Philosophical Horror Book Club: Damnation Game at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Philosophical Horror Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, The Damnation Game, by Clive Barker.
There are things worse than death. There are games so seductively evil, so wondrously vile, no gambler can resist. Amid the shadow-scarred rubble of World War II, Joseph Whitehead dared to challenge the dark champion of life’s ultimate game. Now a millionaire, locked in a terror-shrouded fortress of his own design, Joseph Whitehead has hell to pay. And no soul is safe from this ravaging fear, the resurrected fury, the unspeakable desire of.
Born in Liverpool in 1952, Clive Barker has written and produced several plays, including The History of the Devil and Frankenstein in Love, which are as diverse in style and subject as the fiction he has written since. His volumes of short fiction, Books of Blood, earned him immediate praise from horror fans and literary critics alike. He won both the British and World Fantasy awards, and was nominated for the coveted Booker Prize, Britain’s highest literary award. His bestselling novels include The Damnation Game, Imajica, Coldheart Canyon, The Thief of Always, The Great and Secret Show, Everville, the Abarat series, and The Scarlet Gospels. He is also the creator of the now-classic Hellraiser films as well as Nightbreed and Lord of Illusions.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/philosophical-horror-book-club-damnation-game
Rainn Wilson, with Valarie Kaur, & Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution at LiveTalks L.A. – Virtual (Reprise) Event
Rainn Wilson, in conversation with Valarie Kaur, discusses his new book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution.
Actor, producer, writer, and New York Times bestselling author Rainn Wilson, cofounder of the media company SoulPancake, explores the benefits of spirituality as a means to creating solutions for an increasingly challenging world.
You may know Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute on TV’s “The Office.” But he’s also a writer, thinker, and media executive. In his new book, Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution, he talks about the need for profound healing that can only be provided by faith and the sacred. Sparked by his personal struggles with loss, addiction and mental health, Wilson delves into ancient wisdom for answers to life’s deepest questions.
Rainn Wilson is a three-time Emmy nominated actor best known for his role as Dwight Schrute on NBC’s The Office. Besides his many other comedic and dramatic roles on stage and screen, he is the co-founder of the media company SoulPancake and host of the docuseries Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss, coming early summer on Peacock. Rainn is the author of The Bassoon King: My Life in Art, Faith, and Idiocy, as well as the coauthor of SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions, a New York Times bestseller. He lives in Oregon and California with a lot of animals, his wife and son.
Valarie Kaur is a civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, and author of the #1 LA Times Bestseller SEE NO STRANGER. A daughter of Punjabi Sikh farmers in California, she has led visionary campaigns to tell untold stories and change policy on issues ranging from hate crimes to digital freedom. In Fall 2022, President Biden honored Valarie at the White House in the first-ever Uniters Ceremony, naming
her as one of 16 leaders whose work is healing America. Her work has ignited a national movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. Today, she leads the Revolutionary Love Project to inspire and equip people across America to build the beloved community.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.,
Where: LiveTalks LA
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Virtual Event (see site)
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/rainn-wilson/
Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik & The T Guide at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik will discuss their book, The T Guide: Our Trans Experiences and a Celebration of Gender Expression—Man, Woman, Nonbinary, and Beyond.
In this fabulous, fashion-forward guide, transgender icons Gigi Gorgeous and Gottmik discuss the ins and outs of being transgender with their honest, hilarious, and GORGEOUS tales of what it means to be true to oneself–and they’ve picked up a few friends along the way.
Whether you’re embarking on your own transgender journey or seeking the knowledge to be the best ally you can be, there is something to be learned from every story they tell.
Gigi Gorgeous is a YouTube star, transgender activist, television personality, author, actress, and LGBTQ+ advocate. In 2017 she was named one of Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential People on the Internet” and one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30.” Her story was chronicled in the 2017 documentary This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, and she has made appearances on Project Runway All Stars, Canada’s Drag Race, Entertainment Tonight, and Access Hollywood, among others.
Gottmik (a.k.a Kade Gottlieb) is an American drag performer, actor, and make-up artist. The first transgender male to compete on RuPaul’s Drag Race, Gottmik has since graced the covers of British Vogue and OUT, as well as been profiled in global publications such as Vogue, Allure, InStyle, C*ndy, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Entertainment Weekly, among others. In 2021, Gottmik was featured on Variety’s “Power of Young Hollywood” list. In addition to touring the US and Europe as a celebrated drag performer, Gottmik has been featured in various fashion campaigns including Versace & Savage X Fenty and hosted the red carpet at the MTV Movie & TV Awards.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/book-soup-gigi-gorgeous-gottmik
Montana Branch Library Book Group: When Nietzsche Wept at Montana Branch Library, SMPL – Online Zoom Event
Join participants in the Montana Branch Library Book Group online to discuss When Nietzsche Wept, by author Irvin D. Yalom.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Montana Branch Library, SMPL
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site for Zoom link)
Website: https://smpl.org/uploadedFiles/May2023CalendarOfEvents.pdf
Erica Bauermeister & No Two Persons at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Erica Buaermeister will present and discuss her new novel, No Two Persons.
Alice has always wanted to be a writer. Her talent is innate, but her stories remain safe and detached, until a devastating event breaks her heart open, and she creates a stunning debut novel. Her words, in turn, find their way to readers, from a teenager hiding her homelessness, to a free diver pushing himself beyond endurance, an artist furious at the world around her, a bookseller in search of love, a widower rent by grief. Each one is drawn into Alice’s novel; each one discovers something different that alters their perspective, and presents new pathways forward for their lives.
Together, their stories reveal how books can affect us in the most beautiful and unexpected of ways–and how we are all more closely connected to one another than we might think.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Erica-Bauermeister-No-Two-Persons
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 an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial and Transnational Literatures at California State University Channel Islands, teaching courses on creative writing and contemporary African literatures. Raquel has published poetry in Africology and The Arrow; fiction in Enculturation, The Daily Palette, The Womanist, and Crux; and non-fiction in Little Village; and has done readings with the Ventura County Poetry project. Raquel lives for talking about all things about the craft and social meanings of literature!
Where: Beyond Baroque – Online event
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: https://beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-633290638347
Writers Bloc Presents: Tom Hanks, with John Horn, & The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece at Chevalier’s Off-Site at The Ebell – In-Person Event
Tom Hanks, in conversation with John Horn, will discuss his first novel, The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece.
Considered to be one of the most brilliant and talented actors, Hanks knows his way around comedies, and has led some of the best rom-coms in recent decades. He’s a fan of contemporary history, and his work in WWII dramas is formidable. Hanks has landed heaps of awards and nominations in film and television for his decades of exemplary acting, writing, and directing. But there’s so much more to Tom Hanks than movies, television, supporting social justice and space exploration initiatives. He’s an author. And no surprise, he’s a terrific writer.
