MOIRA First Press Reading Series & Chloe Martinez at Woodbury University – In-Person Event
The olive is among the oldest known cultivated trees in the world, grown before the written language was invented. In California, there are many isolated trees or fragments of old groves, such as the trees that still stand on the Woodbury campus. Traditionally, after harvest, oil was pressed in screw or hydraulic presses. The paste was subjected to increasingly high pressures with subsequent degradation in the flavor of the oil. Thus, the “first press” of oil was considered the most flavorful and desirable. ~ the Olive Oil Source, 2018.
Chloe Martinez will be the featured guest at this second event in this year’s series. is a poet and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College. See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines and details.
Where: Woodbury University
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 7500 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank, CA 91504
Website: https://www.moriaonline.com/first-press-reading-series
Book Club Bonanza and Indigenous Voices: YA Read via Central Library, LAPL – Online Teen Event
This Book Club for teens will read a YA fiction book to read to celebrate Indigenous Voices month, and today will discuss read-alikes on the book(s) selected.
NOTE: See site for link and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-bonanza-indigenous-voices-0
LiveTalks L.A. Presents: Ken Burns, with Lisa Napoli, & Our America: A Photographic History – Online Event
From one of our most treasured filmmakers, a pictorial history of America comes a stunning and moving collection of some of Ken Burns’s favorite photographs, with an introduction by Burns, and an essay by longtime MoMA photography curator Sarah Hermanson Meister.
Ken Burns, the producer and director of numerous film series, including The Vietnam War, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History, and The War, founded his own documentary film company, Florentine Films, in 1976. His landmark film The Civil War was the highest-rated series in the history of American public television, and his work has won numerous prizes, including the Emmy and Peabody Awards, and two Academy Award nominations. He lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.
Lisa Napoli has had a long career in journalism, including staff reporting jobs at public radio’s Marketplace, the pioneering New York Times CyberTimes, and as a columnist/correspondent at MSNBC. She is the author, most recently, of Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR. Her previous books include Up All Night: Ted Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-Hour News; a biography of NPR benefactor, the McDonald’s heiress, Joan Kroc, Ray & Joan, and a memoir about media’s impact on the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, Radio Shangri-La. She is also the co-creator of the Bio Podcast.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Live Talks Los Angeles
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 6 pm PT
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/ken-burns/
Sam Wasson, with Alexander Payne, & Hollywood: The Oral History at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Sam Wasson, in conversation with Alexander Payne, will present his book, Hollywood: The Oral History.
This book is the real story of Hollywood as told by such luminaries as Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep, Harold Lloyd, and nearly four hundred others, assembled from the American Film Institute’s treasure trove of interviews, reveals a fresh history of the American movie industry from its beginnings to today.
From the archives of the American Film Institute comes a unique picture of what it was like to work in Hollywood from its beginnings to its present day. Gleaned from nearly three thousand interviews, involving four hundred voices from the industry, all researched by film scholar Jeanine Basinger and author Sam Wasson.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/book-soup-presents-sam-wasson
Reading & Signing: Ryan Lee Wong & Which Side Are You On? at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Ryan Lee Wong will present and discuss his most recent book, Which Side Are You On?
In this novel, twenty-one-year-old Reed is fed up. Angry about the killing of a Black man by an Asian American NYPD officer, he wants to drop out of college and devote himself to the Black Lives Matter movement. But would that truly bring him closer to the moral life he seeks?
In a series of intimate, charged conversations, his mother—once the leader of a Korean-Black coalition—demands that he rethink his outrage, and along with it, what it means to be an organizer, a student, an ally, an American, and a son. As Reed zips around his hometown of Los Angeles with his mother, searching and questioning, he faces a revelation that will change everything.
Inspired by his family’s roots in activism, Ryan Lee Wong offers an extraordinary debut novel for readers of Anthony Veasna So, Rachel Kushner, and Michelle Zauner: a book that is as humorous as it is profound, a celebration of seeking a life that is both virtuous and fun, an ode to mothering and being mothered.
Ryan Lee Wong was born and raised in Los Angeles, lived for two years at Ancestral Heart Zen Temple, and currently lives in Brooklyn, where he is the administrative director of Brooklyn Zen Center. Previously, he served as program director for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and managing director of Kundiman. He has organized exhibitions and written extensively on the Asian American movements of the 1970s. He holds an MFA in fiction from Rutgers University–Newark. Which Side Are You On is his first book.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-which-side-are-you-on-by-ryan-lee-wong-tickets-461604039107
Shannon Messenger Meet and Greet for Stellarlune Book Tour at Once Upon a Time Bookstore at Highlander Auditorium – In-Person YA & MG Event
Shannon Messenger will present the next full-length YA novel in her Keeper of the Lost Cities series, Stellarlune.
In this ninth book in the series, Sophie and her friends discover the true meaning of power and evil. Her friends are divided and scattered, and the Black Swan wants Sophie to focus on their projects. But her instincts are leading her somewhere else.
Stellarlune—and the mysterious Elysian—might be the key to everything. But finding truth in the Lost Cities always requires sacrifice. And as the Neverseen’s plans sharpen into terrifying focus, it appears that everyone has miscalculated. The Lost Cities’ greatest lie could destroy everything. And in the battle that follows, only one thing is certain: nothing will ever be the same.
Shannon Messenger is the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of the award-winning middle grade series, Keeper of the Lost Cities, as well as the Sky Fall series for young adults. Her books have been featured on multiple state reading lists, published in numerous countries, and translated into many different languages. She lives in Southern California with her family—and an embarrassing number of cats. Find her online at ShannonMessenger.com.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Highlander Auditorium at Upland High School
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 850 North San Antonio Ave., Upland, CA 91786
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/stellarlune
Ana Huang, with Lacey, & The Twisted Series at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
Ana Huang, in conversation with bookstagrammer/booktuber Lacey @laceybooklovers, will discuss her popular Twisted series.
Signed books available in-store.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: Main St. at Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Rabia Chaudry & Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Rabia Chaudry will present and discuss her new book, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom: A Memoir of Food, Fat, and Family.
From the bestselling author and host of the wildly popular Undisclosed podcast, comes a memoir about food, body image, and growing up in a loving but sometimes oppressively concerned Pakistani immigrant family.
At once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695. E. Colorado Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/rabia-chaudry-presents-fatty-fatty-boom-boom
ALOUD Reading Series Presents: Joel Simon & The Infodemic at Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library – In-Person Event
Author Joel Simon, in conversation with directors of the documentary Endangered, Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, will discuss his new book co-authored with Robert Mahoney, The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free.
The Infodemic chronicles the ways in which governments cracked down on dissent and usurped power during the COVID19 pandemic, under the guise of protecting public health. Endangered, produced by Loki Films and Ronan Farrow, tells the story of four journalists confronting violence and tackling misinformation as they fight to report the truth. The discussion is moderated by David Kaye, a law professor and leading free expression expert.
Joel Simon is an author, journalist, and press freedom advocate. He is currently a Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute, also at Columbia. He is the author of four books, including The Infodemic: How Censorship and Lies Made the World Sicker and Less Free, coming on April 26 from Columbia Global Reports. From 2006 until 2021, Joel served as executive director of the Committee to Protect journalists.
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are the co-directors of “Jesus Camp” (Academy Award nominee), “The Boys of Baraka” (Emmy nominee), “12th & Delaware” (Peabody Award winner), “DETROPIA” (Emmy winner), “Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You” (2016 Sundance), “One of Us” (2017 Toronto International Film Festival), and “Love Fraud” (2020 Sundance).
“Endangered” (HBO) is Ewing and Grady’s 6th feature documentary collaboration and will be premiering at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival before airing on HBO June 28th.
David Kaye is a clinical professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, and the former United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression (2014-2020). His 2019 book, Speech Police: The Global Struggle to Govern the Internet (Columbia Global Reports), explores the ways in which companies, governments and activists struggle to define the rules for online expression.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lfla.org/event/the-infodemic-how-censorship-and-lies-made-the-world-sicker-and-less-free/
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)
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online (see site)
Website: https://beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-464290163377
Teen Book Club Event & None Shall Sleep at Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – Online Teen Event
Do you love to read and talk about Young Adult Lit? Join the Palms Library Teen Book Club! We are open to teens ages 13-17 and meet over Zoom.
November 15: None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marner
Happy reading!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/teen-book-club-2
Middle Grade Book Club Event & Eden’s Everdark at Pages: A Bookstore– In-Person MG Event
The Middle Grade Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Eden’s Everdark. by Karen Strong.
This is the tale of a young girl who stumbles into a magical realm ruled by a wicked witch is a haunting and ultimately uplifting middle grade novel about grief, family, and decades-old magic.
Still grieving the loss of her mother, Eden visits Safina Island, her ancestral home, as a healing balm. But when she discovers an old sketchbook that belonged to her mother, she’s haunted by the images she sees drawn there. A creepy mansion covered with roots and leaves. A monstrous dog with dagger-sharp teeth. And a tall woman with wind-blown hair and long, sharp nails who is as beautiful as she is terrifying.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Pages: A Bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/middle-grade-book-club-11
Come Write In! NANOWRIMO Event at John C. Fremont Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Do you NaNo? November is National Novel Writing Month.
If you’re looking for a place to work on your book, join us for silent writing sessions in our community room on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in November.
Note: There will be no event on Thursday, November 24.
Call (323) 962-3521 or email jcfrmt@lapl.org with questions about the event.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: John C. Fremont Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 6121 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/come-write
Three Act Writing Workshop: Matt Sedillo at Eastside Café – In-Person Event
The Three Act Writing Workshop will be presented and led by Matt Sedillo.
All donations will go to the Eastside Café.
Matt Sedillo is an acclaimed political poet, writer and spoken word performer, and is the author of two books: Mowing Leaves of Grass and City on the Second Floor.
NOTE: See site for details. Check to verify.
Where: Eastside Café, El Sereno
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 5469 Huntington Dr. North, Los Angeles, CA 90032
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10162683988554522&set=a.212071394521
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, Nate Lovett and Tony Moore.
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.
Located in the heart of one of LA’s oldest gay clubs, this space promises connection and community for folks across the LGBTQ+ spectrum (and allies!) before the untz untz starts.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Micky’s Nightclub & Bar in West Hollywood (Upstairs)
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 9 pm
Address: 8857 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-mic-mickys-tickets-383607960737?aff=erelpanelorg
Road to Joy Fall Season: Light in Our Hearts & WeHo Reads Event with bridgette bianca, Cassandra Lane, traci kato-kiriyama & Shonda Buchanan at City of West Hollywood: WeHo Reads – Online YouTube Event
Join the City of West Hollywood’s WeHo Reads Road to Joy series to hear four poets read to the theme Light in Our Hearts, featuring:
bridgette bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University and her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Otis College of Art & Design. She has performed her poetry all around Southern California, including features at The World Stage, the Southern California Poetry Festival, Los Angeles Lit Crawl, the Table Lit, LitFest Pasadena, Rapp Saloon, La Palabra, and the un::fade::able Reading Series. She is one half of the literary curating team, Making Room for Black Women, with Sanura Williams of My Lit Box and co-host of the quarterly reading series at the Women’s Center of Creative Work with Nina Rota. bridgette bianca’s work as a writer and an educator seeks to serve the people and moments most forget or ignore. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was released by Writ Large Press in 2020
Cassandra Lane is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA from Antioch University LA. Her stories have appeared in the New York Times’s “Conception” series, the Times-Picayune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. Lane is the author of the collection We Are Bridges (Feminist Press, 2021), and she is also a magazine editor and essay writer at L.A. Parent..
traci kato-kiriyama is the author of Navigating With(out) Instruments (Writ Large Press) and is an award-winning multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary artist, recognized for their work as a writer/performer, theatre deviser, cultural producer, community organizer, and audiobook narrator.
