead Kennedys, TSOL, Flipper, and Subhumans. O’Neil writes a brutally honest and no holds barred memoir depicting the sleepless nights behind the wheel, never-ending string of decrepit night clubs, a plethora of ruthless promoters, depressing dressing rooms, copious amounts of cheap beer, clandestine drug buys, riotous crowds, intense violence, inadvertent OD’s, and seedy motel one night stands. This book is an insider’s look at life on the road from back in the day and you’re along for the ride.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Stories Books & Cafe
Date: Sunday the 11th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Los Angeles Literature 