Tom Hanks’ new novel, The Making of Another Motion Picture Masterpiece, draws on his personal Hollywood experiences– and his passion for looking at American culture from post WWII to the present. It’s a funny, moving, satirical take on the infrastructure of a colossal superhero movie, spanning decades and generations– sprung from a comic book with a lovely backstory of its own. Peppered with eccentric characters, action to spare, and a lens on post-war America and pop culture.
NOTE: See site or RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ebell of Los Angeles
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 4401 West 8th St., Los Angeles, CA 90005
Website: https://writersblocpresents.com/main/tom-hanks/
At Dynasty Typewriter: Emma Cline Launches Guest at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Emma Cline will present and discuss her book, Guest: A Novel.
In the novel Guest, a young woman pretends to be someone she isn’t in this stunning novel by the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls.
A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she’s been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.
With few resources and a waterlogged phone, and gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.
Emma Cline is the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls and the story collection Daddy. The Girls was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and the winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. Cline’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. She received the Plimpton Prize from The Paris Review and an O. Henry Award and was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists.
Tickets for this event can be found using the following link: https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/events-calendar?loxi_pathname=%2Femma-clines-book-launch-the-guest-4559
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/dynasty-typewriter-emma-cline-launches-guest
Simon Winchester & Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge at LiveTalks L. A. – In-Person Event
Simon Winchester will discuss his new book, Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic.
From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes. In Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic, Simon Winchester examines how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.
With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things—no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization—are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness? And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?
Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of many books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa, all of which were bestsellers. In 2006, Winchester was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by Her Majesty the Queen. He lives in western Massachusetts.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: LiveTalks LA at William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Arts Station
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 2525 Michigan Ave., E-1, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/simon-winchester/
Under the Mic Influence & Open Mic featuring BEACH CITY POETRESS at LB Unified – In-Person Event
Join host Kuahmel Alyeeus KuahAllah and @djkevjam for poetry, Open Mic, rare grooves, cocktails, tasty bites.
BEACH CITY POETRESS is the special guest performer tonight!
Under the Mic Influence and Open Mic bring you poetry & battle rap dynamo @sistar_outspoken to set off 2023 in @lbunified with @djkevjam and yours truly. Vegan soul food from @anotherside0fsoul on deck all evening. BE THERE!
DM now to get at the #openmic!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and details.
Where: LB Unified Bar & Lounge
Date: Monday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm; Mic at 8 pm
Address: 2222 E. Anaheim, Long Beach, CA 90804
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/ or https://allevents.in/long%20beach/under-mic-influence/10000595248914527
Susan Goldman Rubin & The Women Who Build Hollywood via Children’s Book World – Online MG & Teen Event
Award-winning author Susan Goldman Rubin will present her book, The Women Who Built Hollywood: 12 Trailblazers in Front of and Behind the Curtain, via a virtual school/book talk event, and you may participate by contacting the store for details.
Susan Goldman Rubin tells the electrifying unknown stories of the pioneering and groundbreaking women of Old Hollywood. In the early twentieth century, women from all walks of life fought against sexism and racism to succeed in Hollywood as actors, directors, costume designers, editors, and stuntwomen. From well-known, glamorous starlets like Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, to under-appreciated trailblazers like Anna May Wong and Hattie McDaniel, this book shows that movies wouldn’t be the same without the women who succeeded against the odds and built Hollywood from the ground up.
Susan Goldman Rubin grew up in the Bronx and dreamed of becoming an artist. She illustrated her first three picture books but then turned to writing nonfiction, mainly about art and history, and is the author of more than 55 books for young people. Her titles include Diego Rivera: An Artist For The People, They Call Me A Hero: A Memoir of My Youth, Music Was It! Young Leonard Bernstein, Everyone Paints! The Art and Lives of the Wyeth Family, and Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 9 am
Address: Online event (see site)
Third Tuesday Book Club: Cloud Cuckoo Land at Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Playa Vista’s Third Tuesday Book Club participants will discuss this month’s selection, Cloud Cuckoo Land, by bestselling author Anthony Doerr.
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times Book Review).
Set in the 215ht century, this novel is a soaring story about children on the cusp of adulthood in worlds in peril, who find resilience, hope, and a book.
This event is scheduled for the 3rd Tuesday of the month. New members are welcome.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 6400 Playa Vista Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90094
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/3rd-tuesday-book-club
Classic Detectives Book Club: The House Without a Key at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Classic Detectives Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, The House Without a Key: A Charlie Chan Mystery, by Earl Derr Biggers.
This is Book #1 in the Charlie Chan Mysteries series.
Earl Derr Biggers was born in Warren, Ohio in 1884. He graduated from Harvard University in 1907 and lived for many years in California. He wrote six novels featuring detective Charlie Chan, who became a staple of the movies. He died in Pasadena, CA in 1933.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/classic-detectives-book-club-house-without-key
Maria Sansone & Oh $#!%, What’s For Dinner? at Diesel, A Book Store – In-Person Event
Maria Sansone will read from, discuss and sign her book, Oh $#!%, What’s For Dinner?.
Emmy award–winning TV host, social media personality, lifestyle expert, and mom of two, Maria Sansone, knows that when it comes to weeknight dinners…the struggle is real.
In Oh $#!% What’s for Dinner? Maria shares 65 of her go-to, no-fuss weeknight recipes for real life. No appetizers and no desserts because mama don’t have time for that on a weeknight. Quick and easy entrees paired with some tried-and-true sides designed to help you through mealtime, in no time.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, A Book Store
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Maria-Sansone-Author-signing
Cocktail Hour: J. Ryan Stradal & Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club at pages: a bookstore at the 900 Club – In-Person Event
Join pages as the store hosts a Cocktail Hour at the 900 Club with J. Ryan Stradal for a discussion of his book, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club.
The author of two previous novels, Kitchens of the Great Midwest (a staff favorite for all time) and The Lager Queen of Minnesota, the bookstore previously hosted an event for J Ryan at the LA Ale Works.
To celebrate the publication of Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club this event will be celebrated with the bookstore’s neighbors right next door at the 900 Club.
This novel is a story about a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them.
Your ticket includes a signed copy of Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club, an Old Fashioned cocktail (made to the book’s specifications) and light nibbles including a relish tray, a beloved staple of the Lakeside Supper Club and spectacular conversation between J. Ryan and Taylor Kay Smith who will be discussing J. Ryan’s latest and other things decidedly midwest. This will be a fun one and you don’t want to miss out; a cocktail and book talk with pages and J. Ryan at 6:30 and an 8:00 dinner reservation somewhere downtown. We think it’s a pretty perfect night out!