As a storyteller and Artivist, traci kato-kiriyama is grounded in collaborative process, collective self-determination, and art+community as intrinsically tied and a critical means toward connection and healing. She is a performer & principal writer of PULLproject Ensemble, two-time NET recipient; NEFA 2021-22 awardee for their show TALES OF CLAMOR
traci kato-kiriyama has presented in hundreds of venues for over 25 years as a writer, actor, poet, speaker, guest lecturer, facilitator, Artist-in-Residence, and organizing / arts & culture consultant
Shonda Buchanan is the author of five books, including the award-winning memoir, Black Indian. Her first collection of poetry, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians? was nominated for the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the Library of Virginia Book Awards.
Shonda Buchanan is the President of the Board of Trustees for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. A national and international lecturer and workshop leader, she received an MFA from Antioch University and a MA and BA in English from Loyola Marymount University where she is a Senior Lecturer. She is also an instructor at Alma University’s Creative Writing Program.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: WeHo Reads: Light in Our Hearts
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online YouTube Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/weho-reads-2022-road-to-joy-72109 or https://www.weho.org/community/arts-and-culture/literary-arts/weho-reads
Classic Detectives Book Club: The Red House at Cellar Door Books – In-Person Event
The Classic Detectives Book Club will discuss its monthly selection, The Red House, by A.A. Milne.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Books
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., Riverside CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/classic-detectives-book-club-red-house-mystery
Village Well Book Club & Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Village Well Books & Coffee will hold a monthly book club meeting and discuss the November selection: Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett.
Spanning five decades, Commonwealth explores how a chance encounter reverberates through the lives of the four parents and six children involved. Spending summers together in Virginia, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.
Village Well invites interested participants to discuss the book, dive into what we loved (or didn’t), and meet fellow book lovers!
To join this monthly book club, email events@villagewell.com to sign up. Then just grab a copy of the book and get to reading!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm- 7:30 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/21052
Mark Schiff & Why Not?: Lessons on Comedy, Courage, and Chutzpah at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Mark Schiff will present and discuss his book, Why Not?: Lessons on Comedy, Courage, and Chutzpah
From master comedian Mark Schiff, a long-time touring partner of Jerry Seinfeld, this book is a hilarious account of decades of foolery with comedy and acting legends and how he honed his mensch skills in all of life’s arenas. With wit and wisdom, Mark reminds us that no matter the troubles at-hand, the show must always go on.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/mark-schiff
Author Chat Series: Whiteout with Six Authorsat Salt Eaters Bookshop – In-Person Event / SOLD OUT
The Salt Eaters Author Chat Series hosts six acclaimed authors in conversation:
Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, & Nicola Yoon.
This event is celebrating the release of their latest novel, Whiteout (Harper Collins), on sale November 8th. The evening will include a reading, discussion, and book signing to follow.
In WHITEOUT, Atlanta is blanketed in snow from a storm of colossal proportions just before Christmas. A group of Black teens, who reflect a diverse range of identities and experiences, band together to help a friend pull off the most epic apology of her life. With the city frozen in place and everyone sprinkled across the city, will the teens be able to make it happen?
Black joy and cozy romance thrum with thrilling anticipation in WHITEOUT, evoking the magic of wintertime set against the landmarks and distinctive culture of Atlanta.
About the authors:
Dhonielle Clayton is the New York Times bestselling author of the Belles series and The Marvellers and the coauthor of The Rumor Game and the Tiny Pretty Things duology, which was made into a Netflix original series. She is COO of the nonprofit We Need Diverse Books and the owner of Cake Creative.
Tiffany D. Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of Grown; Allegedly; Monday’s Not Coming, a Walter Dean Myers Honor Book and Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award winner; Let Me Hear a Rhyme; White Smoke; and Santa in the City.
Nic Stone is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of William C. Morris Award finalist Dear Martin, Dear Justyce, Odd One Out, Jackpot, Clean Getaway, Fast Pitch, and the Shuri novel series with Marvel Comics.
Angie Thomas’s award-winning, acclaimed debut novel, The Hate U Give, is a #1 New York Times bestseller and major motion picture from Fox 2000. She is also the author of On the Come Up and Concrete Rose.
Ashley Woodfolk worked in children’s book publishing before becoming an author full-time. Her novels include the highly acclaimed The Beauty that Remains and When You Were Everything, the Flyy Girls series, and Nothing Burns as Bright as You.
Nicola Yoon is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Everything, Everything and The Sun Is Also a Star, both of which have been adapted into major motion pictures, as well as Instructions for Dancing. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Honor Book recipient, and a Coretta Scott King–John Steptoe New Talent Award winner. She’s also co-publisher of Joy Revolution, a Penguin Random House young adult imprint focused on love stories starring people of color.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Salt Eaters Bookshop/SOLD OUT
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 302 East Queen St., Inglewood, CA 90301
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/author-chat-series-whiteout-tickets-439974183627
At Skylight: Meg Howrey, with Jillian Lauren, & They’re Going to Love You at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Author Meg Howrey, in conversation with Jillian Lauren, will present and discuss her new book They’re Going to Love You.
This book is a magnetic tale of betrayal, art, and ambition, set in the world of professional ballet, New York City during the AIDS crisis, and present-day Los Angeles. It’s a gripping and gorgeously written novel of heartbreaking intensity. With psychological precision and a masterfully revealed secret at its heart, it asks what it takes to be an artist in America, and the price of forgiveness, of ambition, and of love.
Meg Howrey is a former professional ballet dancer and actress. She is the author of the novels The Wanderers, The Cranes Dance, and Blind Sight, and a coauthor of the bestselling novel City of Dark Magic and of City of Lost Dreams, published under the pen name Magnus Flyte. Her nonfiction has appeared in Vogue and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She currently lives in Los Angeles.
Jillian Lauren is a writer, storyteller, and advocate for victims of violent crime. She is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoirs Everything You Ever Wanted and Some Girls: My Life in a Harem and the novel Pretty. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. She was the only journalist to extensively interview Samuel Little, the most prolific serial killer in American history, chronicled in Joe Berlinger’s hit STARZ documentary, Confronting A Serial Killer. Michael Connelly’s podcast Murder Book: The Women who Brought Down Samuel Little. Her book Behold The Monster: Confronting a Killer is coming 4/23 from Source Books. Jillian writes essays and articles, some of which have been in New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Magazine, Elle, and Salon. She tells live stories with The Moth and gave a Ted talk about identity and adoption. Jillian is married to Weezer bass player Scott Shriner, and they live in Los Angeles with their two sons.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Robby Kreiger, with Jeff Alulis, & Set the Night on Fire at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Robby Kreiger, in conversation with Jeff Alulis, will present and discuss his new book, Set the Night on Fire: Living, Dying ad Playing Guitar with The Doors (Paperback).
Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after fifty years, The Doors’ notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight.
Through a series of vignettes, Robby Krieger takes readers back to where it all happened: the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar; the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust; his parents’ living room where his first songwriting sessions with Jim Morrison took place; the empty bars and backyard parties where The Doors played their first awkward gigs; the studios where their iconic songs were recorded; and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. Set the Night on Fire is packed with never-before-told stories from The Doors’ most vital years and offers a fresh perspective on the most infamous moments of the band’s career.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695. E. Colorado Ave., Pasadena, CA 91101
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with C.C. Arshagra – Virtual Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest C.C. Arshagra.
C.C. Arshagra is the author of author of ‘The Open Mike Poems’ ‘Book 1. Scared Sacred’, ‘Book 2. Death of an Ego’, and’ Book 3. What Manner of Character’. A series from the turn of the century. Now in the process of releasing the Twentieth Anniversary Edition of the 3-part series as one volume. “The Open Microphone; poem.”
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: http://poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html
The Sunless Sea Open Mic: Poetry and Spoken Word Show – In-Person Event
The Sunless Sea Open Mic: Poetry and Spoken Word Show is offered every week at the Unurban Coffee House. Hosted by DeForest Wright, all are invited to attend.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Unurban Coffee House
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica 90405
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699147113818899
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 line up 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 15th
Time: 9 pm – 11 pm
Address: 544 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/ChLUBSRPCFb/ or https://www.dapoetrylounge.com/admission
Coffee Time Book Club Event & Demon Copperhead at Pages: A bookstore– In-Person Event
The Coffee Time Book Club tends to read new release literary fiction, and will discuss this month’s selection, Demon Copperhead. by Barbara Kingsolver.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Pages: A Bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 10 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/coffee-time-book-club-11
Book Club Discussion: This Tender Land at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Granada Hills Branch Library hosts an online Book Club discussion of Theis Tender Land, by William Kent Krueger, in honor of Native American Heritage Month.
This novel is the epic story of four orphans on a life-changing odyssey during the Great Depression, who escape from the Lincoln School in 1932, where hundreds of Native American Children, forcibly separated from their families to be educated, will journey into the unknown and cross paths with others who are adrift, from struggling farmers and traveling faith healers to displaced families and lost souls of all kinds.
Please email grnhls@lapl.org for the invitation link.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-discussion-tender-land
NANOWRIMO Write-In Event at Venice Memorial Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month.
Need time and space to write during NaNoWriMo? The Venice Library is providing two hours of weekly space, just for you! We may write straight through or do sprints of 25 minutes at a time.
Open to all. Refreshments will be provided.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Venice-Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 3:30 pm
Address: 501 S. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/nanowrimo-write
Good Trouble Reading Group: Haiku and Tanka Poetry at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – On Event
Dr. Andrea Liss hosts via Zoom the next Good Trouble Reading Group. Participants will read and discuss a selection of haiku and tanka by contemporary Japanese women poets from the anthologies A Long Rainy Season and Other Side River.
Email eden@lapl.org and we’ll send you the link to read the poetry selection online, as well as the Zoom link to attend.
The Good Trouble Reading Group shares books that engage themes of social justice with love and family at their core. Dr. Andrea Liss is Professor Emerita of Visual Culture and Cultural Theory at California State University San Marcos and a local Echo Park resident. Her teaching and research focus on feminist visual culture and writing, visual art, and photography related to historical events and representations of social justice, particularly through the work of African American women.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/good-trouble-reading-group-haiku-and-tanka-poetry
Graphic Novel Book Club & The Tryout at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Graphic Novel Book Club is best for ages 9-12 and it reads graphic novels. This is a discussion-based club. Participants should come prepared to share their thoughts about that meeting’s book choice.
This month’s selection to be discussed is The Tryout, by author Christina Soontomvat and illustrator Joanna Cacao.
Hilarious and highly relatable, The Tryout by two-time Newbery Honoree Christina Soontornvat and shining new talent Joanna Cacao will make you laugh, cry, and cheer!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details. Limited space. No drop-ins.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/graphic-novel-club-tryout-christina-soontornvat
NANOWRIMO Write-In Event at the Fabulous Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month.
Join us in person as we celebrate NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month) by offering weekly “Write In” sessions in our cool new study rooms! These small collaboration-friendly spaces feature wi-fi, outlets, comfy chairs, and whiteboards. Light refreshments will be served along with literary inspiration. Attendees will also receive some library swag! What more could an aspiring novelist ask? Space is limited, so email fiction@lapl.org to register today.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Literature & Fiction Study Rooms
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/nanowrimo-write-ins-fabulous-central-library
Sarah Fawn Montgomery & JJ Anselmi Discuss their Latest Releases at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Sarah Fawn Montgomery and JJ Anselmi will present and discuss their most recent books: Halfway From Home and Out Here on Our Own, respectively.
In Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s book, Halfway From Home, she This book excavates the stories and scars we bury, unearthing literal and metaphorical childhood time capsules and treasures. This book grieves a vanishing world while offering—amidst emotional and environmental collapse—ways to discover hope, healing, and home
In JJ Anselmis’ book, Out Here on Our Own, he tells the story of Rock Springs, Wyoming, a mining boomtown with a history of brutal racial violence, widespread addiction, prostitution, and a staggeringly high per-capita suicide rate–yet a place that has proved remarkably resilient. Anselmi stitches together an array of original interviews with people who’ve seen those things firsthand, tracing the boom-bust trajectory of a town known for its corruption, vice, and violence. Amid such horrors as the massacre of Chinese miners in 1885 and the ongoing methamphetamine and opioid epidemics, the town has fought hard to keep its identity of rugged individualism intact.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/sarah-fawn-montgomery-and-jj-anselmi
Book Talk: Natasha Lance Rogoff & Muppets in Moscow at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Natasha Lance Rogoff will present and discuss her most recent book, Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Sesame Street in Russia.
This book brings this gripping tale to life. Amidst bombings, assassinations, and a military takeover of the production office, the author and the talented Moscow team of artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and puppeteers remained determined to bring laughter, learning, and a new way of seeing the world to children in Russia, Ukraine and across the former Soviet empire. With a sharp wit and compassion for her colleagues, Lance Rogoff observes how cultural clashes colored nearly every aspect of the production—from the show’s educational framework to writing comedy to the new Russian Muppets themselves—despite the team’s common goal.
Brimming with insight and nuance, Muppets in Moscow skillfully explores the post-Soviet societal tensions that continue to thwart the Russian people’s efforts to create a better future for their country. More than just a story of a children’s show, this book provides a valuable perspective of Russia’s people, their culture, and their complicated relationship with the West that remains relevant even today.
Natasha Lance Rogoff is an award-winning television director, producer, and writer of more than 25 years. Her previous credits include executive producer of Ulitsa Sezam (Sesame Street in Russia) and producer of Plaza Sesamo (Sesame Street in Mexico.) After studying at the Leningrad State University, she wrote about Soviet underground culture, as well as one of the earliest exposé of Soviet government persecution of the Russian LGBTQ community in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her 1985 film, Rock Around the Kremlin, about underground rock artists, aired on ABC TV’s “20/20. Lance Rogoff embedded herself with hardline Russian communist fascists for two years, filming “Russia for Sale” which aired on ABC’s Nightline with Ted Koppel the night of the failed 1991 coup that ended the Soviet Union. She is now an Associate in the Art, Film and Visual Studies Department at Harvard University and lives between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
LA Times Book Club: Percival Everett & Dr. No at The Autry Museum – In-Person Event
Percival Everett, in conversation with LA Times columnist LZ Granderson, will discuss his latest novel, Dr, No, a supervillain caper about “nothing.” Times reviewer Lorraine Berry describes the book as a “cross-genre hybrid featuring a cast of characters out of a 007 novel.”
A USC English professor and Guggenheim fellow, Everett is the author of more than 30 books, including his recent book, The Trees, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Everett writes books that play with genre, language and our assumptions about race and gender.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Autry Museum
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles CA 90027
KPCC’s One for the Books Literary Series, with Traci Thomas at Crawford Family Forum – In-Person Event
KPCC presents One for the Books, a new literary series hosted by Traci Thomas, creator of The Stacks podcast.
At the first-ever One for the Books event Traci will be talking about how we read and how we should be talking about what we read with guest Sam Sanders (he/him), the host of Vulture’s Into It podcast and Danyel Smith (she/her), former editor-in-chief Vibe magazine and author of Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop.
And since this isn’t your momma’s book club, there’s no required reading, but you can get a signed copy of Danyel’s book in advance or at the event from our partner bookseller, Reparations Club.
Traci Thomas is an avid reader and book lover who created the acclaimed podcast, The Stacks, in order to talk about books and the ways they shape our cultural understanding of race, gender, politics, and what it means to be alive. Weekly guests range from academic thought leaders to bestselling authors, from actors to politicians and more; you’ll find Ibram X. Kendi, Angelina Jolie, Brit Bennett, Desus and Mero, Quentin Tarantino, and many more on The Stacks. Traci also writes a monthly bookish advice column on Shereads.com. Traci lives in LA with her husband aka Mr. Stacks, and her twins, the Mini Stacks. You can find her on Instagram @thestackspod. Sam Sanders is the host of Into It, the flagship culture podcast from Vulture which breaks down the culture and entertainment stories we can’t stop thinking about. He also hosts the podcast Vibe Check from Stitcher.
Sanders joined Vulture from NPR, where he was a correspondent and the host of the award-winning radio program and podcast, It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders. Prior to It’s Been a Minute, Sanders was a member of NPR’s election unit, where he covered the intersection of culture, pop culture, and politics in the 2016 election, and embedded with the Bernie Sanders campaign for several months. He was also one of the original co-hosts of NPR’s Politics Podcast, which launched in 2015. Sanders joined NPR in 2009 as a Kroc Fellow, and held many roles within the organization including as a field producer and breaking news reporter.
Danyel Smith is an author, award-winning journalist, and producer. She’s the creator and host the Spotify-exclusive Black Girl Songbook, a music and talk show that centers black women in music. A 2021 Yaddo Fellow, Danyel was a senior producer and editor at ESPN, and a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, where she co-founded HRDCVR, an innovative hardcover culture magazine. In addition to writing for NPR, The California Sunday Magazine, The New Yorker, Teen Vogue, and The New York Times, Danyel has served as editor of Billboard, editor at large at Time Inc., and editor in chief of Vibe. The author of two novels—More Like Wrestling (2003), and Bliss (2005)—Danyel lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Elliott Wilson.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Crawford Family Forum The & KPCC
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105
Website: https://www.kpcc.org/kpcc-upcoming-events/event/one-for-the-books
Jules Blaine Davis & The Kitchen Healer at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Jules Blaine Davis presents and discusses her book, The Kitchen Healer: The Journey to Becoming You.
With The Kitchen Healer, Jules Blaine Davis invites you into the messy beauty of her healing kitchen and asks, “What are you really hungry for?”
Jules teaches that how we were or weren’t nourished in our childhood kitchens shapes every aspect of our lives today, and so it is through the kitchen that we find healing from the stress, overwhelm, and trauma that so many of us carry.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/jules-blaine-davis-discusses-kitchen-healer
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 16th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.theworldstage.org/events.html
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop a 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: Beyond Baroque
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-465702347257
Flight School Open Mic at Playground Hookah Lounge – In-Person Event
Flight School Open Mic is offered every Wednesday.
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 16th
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-362733063357?aff=erelpanelorg
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry & Andy Sanchez 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 Andy Sanchez
The format is to welcome a featured poet for a reading, and an Open Mic reading. Tonight’s featured reader is Andy Sanchez.
Andres (Andy) Sanchez is a queer/trans Mexican poet, advocate, and traveler. He migrated to the U.S. at the age of 5 and grew up in Southern California and Las Vegas, NV. Andrés has been featured in over a dozen open-mics in the LA area and has hosted workshops, talks, and readings for diverse communities. Their first collection of poems, This Body, was picked up for publication by World Stage Press and it was released on December 16, 2020. This Body remains on the popular list on the World Stage Press website. Andres is currently a poetry teacher for the Community Literature Initiative.
$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 16th
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/451590323507832
Celebration of Chicana/Latina Poets: Readings at Santa Ana College – In-Person Event
A Poetry Reading & Discussion Celebrating Chicana/Latina Poets will feature:
Benda Vaca is the author and publisher of Riot of Roses, and the curator of several literary reading events in Southern California.
Iris De Anda is the author of Codeswitch, and most recently Roots of Redemption: You Have No Right to Remain Silent.
Masiel M. Corona Santoss is the writer of Canto Revolucionario.
Jessica Wilson-Cardenas is the author of Serious Longing and is the founder of the Los Angeles Poet Society.
Discussion and book signing to follow reading.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Santa Ana College, Dunlap Hall D106
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 1530 W.17th St at Bristol St. Santa Ana, CA 92206
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=6010747238965153&set=a.539777892728809
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month Write-Ins at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo.org is a nonprofit writing group that encourages writers worldwide to take the plunge and write the first 50,000 words of a novel in November. Join fellow writers from the community to discuss writing and work on your novel. Writers of all ages welcome!
We’ll be meeting in the library meeting room, 2011 Sunset Blvd. Enter through the parking lot on the Alvarado Street side.
Join fellow writers from the community as we write our novels. This is all about writing, so no reading or editing during the month.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 2011 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/national-novel-writing-month-write-ins
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month Write-In at Brentwood Branch Library, LAPL– In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo’s challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Are you ready to brave the page?
Join fellow writers from the community as we write our novels. This is all about writing, so no reading or editing during the month.
These Write-In events are all about giving you the time and space to write! Writers of all ages are welcome. We’ll be meeting in the library’s community room upstairs. We’ll have writing sprints (short, focused time to write) and plenty of encouragement for you.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Donald Bruce Kauffman – Brentwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 5 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 11820 San Vicente Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/nanowrimo-national-novel-writing-month-write-0
Come Write In: National Novel Writing Month Write-In at John C. Fremont Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo’s challenge is to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. Are you ready to brave the page?
If you’re looking for a place to work on your book, join us for silent writing sessions in our community room on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in November.
Note: There will be no event on Thursday, November 24.
Call (323) 962-3521 or email jcfrmt@lapl.org with questions about the event.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: John C. Fremont Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 5 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 6121 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/come-write
Cover to Cover Book Club & Born a Crime at Mid-Valley Regional Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The Cover-to-Cover Book Club will read and discuss this month’s selection, the memoir Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah.
Copies of each month’s selection will be available for check out at the Reference Desk. New members are always welcome!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Mid-Valley Regional Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 16244 Nordhoff St., North Hills, CA 91343
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/cover-cover-book-club
Mystery Book Club: The Paragon Hotel at Cellar Door Books – In-Person Event
The Mystery Book Club will discuss its monthly selection, The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye.
In this mystery a gun moll with a knack for disappearing flees from Prohibition-era Harlem to Portland’s Paragon Hotel.
The year is 1921, and “Nobody” Alice James has just arrived in Oregon with a bullet wound, a lifetime’s experience battling the New York Mafia, and fifty thousand dollars in illicit cash. She befriends Max, a black Pullman porter who reminds her achingly of home and who saves Alice by leading her to the Paragon Hotel. But her unlikely sanctuary turns out to be an all-black hotel in a Jim Crow city, and its lodgers seem unduly terrified of a white woman on the premises.
As she meets the churlish Dr. Pendleton, the stately Mavereen, and the club chanteuse Blossom Fontaine, she understands their dread. The Ku Klux Klan has arrived in Portland in fearful numbers–burning crosses, electing officials, infiltrating newspapers, and brutalizing blacks. And only Alice and her new Paragon “family” are searching for a missing mulatto child who has mysteriously vanished into the woods. To untangle the web of lies and misdeeds around her, Alice will have to answer for her own past, too.
Lyndsay Faye is the author of five critically acclaimed books: Jane Steele, which was nominated for an Edgar for Best Novel; Dust and Shadow; The Gods of Gotham; also Edgar-nominated; Seven for a Secret; and The Fatal Flame. Faye, a true New Yorker in the sense she was born elsewhere, lives in New York City.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Books
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., Riverside CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/mystery-book-club-paragon-hotel
Reading: Diana Burbano, with Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble, & The COVID Monologues at LibroMobile – Online IG Event
Join LibroMobile for aperitivos & a reading of The COVID Monologues with Diana Burbano & Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble!
Schedule includes: 6-6:30pm Mingle with readers & audience over snacks & refreshments 6:30-7:30pm A Reading by various contributors including playwright Diana Burbano & members of @boflte 7:30-8pm More mingling & one-on-one Q&A About the Anthology:
As of this writing more than 986,545 individuals have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the U.S. alone. The sheer magnitude of the numbers can feel impossible to understand, but Santa Ana’s Breath of Fire Latina Theater Ensemble has found a beautiful, intimate way of putting faces to those devastating statistics. They put a call out to writers to write living altar pieces for those who have passed, 54 writers from around the globe responded to the prompt and their work is collected here. Named simply The COVID Monologues, each piece illustrates the life of an ordinary person who passed away to COVID-19, memorializing their everyday battles and accomplishments in a tapestry woven with grounding, intimate details, and inspiring in their reflective insight.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, link, and details.