NOTE: RSVP, tickets, and details at site.
Where: pages: a bookstore next door at the 900 Club
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 900 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/cocktail-hour-j-ryan-stradal-900-club-tuesday-may-16th-630-pm
ALOUD Reading Series: Frans de Wall & Different Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Online Hybrid Event
Renowned primatologist and bestselling author Frans de Waal has spent thousands of hours observing apes and monkeys both in the wild and in captivity. In his new book (now out in paperback), Different: Gender Though the Eyes of a Primatologist, de Waal challenges widely held beliefs about masculinity and femininity, and common assumptions about authority, leadership, cooperation, competition, filial bonds, sexual orientation, gender identity, and the limitations of the gender binary, exceptions to which are also found in other primates. With humor, clarity, and compassion, Different seeks to broaden the conversation about human gender dynamics by promoting an inclusive model that embraces differences.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Mark Taper Auditorium
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 630 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/different-gender-through-eyes-primatologist
Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month Event: A Conversation with Author Joe Ide (Fixit) at Santa Monica Library – Online Zoom Event
Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month Event and Mystery Book Group Discussion presents a Conversation with author Joe Ide.
Author Joe Ide discusses his writing and books, including: The Goodbye Coast: A Philip Marlow Novel and his I.Q. series, with the newest title FixIt (which will be released thismonth).
Email library@santamonica.gov for Zoom link.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Santa Monica Library
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online Event (see site for Zoom link)
Website: https://smpl.org/uploadedFiles/May2023CalendarOfEvents.pdf
Zachary Zane & Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Zachary Zane will discuss his book, Boyslut: A Memoir and Manifesto.
As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. Without an explanation as to why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.
Boyslut is a series of personal and tantalizing essays that articulate how our society still shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuality and much self-described sluttiness, Zane breaks down exactly how this sexual shame negatively impacts the sex and relationships in our lives, and through personal experience, shares how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Zachary-Zane
North Fig Book Club: MEM, by Bethany Morrowat North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
The North Fig Book Club will meet again at 7pm on May 16 to discuss Mem by Bethany Morrow. Finishing the book is recommended but not required to attend. Come for an introspective discussion full of laughter and mirth. We will vote on the book for June at the club meeting.
Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole and complete. The Mems exist as mirror-images of their source — zombie-like creatures destined to experience that singular memory over and over, until they expire in the cavernous Vault where they are kept. And then there is Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating her own memories. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she is allowed to live on her own, and create her own existence, until one day she is summoned back to the Vault. What happens next is a gorgeously rendered, heart-breaking novel in the vein of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Debut novelist Bethany Morrow has created an allegory for our own time, exploring profound questions of ownership, and how they relate to identity, memory and history, all in the shadows of Montreal’s now forgotten slave trade.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, CA 90043
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/516-north-fig-book-club-mem-by-bethany-morrow/
At Skylight: Sasha Velour & The Big Reveal at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Sasha Velour will present and discuss her book, The Big Reveal.
This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Within these pages, illustrated throughout with photos and original artwork, Sasha Velour illuminates drag as a unique form of expression with a rich history and a revolutionary spirit.
Each chapter strips off a new layer, removing one tantalizing glove and then another, to reveal all the twists and turns in the life of a queen. As Sasha recalls her own journey, from the women who raised her, to learning the craft of an artist, to success, disaster, and more, she also uncovers the history of queer life around the world that made it all possible.
Sasha Velour is a gender-fluid drag queen, artist, and speaker. She is the creator and editor of the critically acclaimed drag magazine “Velour” and the host of the influential New York City-based drag show NightGowns, which was adapted into a docu-series. Her first one-queen theater show, “Smoke & Mirrors” toured to sold-out audiences around the world. In 2017, she was crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9 on VH1, with an emotional and reveal-filled finale performance that made history. Velour also holds a degree in Literature from Vassar College, an MFA in Cartooning from The Center for Cartoon Studies and was a former Fulbright Scholar in Moscow. The Big Reveal is her first book.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-sasha-velour-presents-big-reveal
Book Launch: Ethan Philbrick & Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
This event is a night of readings and responses to Ethan Philbrick’s Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence,featuring Jennifer Doyle, Malik Gaines, Karen Tongson, and Craig Willse.
Group Works is a book about trying to do things together even when that doesn’t seem possible. Written against both phobic and romantic accounts of collectivity, Group Works contends that the small group emerges as a medium for artists when established forms of collective life break down. It is a book about assembling and falling apart when assembling is, in itself, a kind of falling apart together.
For this event, Philbrick will be joined by Jennifer Doyle (Hold it Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art, 2013), Malik Gaines (Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible, 2017), Karen Tongson (Normporn: Queer Pleasures in Sentimental Television, forthcoming), and Craig Willse (The Value of Homelessness: Managing Surplus Life in the United States, 2015) to offer associative responses to the book.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Thursday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Dean King & Guardians of the Valley at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Dean King will present and discuss his new book, Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite.
In June of 1889 in San Francisco, John Muir–iconic environmentalist, writer, and philosopher–meets face-to-face for the first time with his longtime editor Robert Underwood Johnson, an elegant and influential figure at The Century magazine. Before long, the pair, opposites in many ways, decide to venture to Yosemite Valley, the magnificent site where twenty years earlier, Muir experienced a personal and spiritual awakening that would set the course of the rest of his life.
Upon their arrival the men are confronted with a shocking vision, as predatory mining, tourism, and logging industries have plundered and defaced “the grandest of all the special temples of Nature.” While Muir is consumed by grief, Johnson, a champion of society’s most pressing debates via the pages of the nation’s most prestigious magazine, decides that he and Muir must fight back. The pact they form marks a watershed moment, leading to the creation of Yosemite National Park, and launching an environmental battle that captivates the nation and ushers in the beginning of the American environmental movement.
Beautifully rendered, deeply researched, and inspiring, Guardians of the Valley is a moving story of friendship, the written word, and the transformative power of nature. It is also a timely and powerful “origin story” as the toweringly complex environmental challenges we face today become increasingly urgent.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Dean-King-Guardians-of-the-Valley
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with Fred Dodsworth via Online Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest Fred Dodsworth.
Fred Dodsworth is a is a poet and writer and has had a long career as a journalist and publisher in the Bay Area. As a freelance Publication Consultant, Fred has worked on projects in a range of media from books on California Indians to literary and lifestyle magazines, lesbian sports magazines to alt-weeklies, and daily newspapers as well. In addition to serving as a Board Member with Bay Area Generations, he was responsible for publication design and production of B.A.G.’s monthly chapbook.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 16th
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 16th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699147113818899
Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic Night at Greenway Court – In-Person Event
The nation’s largest weekly Open Mic event is 25 years strong. They hold open mic nights. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in their audience.
Every Tuesday (except for 3rd Tuesdays which is Slam Night) we hold open mic nights. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in our audience.
TIME LIMIT: Each artist has 3 minutes at the mic, and if you go over, our DJ will scratch you. Please be respectful of the time limit as we try to accommodate as many people as possible.
$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to theatre.
See sites for details.
$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to theater.
Masks are encouraged. All ages are welcome.
Where: Greenway Court Theatre and YouTube Live Stream
Date: Tuesday the 16th
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/events/open-mic-night
New Neverspeak Tuesdays Open Mic at DiPiazza’s – In-Person Event
The New Neverspeak Tuesdays Open Mic at DiPiazza’s with Shy But Flyy, will feature guest poet TBA + an open mic.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: DiPiazza’s Pizza
Date: Tuesday the 16th
Time: 9 pm
Address: 5205 E. Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-mic-w-shy-but-flyy-music-poetry-tickets-533965133087
Coffee Time Book Club: Hello Beautiful at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
The Coffee Time Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Hello Beautiful, by author Ann Napolitano. (Facilitated by Linda McLoughlin Figel).
An exquisite homage to Louisa May Alcott’s timeless classic, Little Women, Hello Beautiful is a profoundly moving portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in despite who they are, but because of it.
Ann Napolitano is the author of Dear Edward, which was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna selection, and is now an Apple TV+ series. She is also the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arm’s Reach. For seven years, Napolitano was the associate editor of the literary magazine One Story, and she received an MFA from New York University. She has taught fiction writing at Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gotham Writers Workshop.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 10 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/coffee-time-book-club-17
Mike Sonksen Guests at the ALTA Online IG Event – Online Live Event
The ALTA Online IG will present guest Mike Sonksen, poet, writer, educator, historian, and author of Letters to My City, which is about to release its 2nd edition from Writ Large Press.
Over the past year Mike Sonksen has written seven pieces for ALTA about L.A.’s cultural landscape, public art, and literary history. Learn more at this IG live event.
Where: ALTA LIve
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 12:30 pm
Address: Online IG Event
Website: https://www.instagram.com/altajournal/
Write Your Novel Event at Platt Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The Platt Branch Library invites you to write your novel at their library.
Is writing one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2023? Is completing a book on your bucket list? Whether you shouted an emphatic yes or mumbled a hushed maybe to either of those questions, our new novel writing support group is for you. This new group will be a place to learn, practice, and receive support from other writers. We will use LinkedIn Learning courses available on lapl.org to guide us through the novel writing process one step at a time. With weekly goals and the encouragement of your peers, you can spend the year working your way toward a completed novel.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Platt Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 23600 Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/write-your-novel
Tween Book Club: Confessions of a Class Clown at Panorama City Branch Library, LAPL – Online Kids Event
The Panorama City Branch Library invites tweens ages 9-12 to enjoy a book club discussion of Confessions of a Class Clown, by author Arianne Costner.
Please register at tinyurl.com/PanoramaCityTweens to receive Zoom Link.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Panorama City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/tween-book-club
Middle Grade Book Club: Iceberg at pages: a bookstore – In-Person MG Event
The Middle Grade Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Iceberg, by author Jennifer A. Nielsen.
As disaster looms on the horizon, a young stowaway onboard the Titanic will need all her courage and wits to stay alive.
Hazel Rothbury is traveling all alone from her home in England aboard the celebrated ship Titanic. Following the untimely death of her father, Hazel’s mother is sending her to the US to work in a factory, so that she might send money back home to help her family make ends meet. But when calamity strikes, Hazel must fight to save her friends and herself.
Where: pages: a bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/middle-grade%C2%A0book-club
Graphic Novel Book Club: Grace Needs Space at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Event
Graphic Novel Book Club celebrates a shared love of graphic novels and visual creativity! Iz and Apollo will host our ever-popular book club.
Best for ages 9 – 12.
Participants will read this month’s selection Grace Needs Space, by Benjamin A. Wilgus and Rii Abrego.
3rd Wednesday of the month @ 5 pm for 45 minutes.
Limited space. No drop-ins.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 5 pm – 5:45 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
AAPI Heritage Reding: When Fire. Myth Echo at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person & Live Online Zoom Hybrid Event
Join Beyond Baroque for a virtual and in-person reading with: Kay Ulanday Barrett, Janice Lee, Ng’u Revilla. Angela Penaredondo, and Simon Shieh.
In honor and continued celebration of Asian American Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Month for the month of May, Beyond Baroque presents, When Fire. Myth. Echo, a poetry reading that brings together AANHPI poets from the pacific northwest, east coast, southern California and Hawaii to the L.A. literary stage.
When Fire. Myth. Echo unapologetically meditates while still tenderly exposed to a world in tidal rupture. These writers find language and lineage inside spaces that converge mythmaking and healing as anti-colonial resistance and resilience. In these poetic stories, the lyrical voice, the experimental voice, the performative voice is a body praying, shapeshifting, calling out violence, and grieving as a method to fight and protect our individual histories’ imagination.
Angela Peñaredondo (she/they) is queer, nonbinary Filipinx writer and author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press, March 2023), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (winner of the 2016 Inlandia Institute’s Hillary Gravendyk Book Prize) and the chapbook Maroon (Jamii Publishing). An interdisciplinary writer, artist, and educator, their work can be found in The Academy of American Poets, Pleiades, Apogee Journal, Southern Humanities Review. Black Warrior Review and elsewhere. They are recipients of fellowships from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, Macondo, TinHouse, the Community of Writers and others. They are an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University, San Bernardino.
Janice Lee (she/they) is a Korean American writer, teacher, spiritual scholar, and shamanic healer. She is the author of 7 books of fiction, creative nonfiction & poetry: KEROTAKIS (Dog Horn Press, 2010), Daughter (Jaded Ibis, 2011), Damnation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2013), Reconsolidation (Penny-Ante Editions, 2015), The Sky Isn’t Blue (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016), Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021), Separation Anxiety (CLASH Books, 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award, and A roundtable, unanimous dreamers chime in, a collaborative novel co-authored with Brenda Iijima, (Meekling Press, 2023). An essay (co-authored with Jared Woodland) is featured in the recently released 4K restoration of Sátántangó (dir. Béla Tarr) from Arbelos Films. She writes about interspecies communication, plants & personhood, the filmic long take, slowness, the apocalypse, architectural spaces, inherited trauma, and the Korean concept of han, and asks the question, how do we hold space open while maintaining intimacy? She currently lives in Portland, OR where she is the Operational Creative Director at Corporeal Writing and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Portland State University.
Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, cultural strategist, and A+ napper. They are the winner of the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, a 2022 recipient of a Tin House Next Book residency, and a recipient of a 2020 James Baldwin Fellowship Award at MacDowell. Their second book, More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) received a 2021 Stonewall Honor Book Award and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. They have featured at The United Nations, The Lincoln Center, The Hemispheric Institute, Symphony Space, Brooklyn Museum, Dodge Poetry, The Poetry Foundation, The School of the Arts Institute, Princeton, Columbia University, Sesame Street, & more. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Magazine, Literary Hub, them, The Advocate, Al Jazeera, NYLON, Vogue, The Rumpus, The Lily, The Maine Review, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Currently, they serve as a co- curator at The Asian American Writers’ Workshop. For more information go online at kaybarrett.net or on social media at @brownroundboi.
Noʻu Revilla (she / her / ʻo ia) is an ʻŌiwi poet and educator. Her debut book Ask the Brindled (Milkweed Editions 2022) won the 2021 National Poetry Series. She also won the 2021 Omnidawn Broadside Poetry prize. Her writing has been featured in Poetry, Lit Hub, ANMLY, Beloit, and the Library of Congress, and she has performed throughout Hawaiʻi, Toronto, Papua New Guinea, and the United Nations. Her work has also been adapted for theatrical productions in Aotearoa as well as exhibitions in the Honolulu Museum of Art and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-Mānoa, where she teaches creative writing with an emphasis on ʻŌiwi literature, spoken word, and decolonial poetics. She is a lifetime “slyly / reproductive” student of Haunani-Kay Trask. Learn more about Noʻu at nourevilla.com.
Simon Shieh is a Taiwanese American poet, essayist, and educator. He is the author of Master (Sarabande Books, 2023), chosen by Terrance Hayes for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize. His poems and essays are published/forthcoming in Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The Yale Review, among others, and have been recognized with support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation (www.simonshieh.com).
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, link, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd, Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/when-fire-myth-echo-tickets-602869146847
Book Talk & Launch: Emily Wells, with Toni Bentley, & A Matter of Appearance at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Emily Wells, in conversation with Toni Bentley, will discuss her debut memoir, A Matter of Appearance.
This book is a dazzling memoir of chronic illness that explores the fraught intersection between pain, language, and gender.
Emily Wells, a former ballerina, spent her childhood dancing through intense, whole-body pain she assumed was normal for someone used to pushing her body to its limits. For years, no doctor could tell Wells what was wrong with her, or they told her it was “all in her head.” It was only in college that she learned the name for the illness she had been suffering from all her life: Behcet’s Disease, a rare congenital disorder causing blood vessel inflammation throughout the body, arthritis, and swelling of the brain.
In A Matter of Appearance, Wells, who now teaches writing at UC Irvine, traces her journey as she tries to understand and define this specific and personal pain, internally and externally. She draws on the critical works of Freud, Sontag, and others to explore the intersection between gender, pain, and language, tracing a line from the hysteria patients documented at the Salpêtrière Hospital in nineteenth-century Paris through to the contemporary New Age healers of Los Angeles, her stomping ground. At the crux of this is the dilemma of how to express in words an experience that is both private and public, subjective, and quantifiable.
Emily Wells is a writer living in Los Angeles. A Matter of Appearance, a memoir binding the author’s account of autoimmune disease to 19th century French hysteria and discursive histories of ballet and illness, is her first book. Emily has an MFA in fiction from UC Riverside and now teaches writing at UC Irvine. Formerly, she has been an editor at several fashion and art magazines and newspaper reporter.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-a-matter-of-appearance-by-emily-wells-tickets-626584249357
Adult Book Club: Lessons in Chemistry at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
The Studio City Branch Library invites adults to enjoy a book club discussion of Lessons in Chemistry, by author Bonnie Garmus.
Lessons in Chemistry is about women’s lives, careers, and struggle for empowerment in the late 50s and early 60s. It follows the story of Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist who is forced to become a television chef when she finds herself a young, single mother.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-adults
JJ Elliott & There Are No Rules for This at Diesel, A Book Store – In-Person Event
JJ Elliott will read from, discuss and sign her book, There Are No Rules for This.
In her debut novel There Are No Rules for This, JJ Elliott draws readers into a deeply affecting story of friendship, loss, guilt, healing, and forgiveness. Told from the perspective of Ali, the story starts with Feeney’s suicide and progresses through its aftershocks, while continually flashing back to memorable incidents over the course of the women’s friendship. Why didn’t Ali, who believed she knew Feeney better than Liddy or Max did, see it coming? Did she really know her at all? Did Feeney really have to die for her closest friends to know she was suffering?
Those questions are only strengthened during the traditional, staid funeral for Josephine Simms (aka Feeney), dictated by her icy mother. After enduring a carefully orchestrated, emotionless memorial service for someone who seems to be a stranger, Ali, Liddy, and Max set out to celebrate the Feeney they loved for her heart and spirit in their own way—complete with drinking a pinch of her purloined ashes in a glass of her favorite wine. After toasting Feeney, the three survivors are seized with a wild and very Feeney-ish idea: Why not hold their own funerals, so they can say and hear how much they mean to one another while they’re still alive?
Interweaving moments of hilarity with expressions of profound grief, There Are No Rules for This offers glimpses of what drove Feeney to take her own life through comments that her friends dismissed and passages in the diary she kept, which Ali happens to find. Yet, JJ Elliott does not offer Ali, Liddy, and Max—or her readers—clear and simple answers. When the novel closes, the reasons Feeney did not seek help from her friends and felt unable to go on living remain a mystery. What shines out, however, is the value of Feeney’s life and her ongoing gift to the women she loved.
JJ Elliott is a professional copywriter with a degree in English from UCLA. She lost her mother to suicide as a teenager, and spent over two years in her 20’s manning the suicide hotlines in LA. One of the reasons she wanted to write this book is because she finds herself increasingly frustrated by the way suicide is treated in print and on-screen, as a mystery to be solved instead of a multi-layered, complex condition that can rarely be boiled down to one specific “reason.”
A native of Northern California, she now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two teenage children. There Are No Rules for This is her first novel.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, A Book Store
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/brentwood-wednesday-jj-elliott-author-signing
Michelle Gagnon, with Eric Beetner, & Killing Me at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Michelle Gagnon, in conversation with Eric Beetner, will present and discuss her new book,Killing Me.
She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird.
Amber Jamison can’t believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer. She’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she is more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman…who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers?