Where: LibroMobile
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 1150 S, Bristol St., Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/the-covid-monologues-with-diana-burbano-boflte
Writer’s Workshop with Editor-in-Chief of Dryland Literary Journal, Viva Padilla at Re/Arte – In-Person Event
Join us for a Writer’s Workshop led by writer Viva Padilla to focus on getting your work published. Bring your work to get feedback. Donation of $15 minimum encouraged.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, further details, guidelines & information.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 2123 East Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 900
Website: https://reartela.com/events%2Feventos
Mark H. Parsons & Wendelin Van Draanen Present Their New Books: The 9:09 Project & The Peach Rebellion at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Mark H, Parsons and Wendelin Van Draanen will discuss the writing process and present their new books, The 9:09 Project and The Peach Rebellion, respectively.
Mark H, Parsons’ book, The 9:09 Project, explores the inner life of a young man who goes to the same street corner at 9:09 PM every evening to take a photograph in honor of his mother… because that’s what time it was when she died. And he’s worried — deeply worried — that he’s losing his connection to her. This is a story about the healing power of art, about putting your grief to work, about being open to possibilities, and making connections. In other words, it’s a love story.
Wendelin Van Draanen’s book, The Peach Rebellion, is set in California shortly after WWII. A heartwarming story of sisterhood, breaking rules, and blossoming courage, The Peach Rebellion intertwines the lives of three very different young women as they come together to save a family and take a stand against the patriarchy.
Mark Parsons is a longtime nonfiction writer who’d authored over 200 articles for national publications and a pair of nonfiction books when he realized Wendelin was having way more fun writing children’s books, so he transitioned to writing fiction. His first YA novel, Road Rash (Random House) was named to the ALA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list, and his upcoming novel, The 9:09 Project will be released on Nov. 15 from Delacorte/Random House.
Wendelin Van Draanen is the award-winning, bestselling author of over 30 books (all with Knopf/Random House…and all with the same editor!) including Flipped, The Running Dream, The Sammy Keyes Mystery Series, Runaway, Wild Bird, two four-book series for younger readers, and her nonfiction book for emerging writers, Hope In The Mail—Reflections on Writing and Life. (Flipped was made into a Warner Brothers feature film, directed by Rob Reiner) Her newest novel, The Peach Rebellion, was published this spring and has gained popularity as a women’s book club selection.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/mark-parsons-wendelin-van-draanen-november-17-Author-signing
Sam Wasson, with Bruce Wagner, & ROAR: American Master at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Sam Wasson, in conversation with Bruce Wagner, will present and discuss his new book, ROA: R: American Master.- the Oral Biography of Roger Orr, with VOICES read onstage by: Beverly D’Angelo, Dana Delany, Billie Lourd, and Kelly Lynch.
ROAR is a metafictional exploration of such a life and attendant fame of an extraordinary, and completely made up, man. Born in Nashville in 1940 and adopted by a wealthy San Francisco couple, Roger Orr—”Roar—became an underground stand-up comedian with a cult following while still in his teens, segueing to an acclaimed songwriter in the Sixties. In the decades that followed, his talent spanned the worlds of entertainment, from film directing and books to fine art (paintings, sculpture). His promethean energies expanded to the world of medicine; he became a dermatologist, the first to patent cadaver skin for burn victims. A spiritual seeker who returned to India throughout his life, Roar was also a voracious lover of both men and women. The author brilliantly paints a vivid picture of one man, our times, and our culture’s enduring obsession with fame.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/book-soup-presents-bruce-wagner
Ada Salazar Reading and Conversation in Writing Now Reading Series.at CALArts University – In-Person & Live Stream Event
Ada Salazar will present and discuss her work in the next session of CAL Arts’ Writing Now Reading Series.
Ada Salazar is an award-winning author, arts activist, and translator whose writings for adults and children explore issues of identity and social justice. She is the author of the critically acclaimed middle grade verse novels, The Moon Within (International Latino Book Award Winner), and Land of the Cranes (Américas Award, California Library Association Beatty Award, Northern CA Book Award, NCTE Charlotte Huck Honor, Jane Addams Peace Honor, International Latino Book Award Honor). Her most recent novel A Seed in the Sun releases on Oct. 25, 2022. Her other works include the picture book anthology, In the Spirit of a Dream: 13 Stories of Immigrants of Color; and the forthcoming bio picture book Jovita Wore Pants: The Story of a Mexican Freedom Fighter (Spring, 2023) and the anthology Calling the Moon: Period Stories by BIPOC Authors (Spring, 2023). Aida is a founding member of Las Musas – a Latinx kidlit author collective. Her story, By the Light of the Moon, was adapted into a ballet production by the Sonoma Conservatory of Dance and is the first Xicana-themed ballet in history. She lives with her family of artists in a teal house in Oakland, California.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: CALArts
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 10 pm
Address: 24700 McBean Pkwy., Valencia, CA 91355
Secret Los Angeles: An Unusual Conversation with Darrow Carson, Michael Ordona & Félicien Cassan at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
The Los Angeles urban sprawl, a concrete jungle surrounded by mountains, an ocean, and deserts, is packed with unusual and secret treasures. This guide, intended for everybody, visitors and locals alike, who would like to explore the city in depth, seeks to dispel the misguided image of a megalopolis that is often superficially dismissed or even disliked. It can also be read as a declaration of love for the City of Angels
About the authors:
Félicien Cassan, a French journalist, has written and edited stories for Le Monde and CANAL+, among many other well-known French publications. He currently lives in Nice with his husband and co-author, Darrow Carson who is a California native and former marketing manager for Walt Disney Studios. In 2016, Darrow became a tour guide in Los Angeles and currently leads tours in France.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/21129
NANOWRIMO Prep Session with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. 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 and from the New York Times Book Review, and Publisher’s Weekly. Her work has been translated into many languages. Francesca teaches fiction at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, and privately in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/21130
Matt Coyle & DOOMED LEGACY: VOLUME 9 at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Author Matt Coyle will present and discuss his latest thriller, Doomed Legacy: Volume 9.
A sinister private detective agency, a shady shell corporation, and a dead friend–Rick Cahill is on his most dangerous mission yet
Private investigator Rick Cahill has been running from his past and chasing the truth his whole life. But his past is relentless–and so is his CTE, a disease caused by repeated head traumas that has attacked his body and his mind. As his CTE progresses, he realizes that the disease not only threatens his life but also endangers his family’s wellbeing.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/matt-coyle-discusses-doomed-legacy
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 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 665 N. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.instagram.com/fos_thursdays/
Poetry Reading: Angie Mlinko & Venice at Hammer Museum – In-Person Event
Ange Mlinko reads from her poetry collection Venice (2022). Mlinko is the author of several books of poetry, including Distant Mandate and Marvelous Things Overheard. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Randall Jarrell Award in Poetry Criticism and has served as poetry editor for The Nation. Her essays and reviews have been published in The Nation, the London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, Poetry, and Parnassus. Educated at St. John’s College and Brown University, she has lived in Morocco and Lebanon, and is currently a professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville.
Organized and hosted by poet, literary critic, and UCLA Distinguished Research Professor Stephen Yenser. Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of English and UCLA Recreation.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, event details.
Where: Hammer Museum
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 10988 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2022/ange-mlinko
Under the Skin, a Fruit: a Short Film + Reading Program for The Book of Na with Na Mira + Elena Gomez at Poetic Research Bureau – In-Person Event
In a conjunct effort to celebrate The Book of Na, a 240-page publication by LA-based artist Na Mira that engages border, obliteration, and dream, Rotations, Wendy’s Subway (Brooklyn), and Poetic Research Bureau co-present a program of short films—selected together with Mira and visiting Melbourne poet Elena Gomez—by film artists whose work is informed by translation and dislocation, both materially and in real time.
Under the Skin, a Fruit takes a line from Mira’s book to convey the shared dual-textures and ineffable doubles, stone fruits, in otherwise diverging lines of straining “plot”: Aboriginal histories take place in theatrical reencounter, Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva is read aloud and fragmented, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s earthwork shifts its container. Shorts will screen in two parts, accompanying readings from Mira and Gomez of their own work. Books will be for sale. .
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, event details.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
Spectacular Storytime for Children at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Kids Event
Spectacular Storytime is offered Friday morning at 9:30 am. Storytime is ready to delight and dazzle with troubadour Maddie, and it is geared for children ages 3-6.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/spectacular-story-time-13
NoHo Online Book Club & Summer on the Bluffs via North Hollywood Regional Library, LAPL – Online Event
The NoHo Online Book Club meets twice a month to discuss a selected title and a book of your choice. New members are always welcome. We meet on Zoom the second and fourth Friday of the month.
This meeting’s selection for discussion is Summer on the Bluffs, by Sonny Hostin.
Please note, due to the November holidays, we will only be meeting on the third Friday of the month (11/18).
NOTE: See site for link and details. Email nohlwd@lapl.org to receive the Zoom link.
Where: North Hollywood Regional Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 10 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/noho-book-club
2nd & 3rd Grade Book Club Event & Jasmine Toguchi, Brave Explorer by Debbi Michiko Florence at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
The 2nd & 3rd Grade Book Club will meet and discuss the book, Jasmine Toguchi Brave Explorer, by Debbi Michiko Florence.
This award-winning chapter-book series starring a spunky Japanese American heroine returns with four new standalone books set on a family vacation in Japan!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Pages: A Bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2nd3rd-grade-book-club
Your Author Series: Zahra Omar Shansab and Bahram Rahman via Central Library, LAPL – Online Teen & Kids Event
The Your Author series presents YA author Zahra Omar Shansab, and children’s author Bahram Rahman, to discuss their books, stories, and experiences of immigration.
Zahra’s Lightchaser tells the story of war, patriarchy, and the uncertainties of refugee life for a teenage Afghan girl who copes with her fears by reading her only book with its last pages missing and imagining all the various endings.
In Bahram’s children’s book, Sky Blue Bench, Afghan school girl Aria’s first day back at school since her accident reminds us that while war impacts the most basic needs of children in Afghanistan, resilience, resolve, a sense of community, and gender equality can offer a path to a brighter future.
Streaming live on the library’s YouTube channel.
Those attending the virtual program will have an opportunity to win a free book.
NOTE: See site for link and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/your-author-series-zahra-omar-shansab-and-bahram-rahman
Bookish Literary Event: Laura Warrell, Jill Bialosky & Jena Hanff Korelitz, with Sandra Tsing Loh, via Once Upon a Time & Southern California News Group – Online Event
The Bookish Literary Event and Author Discussion is a one-hour presentation hosted by Sandra Tsing Loh and featuring authors presenting new releases, including:
Laura Warrell will present her debut novel, Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm. This story is about the perennial temptations of dangerous love, told by the women who love Circus Palmer, a trumpet player and ladies man, as they discover the power of their own voices.
Jill Bialosky will present her novel, The Deceptions. This story isa a tale of art and myth, desire and betrayal, and is told by an unnamed narrator whose life is unraveling and who must find a new vision for her future.
Jean Hanff Korelitz will present her novel, The Latecomer. This story is about three siblings, desperate to escape one another, and the upending of their family by the late arrival of a fourth.
Sandra Tsing Loh is the author most recently of The Madwoman and the Roomba.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 5 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/bookish-november-2022
Gary Lippman & We Loved the World But Could Not Stay at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
“I write stories that are only one sentence long,” I explain to you as I plant this book like a time-bomb in your public library, “because imperfection is easier to tolerate in small doses.” With unparalleled wit and wisdom, Gary Lippman’s We Loved the World But Could Not Stay is a collection of intricately constructed single-sentence stories that chronicles the outrageous and the everyday with insight and empathy, all while reimagining and reorganizing the very concept of the story and the basic building blocks of our language.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Gary Lippman received a law degree from Northwestern University and has worked with New York’s Innocence Project. Lippman’s play Paradox Lost ran off Broadway for a month in 2001 and his writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review, VICE, and more. Lippman can now be found in what used to be called “Fun City” with his imaginary French bulldog, his very real Hungarian wife, and a whenever-he’s-inclined-to-visit adult son.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/20706
Book Talk: Jameka Williams, with Bryan Byrdlong, & American Sex Tape at Chevalier’s Bookstore – In-Person Event
Jameka Williams, in conversation with Bryan Byrdlong, will present and discuss her most recent book, American Sex Tape.
Moving beyond a biting indictment of American popular culture, Jameka Williams captures the reader’s gaze and stares right back: “I’m sorry, America, but I’m rich in baby oil & paperback novels only these days. So finish paying for me with what is mint. No conditions.” In this stunning debut collection, Williams offers a deeply personal investigation into how Americans (herself included) have been duped, buying into classism, sexism, and racist beauty ideals, while sacrificing the freedom of self-love and self-determination. With whip-fast profanity and fiery humor, she charts a tender, exalting, and vibrant path to freedom from mirrors, stages, and screens.
Jameka Williams holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her poetry has been published in Prelude Magazine, Muzzle Magazine, and Gulf Coast, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she resides in Chicago, Illinois.
Bryan Byrdlong is a Black writer from Chicago, Illinois. He has been published in Guernica Magazine, The Kenyon Review, and Poetry Magazine. He is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writer’s Program at the University of Michigan. He is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at USC in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-american-sex-tape-by-jameka-williams-tickets-462043333047
He Said, She Said: Wendelin Van Draanen & Mark H. Parsons at pages; a bookstore – In-Person Event
Authors Wendelin Van Draanen & Mark H. Parsons will discuss their work and writing processes, including their new book, The Peach Rebellion.
During their presentations, they will discuss and take questions on:
Their writing process… and yours!
Inspiration… and where to find it.
How to stay creative while dealing with real life (jobs, children, dogs & drums…).
The revision process… how to learn to love it.
Dealing with agents, editors, and publishers.
Self-pub and trad-pub… the advantages of each.
The book-to-movie experience.
Come with questions!
Expect arguments! After all, they’re married…
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 902
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/he-said-she-said
2022 Southern California Poetry Festival: Day 1 of 3 Day Event at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
The Southern California Poetry Festival is an annual celebration of the art of poetry and the diversity of voices within Southern California. Founded in 2016 by Sonia Greenfield and Donna Hilbert in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, the festival moved permanently to Los Angeles’ historic home for poetry, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in 2018. Beyond Baroque now organizes and curates the festival with the Poetry Foundation’s support. All programs and workshops are free.
Schedule for Friday, November 18:
7pm – Opening Reception
8pm – A Celebration of Sesshu Foster, with Amy Uyematsu, Angel Dominguez, Carribean Fragoza, & Neelanjana Banerjee
The 2022 Southern California Poetry Festival opens with a reading and discussion celebrating one of Los Angeles’ most iconic poets, Sesshu Foster. Foster will read with poets Amy Uyematsu and Angel Dominguez, and with fiction writer Carribean Fragoza. A discussion focused on Foster’s work, its poetics of place, and its grounding in Foster’s East Los Angeles community will follow, moderated by Kaya Press Managing Editor Neelanjana Banerjee. Co-presented by Kaya Press.
Sesshu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for 35 years. He has also taught writing at the University of Iowa, the California Institute for the Arts, the University of California, Santa Cruz, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, Occidental College and Pomona College. His most recent books are City of the Future, winner of the 2019 CLMP Firecracker Award and ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, a novel co-written with artist Arturo E. Romo, published by City Lights in 2021.
Amy Uyematsu is a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) poet and teacher from Los Angeles. She has six published collections–the most recent being That Blue Trickster Time (What Books Press, 2022). Her first poetry collection, 30 Miles from J-Town, won the 1992 Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Amy taught high school math for LA Unified Schools for 32 years. Active in Asian American Studies when it first emerged in the late 60s, she penned “The Emergence of Yellow Power in America” and was co-editor of the widely-used UCLA anthology, Roots: An Asian American Reader.
Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. They now live amongst the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon, CA. They’re the author of Desgraciado (the collected letters) (Nightboat Books, 2022), RoseSunWater (The Operating System, 2021) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015). They were the 2021 Mazza writer in residence for San Francisco State University and have shared their work across the country in various venues, universities, and states of consciousness. You can find Angel’s words online and in print in various publications including BOMB Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, FENCE, Prolit Magazine, SFMOMA Open Space, and elsewhere. You can find Angel in the redwoods or ocean.
Carribean Fragoza is a fiction writer and journalist from South El Monte, CA. Her collection of stories Eat the Mouth That Feeds You was published in 2021 by City Lights and was a finalist for a 2022 PEN Award. Her co-edited compilation of essays, East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte was published by Rutgers University Press and her forthcoming collection of essays Writing Home: New Terrains of California will be published by Angel City Press in 2023. She has published in Harper’s Bazaar, The New York Times, Zyzzyva, Alta, BOMB, Huizache, KCET, the Los Angeles Review of Books, ArtNews, and Aperture Magazine. She is the Prose Editor at Huizache Magazine and Creative Nonfiction and Poetry Editor at Boom California, a journal of UC Press. Fragoza is the founder and co-director of South El Monte Arts Posse, an interdisciplinary arts collective. She lives in the San Gabriel Valley in Greater Los Angeles.
Neelanjana Banerjee’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared widely in journals and anthologies like Prairie Schooner, Weird Sister, Virginia Quarterly Review, PANK Magazine, The Rumpus, Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers As We Never Saw Them (Abrams Image, 2020), Good Girls Mary Doctors: South Asian Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion (Aunt Lute Books, September 2016), and many other places. She is a co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry (University of Arkansas Press, 2010), and The Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes and Shifts of Los Angeles (Tia Chucha Press, 2016). She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a BA in English and Creative Writing from Oberlin College. She has had residencies at Hedgebrook, the Blue Mountain Center, and Dorland Mountain Arts, and received scholarships to attend the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute and the Squaw Valley Writers Workshop. Her journalism has appeared on Teen Vogue, The Aerogram, The Center for Asian American Media Blog, LA Review of Books, Alternet, WordRiot, Colorlines, Fiction Writers Review and more. She is based in Los Angeles, where she is the Managing Editor of Kaya Press, and teaches writing and publishing in the Asian American Studies Department at UCLA and through private writing workshops.
NOTE: See site for RSVP link, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday the 19th (Day 1 of 3)
Time: 7 pm – 10 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/scpf2022.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/southern-california-poetry-festival-a-celebration-of-sesshu-foster-tickets-445617853997
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music
Welcome to The New Renaissance and another edition of SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music. Open Mic, Live Band, Wine Bar, Catered Food, VIP with bottle service and another Incredible Feature Artist for your listening pleasure. “Derek D. Brown” will be in the building. Derek is an author, poet and a venture expressionist born and raised in Los Angeles. His premiere collection of poems entitled Articulate Scars: Comfortable Silences and Reluctant Tears, was met with wide acclaim from poetry virgins and seasoned wordsmiths alike. He has been a featured attraction at numerous performance venues, educational institutes and literary festivals throughout the country. Show starts promptly at 8pm, early arrival suggested. Still only $10 before 8:30, $15 after. So come on thru and help us Po-et On!
NOTE: Tix on Eventbrite
Where: Park Hills Community Center
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 8:30pm
Address: 5245 Overdale Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/823095398937847/?ref=newsfeed
Graphic Novel Book Club & Indigenous Resistance via Bel Canto Bookstore – Online Event
Bel Canto’s Graphic Novel Book Club will meet and discuss this month’s selection, The 500 Years of indigenous Resistance Comic Book, by Gord Hill.
Graphic Novel Book Club hosted by Bel Canto Books as we read and discuss a new graphic novel or memoir on the 3rd Saturday of each month at 10am PT | 1pm ET.
Gord Hill is a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation and the author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book, and The Antifa Comic Book. He has been involved in Indigenous peoples’ and anti-globalization movements since 1990.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Bel Canto Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10 am – 11:30 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/graphic-novel-book-club-hosted-by-bel-canto-books-tickets-312230859907
Humor in Poetry: Part 2: Workshop with Valerie Seis at Sims Library of Poetry – Online Event
In this free virtual workshop titled Humor in Poetry: Part 2, Valerie Seis leads participants deeper to see how poets use humor and then employ their techniques in our poems
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and event details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10 am – 11:30 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/humor-in-poetry-part-2-tickets-427454657387
2022 Southern California Poetry Festival: Day 2 of 3 Day Event at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
The Southern California Poetry Festival is an annual celebration of the art of poetry and the diversity of voices within Southern California. Founded in 2016 by Sonia Greenfield and Donna Hilbert in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, the festival moved permanently to Los Angeles’ historic home for poetry, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in 2018. Beyond Baroque now organizes and curates the festival with the Poetry Foundation’s support. All programs and workshops are free.
Schedule for Saturday, November 19:
Day 2 of the 2022 Southern California Poetry Festival features acclaimed poet Kazim Ali reading with Pulitzer Prize finalists Mai Der Vang and Jos Charles; a zine-making workshop by Errant Press; readings curated by Moon Tide Press, Nightboat Books, and Kundiman; a generative workshop led by Brendan Constantine; and a reading and panel on the poetics of the borderlands featuring Anthony Cody, Vanessa Angélica Villareal, and others.
Organized in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. All events are free. For information about the festival, including the complete schedule, visit beyondbaroque.org
Schedule:
Workshops
11:00 am – 1:00 pm: A zine making workshop with Errant Press
11:00 am – 1:00 pm: A workshop with Brendan Constantine
Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many of the nation’s standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, Tin House, and Poem-a-Day. His most recent collections are Dementia, My Darling (2016) from Red Hen Press and Bouncy Bounce (2018) a chapbook from Blue Horse Press. New work is forthcoming in the Washington Square Review. A popular performer, Brendan has presented his work to audiences throughout the U.S. and Europe, also appearing on NPR’s All Things Considered, TED ED, numerous podcasts, and YouTube. He currently teaches at the Windward School and, since 2017, has been developing poetry workshops for people with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injury.
1:30 pm – 3:00 pm: Literary Showcase: Moon Tide Press, Nightboat Books, Kundiman
Moon Tide Press:
Kelsey Bryan-ZwickKelsey (she/they) is a disabled, queer, bilingual immigrant, and author based in Los Angeles, California. Their debut poetry collection, Here Go the Knives (Moon Tide Press 2022)—part memoir, part magical realism, part illustration—focuses on their decades surviving with debilitating scoliosis. On the gram @theexquisitepoet.
Gustavo Hernandez is the author of the poetry collection Flower Grand First (Moon Tide Press). His work has been featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Harvard Review, and The Slowdown podcast. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico and lives in Southern California.
Ellen Webre is a biracial, Taiwanese-American poet, born in Hong Kong and raised in California. She attended the Creative Writing Conservatory of the Orange County High School of the Arts and received a degree in screenwriting at Chapman University. She is currently acting as a social media marketing specialist and videographer for Moon Tide Press, is a co-host of Two Idiots Peddling Poetry, and is an editor of Freezeray Magazine. Ellen’s debut book, A Burning Lake of Paper Suns, was released in October 2021 with Moon Tide Press. Her poem “Metaphors for My Body in Midwinter” has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2021. Ellen’s other poems have most recently been published in A Moon of One’s Own, FreezeRay Press, Sh!t Men Say to Me Anthology in Response to Toxic Masculinity, DARK INK: A Horror Anthology, and Voicemail Poems.