You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning. Her close call has law enforcement circling a past she’s tried to outrun. She’s forced to flee across the country, ending up at a seedy motel in Las Vegas with a noir-obsessed manager and a sex worker as her unlikely companions…and danger right behind. She’s landed in the cross hairs of the world’s most prolific killer, caught up in a deadly game that’s been going on for years. To survive, she is forced to dust off her old playbook and partner with someone she can’t trust. The odds are against her, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Michelle-Gagnon
Laura Hankin, with Elissa Sussman, & The Daydreamers Book Event at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents The Daydreamers, by author Laura Hankin, in conversation with Elyssa Sussman.
This book is a deliciously entertaining novel about the stars of a popular teen show from the early 2000s—and the reunion special, thirteen years after their scandalous flameout, that will either be their last chance at redemption, or destroy them all for good.
There will be a book signing to follow. This event is free to attend and tickets are not required, however, we do appreciate RSVPs when possible!
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
At Skylight: Alexandra Auder, with Maggie Nelson, & Don’t Call Me Home at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Alexandra Auder, in conversation with Maggie Nelson, will present and discuss her book, Don’t Call Me Home: A Memoi.
Alexandra Auder’s life began at the Chelsea Hotel—New York City’s infamous bohemian hangout—when her mother, Viva, a longtime resident of the hotel and one of Andy Warhol’s superstars, went into labor in the lobby. These first moments of Alexandra’s life, documented by her filmmaker father, Michel Auder, portended the whirlwind childhood and teen years that she would go on to have.
In Don’t Call Me Home, Alexandra meditates on the seedy glory of being raised by two counterculture icons, from walking a pet goat around Chelsea and joining the Squat Theatre company to coparenting her younger sister, Gaby, with her mother and partying in East Village nightclubs. Flitting between this world and her present-day life as a yoga instructor, actress, mother, wife, and much-loved Instagram provocateur, Alexandra weaves a stunning, moving, and hilarious portrait of a family and what it means to move away from being your mother’s daughter into being a person of your own.
Alexandra Auder is a writer and actress. Born in New York City to mother Viva, a Warhol superstar, and father Michel Auder, an award-winning filmmaker who directed Chelsea Girls with Andy Warhol. Alexandra has been a featured character in HBO’s High Maintenance and has acted in the films of Wim Wenders and Jodie Foster, among others. She resides in Philadelphia with her two children and husband, filmmaker Nick Nehez, with whom she co-produces and collaborates.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Connie Wang & Oh My Mother at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Connie Wang will present and discuss her new book, Oh My Mother: A Memoir in Nine Adventures.
In Chinese, the closest expression to oh my god is wo de ma ya. It’s an interjection, a polite expletive, something to say when you’re out of words. Translated literally, it means oh my mother—the instinctual first person you think of when you’re on the cusp of losing it or putting it all together.
In each essay of this hilarious, heartfelt, and pitch-perfectly honest memoir, journalist Connie Wang explores her complicated relationship to her stubborn and charismatic mother, Qing Li, through the “oh my god” moments in their travels together. From attending a Magic Mike strip show in Vegas to experimenting with edibles in Amsterdam to flip-flopping through Versailles, this iconic mother-daughter duo venture into the world to find their place in it, and sometimes rail against it—as well as against each other.
There are hijinks, capers, and adventures. There is also tenderness, growth, and discovery. In telling these stories about the places they’ve gone and the things they’ve done, Wang reveals another story: the true story of two women who finally learned that once we are comfortable with the feeling of not belonging—once we can reject the need to belong to any place, community, census, designation, or nation—we can experience something almost like freedom.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
WebsiteB https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Connie-Wang-discusses-Oh-My-Mother
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.
- 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm — Formal workshop;
- 8:30 pm – 9:00 pm — Reading: TBA;
- 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — 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 17th
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 at Beyond Baroque – Online Zoom Event
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. Please be prepared to share one poem. This workshop will be hosted via the Zoom video-conferencing platform. Please sign up for each workshop session at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting, and you will be contacted with instructions on how to join the meeting.
The workshop facilitator is James Cushing, who retired in 2020 after thirty-five years teaching literature and creative writing in San Luis Obispo, CA, where he served as the community’s poet laureate in 2008-2010. Cushing’s poems have appeared widely and his collections include The Length of an Afternoon, Undercurrent Blues, Pinocchio’s Revolution, The Magicians’ Union, Solace, and Tangled Hologram, all from Cahuenga Press in Los Angeles.
Please spend some time before the workshop learning how to share documents via Zoom. It will keep the session moving if you’re able to make your poem viewable quickly and easily. Here’s an instructive video that might help.
The workshop can sometimes reach high levels of attendance, which means not everyone will get a chance to read every session.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Wednesday the 17th
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-634792460337
Reading Event: Gary Indiana & Do Everything in the Dark at Poetic Research Bureau – In-Person Event
PRC presents Gary Indiana to present and discuss his book, Do Everything in the Dark. Reading will be followed by a Q&A with Beau Rice.
First published in 20023, this turn-of-the-millennium novel traces the lives of a loosely connected group of New York artists and the dissolution of their scene. It’s told through the narrator of a gallery, who receives intermittent dispatches from his far-flung friends who are spread across the globe seeking reprieves from a changed New York. It suggests the many ways love dies in a world people feel increasingly unlivable.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 8 pm (doors at 7:30 pm)
Address: 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057
Website: https://www.poeticresearch.com/events/gary-indiana
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg & Linda Ravenswood at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Join host Ben Trigg and Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Night for our Reading & Open Mic, with featured guest Linda Ravenswood.
Linda Ravenswood, founding editor in Chief at The Los Angeles Press, is an Oxford Prize in Poetry winner from Los Angeles. She is the current Edwin Markham Poet, selected by US Poet Laureate emeritus Juan Felipe Herrera. She is the 2023 winner of the Arthur Smith Prize in Poetry from Madville Press.
Educated at CalArts (BFA 2007) and Mount St. Mary’s College (MA 2009) with a PhD abd from the Pacifica Graduate Institute (2014) Linda’s arts praxes include collaboration, teaching, & curating arts events & publications. Working with arts organizations including The Poetry Society of New York, and Red Light Lit San Francisco, Linda fuses visual and performance art in formal poetry reading and burlesque venues, as well as deconstructed live literature events. Publications include Cantadora – Letters from California (Eyewear London/Black Spring Press Group, 2023), The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2022), a poem is a house (2023), The 500 – The End of Conquest (Alternating Currents Press, 2024) and If we never meet again: A Pandemic diary (X Artists’ Books, 2024).
Linda is the founder of the poet laureate programme in Glendale, California and introduces the renewed Poets Café programme on KPFK in Los Angeles on Wednesday’s at 2:00 p.m.