Nightboat Books:
Jackie Wang is a poet, harpist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism, as well as the chapbooks Tiny Spelunker of the Oneiro-Womb and The Twitter Hive Mind Is Dreaming. When not writing poetry, she researches race, surveillance technology, and the political economy of prisons and police.
Angel Dominguez is a Latinx poet and artist of Yucatec Maya descent, born in Hollywood and raised in Van Nuys, CA by their immigrant family. They now live amongst the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon, CA. They’re the author of Desgraciado (the collected letters) (Nightboat Books, 2022), RoseSunWater (The Operating System, 2021) and Black Lavender Milk (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015). They were the 2021 Mazza writer in residence for San Francisco State University and have shared their work across the country in various venues, universities, and states of consciousness. You can find Angel’s words online and in print in various publications including BOMB Magazine, The Berkeley Poetry Review, FENCE, Prolit Magazine, SFMOMA Open Space, and elsewhere. You can find Angel in the redwoods or ocean.
Carlos Lara is the author of The Green Record and co-author of The Audiographic As Data (Co-authored with Will Alexander). The poem “God Wave” was published as a chapbook in 2018. His poetry collection Like Bismuth When I Enter was published by Nightboat Books. Other poems and translations have appeared in Lana Turner, Seedings, Vestiges, Aurochs, Flag + Void, Gulf Coast, Omniverse, and elsewhere. He abides in Los Angeles.
Kundiman:
Kien Lam is the author of Extinction Theory, winner of the 2021 National Poetry Series. He is a Kundiman fellow and received his MFA from Indiana University. He lives in Los Angeles and works in esports and television.
Dorothy Chan (she/they) is the author of five poetry collections, including Return of the Chinese Femme (Deep Vellum Books Fall 2023 / Spring 2024), BABE (Diode Editions, 2021), Revenge of the Asian Woman (Diode Editions, 2019), Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold (Spork Press, 2018), and the chapbook Chinatown Sonnets (New Delta Review, 2017). They were a 2023 finalist for the Roethke Poetry Award for Revenge of the Asian Woman, 2022 finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize from the New England Poetry Club for BABE, a 2020 and 2014 finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2020 finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry for Revenge of the Asian Woman, and a 2019 recipient of the Philip Freund Prize in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Their work has appeared in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Chan is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Book Reviews Co-Editor of Pleiades, and Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Honey Literary Inc., a 501(c)(3) BIPOC literary arts organization, run by women, femme, and queer editors of color. Chan was the 2021 Resident Artist for Toward One Wisconsin. Visit their website at dorothypoetry.com.
Cynthia Dewi Oka is originally from Bali, Indonesia and 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, and elsewhere. She has taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr College, New Mexico State University, Blue Stoop, and Voices of Our Nations (VONA), and now serves as Editor-in-Chief of Adi Magazine. For fifteen years, Cynthia worked as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser in social movements for justice that center the experiences of the global majority. She lives in Los Angeles.
3:30 – 5:30 pm: With(out) Borders, a reading & panel discussion
Anthony Cody is the author of Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Prize. His debut has been recognized as a winner of the 2022 Whiting Award, 2021 American Book Award and a 2020 Southwest Book Award, as well as a finalist for the National Book Award, PEN/America Jean Stein Award, L.A. Times Book Award, and the California Book Award. Anthony is a Poets & Writers 2020 Debut Poet. He is a CantoMundo fellow from Fresno, CA with lineage in the Bracero Program and Dust Bowl. Anthony collaborates with Juan Felipe Herrera’s Laureate Lab Visual Wordist Studio, serves as a poetry editor for Omnidawn, and is co-publisher of Noemi Press. His forthcoming collection, The Rendering, (Omnidawn) is coming out in the spring of 2023. He teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Randolph College. Visit his website at http://www.anthonycody.com.
Omar Pimienta is an artist/writer/scholar who lives and works in the San Diego / Tijuana border region. His artistic practice examines questions of identity, trans-nationality, emergency poetics, landscape and memory. He has published four books of poetry in U.S, México Argentina and Spain. He has won the Emilio Prado 10th International Publication prize from the Centro Cultural Generación del 27 Malaga Spain. He holds a Ph.D in Literature from the University of California San Diego and a MFA in Visual Arts from the same institution. He is currently member of the Mexican Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte in the area of poetry.
Vanessa Angelica Villareal was born in the Rio Grande Valley to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. She is the author of the poetry collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series 2017), recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award nomination, and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Cut, Harper’s Bazaar, Oxford American, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, and fellowships from CantoMundo and Jack Jones Literary Arts. She is a doctoral candidate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she is working on a poetry and an essay collection while raising her son in Los Angeles.
6:30 – 8:00 pm: A reading with Mai Der Vang, Kazim Ali, & Jos Charles
Mai Der Vang is the author of Yellow Rain (Graywolf Press, 2021), winner of a 2022 American Book Award, and Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the First book Award of the Academy of American Poets. The recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship, her poetry has appeared in Tin House, the American Poetry Review, and Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Fresno State.
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including several volumes of poetry, novels, and translations. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra, and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water.
Jos Charles is author of a Year & other poems (Milkweed Editions, 2022), feeld (Milkweed Editions, 2018), a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series selected by Fady Joudah, and Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). She is the founding-editor of THEM, the first trans literary journal in the US, and engages in direct gender justice work with a variety of organizations and performers. Charles’s poetry has appeared in Poetry, PEN, Washington Square Review, BLOOM, Denver Quarterly, Action Yes, The Feminist Wire, The Capilano Review, and elsewhere. Among her awards are the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a 2015 Monique Wittig Writer’s Scholarship.
All festival events are free & in-person at Beyond Baroque. Masks are required while inside our center.
Event attendees are expected to behave in a respectful and considerate manner while in our space. Beyond Baroque reserves the right to remove individuals from our events, virtual or otherwise, if they are not respecting the space, fellow attendees, or performers.
Reservation Policy: Please RSVP if you are planning to attend this event. Limited seating is available in the theater, therefore seating may not be guaranteed in the case of a full program; we recommend arriving early.
Workshops will be capped at fifteen people and will not be overbooked. Please note that our morning workshops happen at the same time, therefore you can only reserve a spot for one workshop. If you have reserved a space in a workshop and will not be able to attend, kindly email jimmy@beyondbaroque.org, or call 310-822-3006 so that we can release your spot to another person.
NOTE: See site for RSVP link, guidelines, full schedule, and event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Saturday the 19th (Day 2 of 3)
Time: 11 am – 8 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/scpf2022.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/southern-california-poetry-festival-saturday-nov-19-tickets-445563381067
Molly Idle & Juana Martinez-Neal Present I Don’t Care at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Friends and Caldecott Honorees Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal will host a special story time for their new picture book I Don’t Care, by Julie Fogliano, that they jointly illustrated.
This rhythmic, rhyming text by award-winning author Julie Fogliano celebrates the similarities and differences between two unlikely best friends. It will be illustrated by two recent Caldecott Honorees, each depicting one of the characters, Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/i-dont-care
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month Midway Celebration & Battle of the Banneds at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
November is National Novel Writing Month! NaNoWriMo’s challenge is to write a Join fellow-writers from the community as we write our novels.
Writers of all ages are welcome to join this NaNoWriMo Midway Celebration—Battle of the Banneds! Come dressed like a rock star, or a rock star of a character. Between writing “sets” we’ll bask in the sounds of rebel songwriters and read stirring passages from banned books. Food, giveaways/prizes, and writing all in one place to get you over the halfway point of NaNoWriMo.
Pump your fist. Pound the keyboard. And write your story loud!
We’ll be in the library meeting room. Enter through the parking lot on the Alvarado side.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 12 am – 5 pm
Address: 2011 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/nanowrimo-midway-celebration-battle-banneds
Jane West Bakerink & Piney the Lonesome Pine at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Jane West Bakerink will present and discuss her book, Piney the Lonesome Pine.
This holiday classic is an Emmy-nominated animation on the Disney platforms, and Bakerink is the author of this picture book as well as the creator and screenwriter of the DVD.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Pages Bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 12 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/piney-the-lonesome-pine-event-2022
Vroman’s Walk of Fame Dedication Ceremony: Leigh Bardugo, with guest Sarah Enni at Vroman’s Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Leigh Bardugo is the next honoree to immortalize her handprints and signature in the Vroman’s Author Walk of Fame. She will be honored with this dedication and to celebrate all of her wonderful books. After the dedication stay for a special conversation between Leigh Bardugo and Sarah Enni, discussing Leigh’s life and career.
Also, Vroman’s will be broadcasting this morning event on Instagram Live. Keep watch for more details and follow up on Instagram! @vromansbookstore
About Leigh Bardugo: Leigh Bardugo is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, The Language of Thorns, and the King of Scars duology—with more to come. Her other works include Wonder Woman: Warbringer and Ninth House (Goodreads Choice Winner for Best Fantasy 2019), which is being developed for television by Amazon Studios. She lives in Los Angeles and is an Associate Fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.
About Sarah Enni: Sarah Enni is an author, podcaster, and journalist living in Los Angeles. She’s the author of Tell Me Everything, and creator and host of the First Draft podcast. She’s currently the story editor for Wondery’s Scamfluencers podcast.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 12 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/walk-of-fame-dedication-ceremony-honoring-leigh-bardugo
Southern California Haiku Study Group at SoCal Haiku – Online Event
Share a love of Haiku at the next Southern California Haiku Study Group meeting.
There will be a Zoom Workshop and a launch of the 2022 anthology, Red Paper Parasols.
This event takes place on the 3rd Saturday of every month at 2pm PT
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details
Where: Southern California Haiku Study Group
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://socalhaiku.wordpress.com/
Mystery Romance Panel: Jesse Q. Sutanto, Jennifer J. Chow & Ellen Byron at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents a Mystery Romance Panel with Jesse Q. Sutanto, Jennifer J. Chow & Ellen Byron, who will talk about their recent releases:
Four Aunties and a Wedding by Jesse Q. Sutanto;
Death by Bubble Tea by Jennifer J. Chow;
Wined & Died in New Orleans by Ellen Byron.
There will be a book signing to follow. This event is free to attend and tickets are not required, but RSVPS are appreciated.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm
Address: Main St. at Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Michelle Sterling & A Sweet New Year for Ren at Bel Canto Books – In-Person Kids Event
Bel Canto Bookstore will host a book signing with Michelle Sterling,to present her book A Sweet New Year for Ren.
Celebrate the Lunar New Year through a young girl’s family traditions in this charming picture book featuring illustrations by New York Times bestselling artist Dung Ho that also includes a recipe for pineapple cakes!
Little Ren looks forward to the preparation for and festivities of Lunar New Year, but she is always too little to help make the delicious pineapple cakes that are her favorite. She watches family members rolling out the dough and loves the mouth-watering smell. Watching and waiting, when will Ren be old enough?
Michelle Sterling is an author, photographer, and speech-language pathologist. She lives in Southern California, where her summers are filled with reading, homemade ice cream, and long, golden hours at the park. When Lola Visits is her first picture book. Find Michelle online at www.averyandaugustine.com.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Bel Canto Books at The Hangout
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 2122 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Open Mic Event with Poet Mike Sonksen at Downey Public Library – In-Person Event
Poet, author, and educator Mike Sonksen will host an Open Mic at the Downey Public Library.
Mike Sonksen is the author most recently of Letters to My City. He is a professor at Woodbury University and writes columns and essays for KCET and other institutions and venues.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details
Where: Downey City Library
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 11111 Brookshire Ave., Downey, CA 90241
Website: https://www.downeylibrary.org/calendar-of-events/open-mic
Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series & Open Mic at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join the Studio City Branch Library in-person or via Zoom for Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series, featuring poetry readings and open poetry mic.
Please email studio@lapl.org for instructions on how to join the program.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/expressions-la-poetry-reading-series-and-open-mic
Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Readings by: VIBIANA APARICIO-CHAMBERLIN, PAOLO BICCHIERI & BRIAN DUNLAP, and Spectrum poets in Open WIndow – Online Only Event
Saturday Afternoon Poetry presents a Poetry Reading featuring: VIBIANA APARICIO-CHAMBERLIN, PAOLO BICCHIERI & BRIAN DUNLAP + Poets published in Spectrum online edition: Open Window. Hosted by DKC & JRT.
VIBIANA APARICIO-CHAMBERLIN is a poet, and her work in Chicana on Fire (2022) is testimonial and collective. She was born and raised in Boyle Heights, California. She earned an M.A in Theater Arts from California State University, Los Angeles. She is an activist, writer and a visual and performing artist.
PAOLO BICCHIERI is a writer living on the coast. He has also worked at nonprofits, restaurants, and bars from McDonald’s to Tartine, rebuilt homes in New Orleans, and led a volunteer training for Lemony Snicket. He’s dedicated to equitable representation by and with marginalized people through narration, outreach, and development.
BRIAN DUNLAP is a native Angeleño who still lives in Los Ángeles. He explores and captures the city’s stories that are hidden in plain sight. Dunlap is the author of the chapbook Concrete Paradise (Finishing Line Press, 2018). He is the winner of the 2018 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize from december magazine judged by former L.A. Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event Only (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Narrative Poetry Workshop with Jessica Chavez via L.A. Poet Society – In-Person Event
On Saturdays from 3pm – 5pm the Los Angeles Poet Society offers a narrative Poetry Workshop led by Jessica Chavez and held at Art / Space Huntington Park.
Los Angeles Poet Society will provide journals & pens for all workshop participants.
Please complete the registration form available at site.
Face Masks are not required.
Where: Art / Space Huntington Park
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 3382 E. Florence Ave., Highland Park, CA 90255
Website: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScYZce3X6ZE7bVnc_LW1vwPGJqEcBQ5SPF3Qvxs_NHOtcE5lw/viewform
Meet BFFs and Illustrators Molly Idle and Juana Martinez-Neal & I Don’t Care at Cellar Door Books – In-Person Kids & MG Event
Join a special story time with two BFFs who illustrated Julie Fogle’s fantastic book… together. Juana Martinez-Neal and Molly Idle will be HERE, in person, to meet you and sign your copy of their book I Don’t Care!
See site for details on book bundle offers and fund raising for Pediatrics Unit at Riverside University Health Services.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Books
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 3:30 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., Riverside CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/idontcare
Ryan Dusick & Harder to Breathe: A Memoir at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Ryan Dusick will present and discuss his new memoir, Harder to Breathe: A Memoir of Making Maroon 5, Losing It All, and Finding Recovery.
Two decades after Songs About Jane, Maroon 5’s original drummer presents an unflinching examination of fame, anxiety, mental health, and recovery
In the nineties, Ryan Dusick and his friends Adam Levine and Jesse Carmichael dreamed about making it big . . . and against all odds, they did. This inside story recounts Maroon 5’s founding and their road to becoming Grammy-winning megastars, told through the eyes of former drummer Ryan Dusick. He takes readers behind the scenes of the band’s meteoric rise to success–and the grueling demands that came with it–as well as his personal struggles with anxiety and addiction after his departure from the band.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/ryan-dusick
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club: Bloodchild and Other Stories at Cellar Door Books – In-Person Event
The Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club will read and discuss this month’s selection, Bloodchild and Other Stories, by Octavia E. Butler.
Like all of Octavia Butler’s best writing, these works of the imagination are parables of the contemporary world. She proves constant in her vigil, an unblinking pessimist hoping to be proven wrong, and one of contemporary literature’s strongest voices.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER (1947–2006) is recognized as among the bravest and smartest of contemporary fiction writers. A 1995 MacArthur Award winner, Butler transcended the science fiction category even as she was awarded that community’s top prizes, the Nebula and Hugo Awards. She reached readers of all ages, all races, and all religious and sexual persuasions. For years the only African-American woman writing science fiction, Butler has encouraged many others to follow in her path.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Books
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., Riverside CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/sci-fi-fantasy-book-club-bloodchild-and-other-stories
Pages on Stages USC Chapter Open Mic Featuring 7 Guests at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
This Pages on Stages Event is hosted by Hiram Sims and will feature:
Gia Civerolo is a poet who recently began publishing her work in anthologies including: “Once Upon a Poem” “Spectrum 32: Rejoice or Rue”, Spectrum Summer Love, Spectrum September Song, Spectrum Mayflowers, Scenes of Southern California, and Memories of Southern California including photo credits. She is currently working on her first book of poetry with the CLI Session 10 class. She is most proud of being a Mom to Riley and Holden.
Yasmin was born in Israel and grew up in Argentina and Brazil before coming to the US in her teenage years. She has a Bachelors and Masters in Clinical Social Work and currently directs a Harm Reduction program for people who struggle with mental health and substance use. She writes poetry as a way to spiritually cope with this chaotically beautiful world.
Anthony Hengsathorn is from Santa Monica, California and resides in Westwood. He is a first generation American with his father being from Mexico and his mother from Thailand. Venice Beach is his go-to place for inspiration—from the cool breeze, to the street performers, and for all the people around the world who go there to wander. In his spare time, you can find him taking classes at The Clown School, rehearsing monologues for Santa Monica College, singing his favorite songs, and also creating his own song lyrics.
JeannieLuv is a multidisciplinary artist who works across mediums to inspire others to honor their authentic truth by sharing hers. She has been writing poetry since she was a little girl and had her first poem published at the age of 8. She moved to LA in 2013 from the east coast to pursue her creative passions and is so excited to be working on her first book as a part of the USC chapter of CLI. You can find her on Instagram @awakeninginLA.
Tichina is a Los Angeles based spoken word poet, math teacher, and mixologist. She is an Oakland native and seeks to share her poetry with the world. She has performed at UCLA, her hometown, and various places in LA.
La Neta is Mexican born, indigenous, energy worker, from South Central. She works hard to give her two fur babies a better life and loves them as equally as she does her 45 indoor plants (Last time she counted).
Anastasia Fenald is a second-generation Ukrainian-Hispanic-American poet from Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert. She spends most of her free time attending poetry workshops, performing at local open mics, and exploring Southern California. Help Me, I’m Here: Poems to Myself is her debut poetry collection by the World Stage Press. Follow her on Instagram/Twitter: @anastasiafenald.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence, Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.simslibraryofpoetry.org/event-details/pages-on-stages-clis-usc-chapter
Michael Wohl & In Herschel’s Wake at Village Well Books & Café – In-Person Kids Event
Author Michael Wohl will present his children’s book, In Herschel’s Wake.
In this book, a trio of estranged siblings are forced to work together as they schlep to an obscure, obstacle-laden island when their hippie, fugitive father dies unexpectedly.
Michael Wohl tells stories: as an award-winning filmmaker; as an author of a dozen nonfiction books about filmmaking; and through curated culinary experiences that reveal the unifying magic of breaking bread.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/21126
Griot Café Open Mic with Sistah Shy & Samuel Rain at Shades of Africa, Long Beach – In-Person Event
Sistah Shy & Samuel Rain host the Griot Café Open Mic & Poetry event every Saturday evening at Shades of Africa in Long Beach. See site to subscribe for reminders, etc.
Where: Griot Café at Shades of Africa
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1001 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://shadesofafrika.com/griot-cafe-open-mic-poetry/
2022 Southern California Poetry Festival: Day 3 of 3 Day Event at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
The Southern California Poetry Festival is an annual celebration of the art of poetry and the diversity of voices within Southern California. Founded in 2016 by Sonia Greenfield and Donna Hilbert in partnership with the Poetry Foundation, the festival moved permanently to Los Angeles’ historic home for poetry, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, in 2018. Beyond Baroque now organizes and curates the festival with the Poetry Foundation’s support. All programs and workshops are free.
Schedule for Sunday, November 20:
10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Workshop with Douglas Manuel: “Returning to Harlem”
In this workshop, we will revisit the works of Harlem Renaissance Writers like Georgia Douglas Johnson, Anne Spencer, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer and listen to the music of the era, in hopes of getting into a Harlem-state-of-mind. From there, we will write poems mimicking the forms and stylistic gestures of this fruitful period. We will write blues poems like Hughes, sonnets like Cullen, and poetic prose poems like Toomer.
Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Long Beach, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. His first collection of poems, Testify, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry, and his poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is a Bayard Rustin Fellow at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program. His second poetry collection, Trouble Funk, will be out in spring of 2023.
10:00 am – 12:00 pm – Workshop with Sarah Maclay: “The Nocturne”
In this generative workshop, we’ll enter the liminal revery of the poetry of night by way of a nocturne with a secret epistolary slant—to the missing, the dead, the untouchable. With a handful of dreamy examples for lift-off, we’ll drop into the turf of Chopin and Sigur Ros—but in words.
Sarah Maclay’s Nightfall Marginalia, her fifth full-length, will be out in 2023, from What Books Press. Other recent titles include The “She” Series: A Venice Correspondence, with Holaday Mason, and Music for the Black Room (UT Press). Her poems, reviews, scripts, and essays have appeared in APR, FIELD, Ploughshares, The Best American Erotic Poetry: From 1800 to the Present, The Writer’s Chronicle, Scenarios:Scripts to Perform, Poetry International, where she also served as Book Review Editor for a decade, and beyond. Her poems provide the lyrics for composer Kostas Rekleitis’s new album Identity Had Gone. A recipient of a City of LA Individual Fellowship, a Pushcart special mention, the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, a Best of the Net nomination, and a Yaddo residency, she teaches creative writing and literature at Loyola Marymount University, and conducts periodic workshops for Beyond Baroque.
12:30 pm – 1:45 pm – Indigenous Poets Across the Americas: Tommy Pico, Kinsale Drake, Jessa Calderon, & Moncho Ollin Alvarado
A reading by poets of the Diné, Kumeyaay, Tongva, Chumash, and Mexica nations whose work explores indigenous ancestry, present, and future through poetry. Co-presented by Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural.
Tommy Pico is a poet, podcaster, and tv writer. He is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, Feed, and myriad keen tweets including “sittin on the cock of the gay.” Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! is poetry editor at Catapult Magazine, writes on the TV shows Reservation Dogs and Resident Alien, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
Kinsale Drake (Diné) is a writer and narrator whose work has appeared in Poets.org, The Adroit Journal, Yale Literary Magazine, TIME, NPR, Abalone Mountain Press, LACMA, NYU Gallatin, and elsewhere. She previously served as a National Student Poet; she currently edits Changing Wxman Collective. She is an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow, and the winner of the J. Edgar Meeker Prize for Poetry, the Academy of American Poets College Prize, and the Young Native Playwrights Award. Her work is forthcoming in Best New Poets, MTV, and elsewhere.
Jessa Calderon is the Coordinator of Indigenous Oceans and Waters Protector Program for Sacred Places Institute. Jessa is a songwriter, published author, poet, hip hop artist, performer, hypnotherapist, massage therapist, energy worker and offers guided meditations. Jessa encourages our community and youth to find their healing mentally, physically and spiritually by sharing her words, music and practices. Jessa has had the privilege to work with community and youth from many Nations, helping them find themselves while helping them to feel good about themselves.