The format is to welcome a featured poet for an individual reading, as well as an Open Mic reading.
$4 cover fee, cash only.
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines & information.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/3061999814102762/?ref=newsfeed&locale=pt_BR or https://allevents.in/orange/linda-ravenswood-at-the-ugly-mug/200024506165236
New SOM Wednesdays Open Mic at Roscoe’s Lounge – In-Person Event
The New SOM Open Mic will be held Wednesdays (not Tuesdays) at the “new” venue Roscoe’s Lounge with music, comedy, and poetry + an open mic.
Adjustments in progress.
New Host will be Kyle Davis.
Previouslyhosted by Chris Severs @somopenmichost
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Roscoe’s Lounge
Date: Wednesday the 17th
Time: 8 pm (Sign-ups at 7:30 pm)
Address: 730 E. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.facebook.com/somopenmic/
Story Writing Club for Teens at Jefferson Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Draw, learn the art of storytelling, and discover your ideas with other teens. For ages 11-18.
Where: Jefferson Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 4;30 pm – 5;30 pm
Address: 2211 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90018
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/story-writing-club
Venice Book Club: Author Talk: Marianne Wiggins & Properties of Thirst at Venice Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The Venice Branch Library’s Book Club hosts an author talk and Q&A with local author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins, and participants will discuss her book Properties of Thirst.
This novel is about a family and a country on the brink of World War II, and the battles at home for water in a changing American landscape. Through stories of loves and losses that weave together to form our shared history, it also celebrates the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.
Copies of the book are available at the library’s front desk.
Snacks are provided by Friends of the Venice Branch Library.
Where: Venice Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 501 S. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/conversation-marianne-wiggins
Book Talk! Darryl Holter’s Driving Force
Author Darryl Holter will discuss and sign his book Driving Force: Automobiles and the New American City, 1900-1930.
Join historian and Chevalier’s co-owner Darryl Holter for a discussion of the early days of the automotive industry. Written with Stephen Gee, the book includes a forward by Jay Leno.
Packed with local history, vintage photos, and original cartoons, the book enlightens readers about the role auto retailers played in the growth of the car industry and the city.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-darryl-holters-driving-force-tickets-632953790827
Susan Goldman Rubin & The Women Who Built Hollywood at Diesel, A Book Store – In-Person Event
Susan Goldman Rubin, in conversation with Carrie Beauchamp, will read from, discuss, and sign her book, The Women Who Built Hollywood: 12 Trailblazers in Front of and Behind the Camera.
Discover the electrifying untold stories of the pioneering and groundbreaking women of Old Hollywood in this nonfiction book perfect for young movie buffs and budding feminists alike.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, A Book Store (in the Courtyard)
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Susan-Goldman-Rubin-Author-signing
Cole Kazdin, with Pamela Saltzman, & What’s Eating Us at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Cole Kazdin, in conversation with Pamela Saltzman, will discuss her new book, What’s Eating Us: Women Food and the Epidemic of Body Anxiety.
Blending personal narrative and investigative reporting, Emmy-award winning journalist Cole Kazdin reveals that disordered eating is an epidemic crisis killing millions of women. This book is an urgent battle cry coupled with stories and strategies about what works and how to finally heal.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, and details.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/cole-kazdin-conversation-pamela-salzman
Landon Jones & Celebrity Nation at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Landon Jones, the writer who coined the term “baby boomer,” will discuss his book, Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved into a Culture of Fans and Followers.
This book is an exploration into how and why fame no longer stems only from heroic achievements but form the number of “likes” and shares—and what this means for American Culture. Jones draws on his experience as former managing editor of People magazine to bolster his account with profiles of celebrities spanning decades and industries. He reviews how celebrity has been wielded as a weapon and also highlights luminaries who have effected meaningful change.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Landon-Jones
Author Appearance: David D’Orazi & Is Everybody Happy: The Untold Story of Kathy O’Dare at Flintridge Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Untold Story of Kathy O’Dare is written by her brother. Kathy O’Dare was a Hollywood starlet, and this story recounts her struggles with mental illness.
Where: Flintridge Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 am
Address: 858 Foothill Blvd., La Cañada Flintridge, CA, 91011
Liv Little, with Coco Mellors, & Rosewater at North Figueroa Bookshop– In-Person Event
Liv Little, in conversation with Coco Mellors, will discuss and celebrate the release of her book, Rosewater.
Featuring the poetry of Kai-Isaiah Jamal, Rosewater is a deliciously steamy queer romance form a bold new voice. In this debut novel, Elsie’s story teaches us that sometimes home is not always where we are, but who we are with…
Liv Little is a writer of Jamaican and Guyanese descent via South London. She tells stories of heart, and her work includes journalism, audio, TV, and curatorial projects. Rosewater is her debut novel.
Coco Mellors grew up in London and New York. Her debut novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein was published last year. Her second novel, Blue Sisters, will be published in 2024.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, CA 90042
Lorraine Avila, with Jehan Giles, & The Making of Yolanda La Bruja at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Author Lorraine Avila, in conversation with Jehan Giles, will discuss her debut novel, The Making of Yolanda Bruja.
This story is about a teen who is adjusting to a new high school and awaiting her initiation into her family’s bruja tradition, when she starts having troubling visions of violence and threats from a white student who is also the son of a politician. How can Yolanda protect her community in a world that doesn’t listen?
This story is born from the intersection of race, justice, education, and spirituality and will capture readers everywhere.
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 am
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: https://rep.club/products/yolanda-bruja-event
At Skylight: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, with Traci Thomas, & CHAIN GANG ALL-STARS at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, in conversation with Traci Thomas, will discuss his debut novel, CHAIN GANG ALL-STARS.
In this book about America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry, prisoners travel and compete in death-matches in packed arenas, with righteous protestors at the gates. It provides many interlinked stories of complex characters caught in a system of unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and a reckoning with what freedom rally means.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Iris Yamashita & City Under One Roof at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Iris Yamashita is the Academy Award-nominated writer for the movie Letters from Iwo Jima, directed by Clint Eastwood.
City Under One Roof is Iris Yamashita’s debut novel and has received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal. In this story, a stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building, in this gripping debut.
When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel.
After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by fearsome gang members from a nearby native village.
Haunted by her past, Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town has something to hide. Will she be able to unravel their secrets before she unravels?
Find out more about Iris Yamashita at www.irisyamashita.com
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/26380
Andrew McCarthy & Walking with Sam at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Andrew NcCarthy will present and discuss his new book Walking with Sam: A Father, A Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain.
The author decided to take a trek across the 500 miles of Spain’s Camino de Santiago, as away to forge a meaningful connection with his son Sam before he left the nest and a way to recreate his own life-altering journey decades before.