Moncho Ollin Alvarado aka @moncholapoet is a sister in residence in air, a Cihuayollotl trans Xicanx poet, translator, visual artist, and educator. She is the author of Greyhound Americans (Saturnalia Books 2022), which was the winner of the 2020 Saturnalia Book Prize, selected by Diane Seuss. She has been published in Hayden Ferry Review, Foglifter, Poets.org, and other publications. She has fellowships and residencies from LAMBDA Literary, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Troika House, and others. Alvarado is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and has been featured at Brooklyn Museum, Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, Time Square Arts, PEN America, to name a few. Currently, she is working on a trans historical novel in verse and lives in Queens with her partner, cuddly dog, & meowling cat. monchoalvarado.com
2:00 – 4:00 pm: Southern California Literary Showcase: The Offing, What Books Press, LA Review of Books
A showcase of independent presses, organizations, and literary journals publishing and supporting poetry in Southern California.
The Offing:
Michael Reyes is a poet and children’s picture book writer. He teaches Rhetoric, Composition, and Chicanx Literature at Cal Lutheran University. He’s received fellowships from VONA, Community of Writers, and Fine Arts Work Center, and has work featured in The Acentos Review, Queen Mob’s Tea House, PANK, and others. He is currently the Assistant Editor of Poetry at The Offing magazine and is currently working on his first poetry collection about anti-Mexican public health policy in the US.
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). His work appears in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Offing, Poetry, Raleigh Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading Anthology. He teaches creative writing online and edits for Frontier Poetry.
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered over fifty performance art works around the world, most recently the déjà vu live (2022) at Beyond Baroque. Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), (ghost gestures) (2021), and the déjà vu (2022). Her work has appeared in New Daughters of Africa, Kitchen Table Translation, and Experiments in Joy: a Workbook. Her poetry has been featured in Bone Bouquet, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day and The Poetry Foundation’s Vs Roll Call podcast. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches at California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.
What Books Press:
Mariano Zaro is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press), finalist of the Housatonic Book Award, and Padre Tierra (Olifante). His poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals in Spain, Mexico and United States. His translations include Buda en llamas (by Tony Barnstone), and Cómo escribir una canción de amor (by Sholé Wolpé). He is a professor of Spanish at Rio Hondo Community College (Whittier, CA). Website: www.marianozaro.com
Elena Karina Byrne is a Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry recipient, and the author of five poetry collections including If This Makes You Nervous (Omnidawn Publishing, 2021). Her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews can be found in POETRY, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Poetry International, Poetry Daily, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, APR, Plume, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, and elsewhere. Former 12-year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America, Elena’s the Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and Literary Programs Director for the Ruskin Art Club. She’s writing screenplays while completing a collection of hybrid essays entitled Voyeur Hour.
Carolie Parker is a visual artist and writer with a background in foreign languages and art history. Her poetry has appeared in Sixth Finch, The Yale Review and Denver Quarterly; What Books Press published Mirage Industry, a book-length collection of her poetry, in 2016. She has exhibited her visual work widely in Los Angeles.
LA Review of Books:
Elizabeth Metzger is the author of the chapbook Bed (Tupelo Press, 2021), winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Poetry Prize, The Spirit Papers (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry, and the chapbook The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death (Horsethief Books, 2017). Her second full-length collection Lying In will come out with Milkweed Editions in April 2023 (and is available to pre-order now). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, American Poetry Review, The Nation, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, among others. Her prose has recently been published in Conjunctions, Literary Hub, Guernica, and Boston Review. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books
Allison Hedge Coke’s recent honors include a 2022-2023 UC Mellon Dean’s Professorship, the 2021-2022 California Arts Council Legacy Artist Fellowship, 2021 AWP George Garrett Award, 2021 induction into the Texas Institute of Letters, 2020 Daniel & Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawai‘i, 2019 Fulbright in Montenegro, 2018 First Jade Female Poetry Festival Sihui China Excellent Foreign Poet, 2016 US Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow. Her latest release is Look at This Blue, from Coffee House Press, 2022.
Anna Journey is the author of the poetry collections The Judas Ear, The Atheist Wore Goat Silk, Vulgar Remedies, and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting, which was selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series, and the essay collection An Arrangement of Skin. She is an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California.
4:30 – 6:00 pm: Best American Poetry 2022: Prageeta Sharma, Alexis Sears, Amy Gerstler, & Matthew Zapruder
Celebrate the release of the 2022 Best American Poetry with readings from Prageeta Sharma, Alexis Sears, Amy Gerstler and BAP editor Matthew Zapruder. A wide-ranging discussion on contemporary American poetics will follow, moderated by Matthew Zapruder.
Prageeta Sharma is the author of the poetry collections Grief Sequence (Wave Books, 2019), Undergloom (Fence Books, 2013), Infamous Landscapes (Fence Books, 2007), The Opening Question (Fence Books, 2004), which won the 2004 Fence Modern Poets Prize, and Bliss to Fill (Subpress, 2000). She is the founder of Thinking Its Presence, an interdisciplinary conference on race, creative writing, and artistic and aesthetic practices. She is the Henry G. Lee ’37 Professor of English at Pomona College.
Alexis Sears’ first book, Out of Order, won the the 2021 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was just published by Autumn House Press. Alexis received her BA in Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and her M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has been widely published, including in Rattle’s Poets Respond last month with her “Heartbreak Ghazal.” She was a scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2019. Currently, she teaches 9th grade English in Oakland, California.
Amy Gerstler’s most recent book of poems is Index of Women (Penguin Random House, 2021). Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker and Paris Review. She is currently collaborating with composer, actor, and arranger Steve Gunderson on a musical play. Her previous books of poems include Scattered at Sea, Dearest Creature, Ghost Girl, Medicine, Crown of Weeds, Nerve Storm, and Bitter Angel. Oren’s Forest, a children’s book Gerstler created with artist/Illustrator Lindsey Burwell, was published in 2022. In 2019, she received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts CD Wright Grant. In 2018, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has also written fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and art criticism.
Matthew Zapruder – The poems in Matthew Zapruder’s fifth collection ask, how can one be a good father, partner, and citizen in the early twenty-first century? Zapruder deftly improvises upon language and lyricism as he passionately engages with these questions during turbulent, uncertain times. Whether interrogating the personalities of the Supreme Court, watching a child grow off into a distance, or tweaking poetry critics and hipsters alike, Zapruder maintains a deeply generous sense of humor alongside a rich vein of love and moral urgency. The poems in Father’s Day harbor a radical belief in the power of wonder and awe to sustain the human project while guiding it forward.
6:30 – 8:00 pm: Poet Laureates & Company: Lynne Thompson, Tongo Eisen-Marn, Shonda Buchanan, bridgette bianca, & Conney Williams.
The 2022 Southern California Poetry Festival closes with a powerhouse reading by the poet laureate of Los Angeles, Lynne Thompson, and the poet laureate of San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin. They’re joined by three of the most dynamic poets in Los Angeles: Shonda Buchanan, bridgette bianca, and Conney Williams. Co-presented by World Stage Press.
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.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His book Heaven Is All Goodbyes was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His latest book is Blood on the Fog. Tongo is currently San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.
Shonda Buchanan is a 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. She is the author of five books, including her memoir, Black Indian, which wone 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 a first-year seminar and a Senior Lecturer for the Department of African American Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She 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.
bridgette bianca is a poet and professor from South Central Los Angeles. Her first book of poetry, be/trouble, was released by Writ Large Press 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.
Conney Williams is a poet, actor, community activist, and performance artist with three collections of poetry Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet (2002) and Blues Red Soul Falsetto (2012). His new collection the distance of observation was released August 2021 on World Stage Press. He also has two critically acclaimed poetry cds: River&Moan and Unsettled Water.
NOTE: See site for RSVP link, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Sunday the 20th (Day 3 of 3)
Time: 10 am – 8 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/scpf2022.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/southern-california-poetry-festival-sunday-nov-20-tickets-445588756967
Fiesta at Sims Library for Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells Book Tour & Author Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl, with Guests: Paola Gutierrez & Brian Dunlap at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
This Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells event and fiesta at The Sims Library will feature author Diosa Xochiquetzalcoatl, and her guest readers, Paola Gutierrez & Brian Dunlap, Brenda Vaca & Kuhamel.
Paola Gutierrez is the author of No me gusta el brócoli.
Brian Dunlap is a native Angeleño who still lives in Los Ángeles. He explores and captures the city’s stories that are hidden in plain sight. Dunlap is the author of the chapbook Concrete Paradise (Finishing Line Press, 2018). He is the winner of the 2018 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize from december magazine judged by former L.A. Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez.
Brenda Vaca is the author of Riot of Roses (Riot of Roses Publishing, 2021) and host of the open mic The Post Up.
Kuahmel is curator of Under the Mic Influence and author of Piece in the Pocket (World Stage Press, 2017).
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and event details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 1 pm – 4 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence, Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.facebook.com/diosa.xochiquetzalcoatl https://www.facebook.com/photo? Oorfbid=1775739116137966&set=pcb.1775739152804629
Focus on Craft Book Club at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents the November Focus on Craft Book Club, which will discuss this month’s selection, A Lady for a Duke, by Alexis Hall.
Developmental editor and teacher Jeanne Devita leads this bookclub that focuses on examining popular romance novels from a writer’s viewpoint. But everyone is welcome, you don’t have to be a writer!
This event meets every 3rd Sunday of the month at 1pm.
No membership necessary, feel free to show up!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 1 pm
Address: Main St. at Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Poetry Reding: Edward Vidaurre & Cry Howl & Open Micvia The Poetry Salon – Online Event
The Poetry Salon presents an online poetry reading by esteemed poet and publisher Edward Vidaurre, plus an Open Mic.
Edward Vidaurre will present and read form his ninth collection, Cry Howl. This publication is his eighth. He is also publisher of FowerSong Press.
Open mic segment follows via a show of hands. Bring a piece to share.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Poetry Salon
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Neal Shusterman & Gleanings: Stories from the Arc of a Scythe at Vroman’s – In-Person YA Event
Neal Shusterman will present Gleanings: Stories from the Arc of the Scythe.
The New York Times bestselling Arc of the Scythe series continues with thrilling stories that span the timeline. Storylines continue. Origin stories are revealed. And new Scythes emerge!
There are still countless tales of “the Scythedom” to tell. Centuries passed between the Thunderhead cradling humanity and Scythe Goddard trying to turn it upside down. For years humans lived in a world without hunger, disease, or death with Scythes as the living instruments of population control.
Neal Shusterman—along with collaborators David Yoon, Jarrod Shusterman, Sofía Lapuente, Michael H. Payne, Michelle Knowlden, and Joelle Shusterman—returns to the world throughout the timeline of the Arc of a Scythe series. Discover secrets and histories of characters you’ve followed for three volumes and meet new heroes, new foes, and some figures in between.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/neal-shusterman-discusses-gleanings
Bucket List Book Club & Death and the King’s Horseman at Cellar Door Bookstore
The Bucket List Book Club will discuss its monthly selection Death and the King’s Horseman, a play by Wole Soyinka.
This is a Nobel Prize-winning playwright’s classic tale of tragic decisions in a traditional African culture.
Based on events that took place in Oyo, an ancient Yoruba city of Nigeria, in 1946, Wole Soyinka’s powerful play concerns the intertwined lives of Elesin Oba, the king’s chief horseman; his son, Olunde, now studying medicine in England; and Simon Pilkings, the colonial district officer. The king has died and Elesin, his chief horseman, is expected by law and custom to commit suicide and accompany his ruler to heaven. The stage is set for a dramatic climax when Pilkings learns of the ritual and decides to intervene and Elesin’s son arrives home.
This paly is a NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Books
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., Riverside CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/bucket-list-book-club-death-and-kings-horseman
Kennedy Ryan, with Anna Todd, & Before I Let Go at The Ripped Bodice Bookstore – In-Person Event
Kennedy Ryan, in conversation with Anna Todd, will present and discuss her new novel, Before I Let Go, and all things romance.
Their love was supposed to last forever. But when life delivered blow after devastating blow, Yasmen and Josiah Wade found that love alone couldn’t solve or save everything
It couldn’t save their marriage.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 5 pm – 8 pm
Address: Main St. at Venice Blvd., Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 