This book captures the intimate, candid and hopeful expedition as the duo traveled across the country and towards one another,
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Andrew-McCarthy-Walking-with-Sam
Navigating Identities: A Conversation with River Garzaat The Autry in Griffith Park – In-Person Event
Host Brian del Los Santos and artist River Garza will discuss the ways in which their cultural identities shape and inform how they show up in the world. They’ll explore how they keep traditions alive, honor the past, and how that makes them who they are today.
River Garza is a Los Angeles artist who draws on traditional Indigenous aesthetics and his Tongva heritage, and whose work reflects tenuous memory, tradition, and identity. Through artifacts and physical landscapes he creates sites, sacred spaces, and reclaims his Tongva sovereignty. His work has been presented and written about in numerous literary spaces.
This event is co-sponsored by LAist and is part of the Site and Sounds experiential live events series, which is curated and centered on site-based discovery.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Autry in Griffith Park (across form the LA Zoo)
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 4700 Western Heritage Way, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://theautry.org/events/community-partner-events/navigating-identities-conversation-river-garza
Andy Cohen, with Danielle Schneider & Casey Wilson, & The Daddy Diaries at LiveTalks L.A. – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Andy Cohen, in conversation with Danielle Schneider & Casey Wilson, will discuss his new book, The Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up.
New York Times bestselling author Andy Cohen, one of the busiest men in show business, goes from bottle service to baby bottles in a hilarious, heartwarming, and name-dropping account of the most important year of his life. In his fifth memoir he tells how having two kids has changed his life.
Danielle Schneider is a writer/performer with a background in improv and sketch comedy, many TV and other credits, and performs regularly with the Upright Citizens Brigade.
Casey Wilson is an actress, writer, director, and podcaster, with many credits. She is the author of a collection of essays, The Wreckage of My Presence,
Where: The Aratani Theatre
Date: Thursday the 18th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 244 San Pedro St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/andy-cohen-2/
Katherine Applegate & The One and Only Ruby via Children’s Book World – Online Kids Event
Award-winning author Katherine Applegate will present her book, The One and Only Ruby, via a virtual school/book talk event, and you may participate by contacting the store for details.
Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ruby stars the adorable baby elephant from the Newbery Medal-winning modern classic The One and Only Ivan and its bestselling sequel, The One and Only Bob. Ruby’s story picks up a few months after the events of The One and Only Bob. Now living in a wildlife sanctuary, Ruby’s caretaker from the elephant orphanage in Africa where she grew up is visiting. Seeing him again brings back a flood of memories both happy and sad of her life before the circus, and she recounts the time she spent in the African savannah to Ivan and Bob.
Katherine Applegate is the Newbery Medal-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author of numerous books for young readers, including The One and Only Ivan, The One and Only Bob, Odder, Crenshaw, Wishtree, and more.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 9 am
Address: Online event (see site)
Spectacular Storytime at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Spectacular Storytime is a weekly time to have fun with books with enthusiastic troubadour, Maddi!
Free to attend.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
Your Author Series: Helen Ku Rhee & Sora’s Seashells via Central Library, LAPL – Online Kids Event
Your Author Series presents author Helen Ku Rhee, who will discuss her children’s book Sora’s Seashells.
This lyrical narration with luminous illustrations telling an uplifting intergenerational story of kindness and confidence, loss and remembrance, with resonance for any child who feels other than. This story, told by Helena Ku Rhee and illustrated by Stella Lim, based on art by Ji-Hyuk Kim, speaks to the prevailing power of kindness and will resonate with anyone who’s been made to feel different.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/your-author-series-helena-ku-rhee-0
2nd & 3rd Grade Book Club: Witchlings at {pages} a bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
The 2nd & 3rd Grade Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Witchlings, by author Claribel A. Ortega.
Where: {pages} a bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/2nd-and-3rd%C2%A0grade%C2%A0book-club-0
Book Talk: Victoria Ying & Deb JJ Lee Present: Hungry Ghost and In Limbo at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person YA Event
Victoria Ying will present her book, Hungry Ghost and Deb JJ Lee will present her book, In Limbo.
Deb JJ Lee’s In Limbo is a debut YA graphic memoir about a Korean-American girl’s coming-of-age story—and a coming home story—set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea. Ever since Deborah (Jung-Jin) Lee emigrated from South Korea to the United States, she’s felt her otherness. For a while, her English wasn’t perfect. Her teachers can’t pronounce her Korean name. Her face and her eyes—especially her eyes—feel wrong.
In high school, everything gets harder. Friendships change and end, she falls behind in classes, and fights with her mom escalate. Caught in limbo, with nowhere safe to go, Deb finds her mental health plummeting, resulting in a suicide attempt.
But Deb is resilient and slowly heals with the help of art and self-care, guiding her to a deeper understanding of her heritage and herself.
Victoria Ling’s Hungry Ghost is a beautiful and heart-wrenching young adult graphic novel that explores eating disorders, family dynamics, and ultimately, a journey to self-love. Valerie Chu is quiet, studious, and above all, thin. No one, not even her best friend Jordan, knows that she has been binging and purging for years. But when tragedy strikes, Val finds herself taking a good, hard look at her priorities, her choices, and her own body. The path to happiness may lead her away from her hometown and her mother’s toxic projections—but first she will have to find the strength to seek help.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Chasten Buttigieg, with Chris Colfer, & I Have Something to Tell You—For Young Adults: A Memoir at Book Soup – In-Person YA Event
Chasten Buttigieg, in conversation with Chris Colfer, will discuss his book, I Have Something to Tell You—For Young Adults: A Memoir.
This book is the young adult adaptation of the moving, hopeful, and refreshingly candid memoir by the husband of a former Democratic presidential candidate about growing up gay in his small Midwestern town.
Growing up, Chasten Glezman Buttigieg didn’t always fit in. He felt different from his father and brothers, who loved to hunt and go camping, and out of place in the rural, conservative small town where he lived. Back then, blending in was more important than feeling seen.
So, when Chasten realized he was gay, he kept that part of himself hidden away for a long, painful time. With incredible bravery, and the support of his loved ones, Chasten eventually came out—and when he did, he learned that being true to himself was the most rewarding journey of all.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/book-soup-presents-chasten-buttigieg-conversation-chris-colfer
Liv Little, with Get Lifted co-founders John Legend, Mike Jackson, & Ty Stiklorius & Rosewater at Reparations Club at Second Home Hollywood – In-Person Event
Author Lorraine Avila, with co-founders of Get Lifted John Legend, Mike Jackson, and Ty Stiklorius, will present her debut novel, Rosewater, at a special off-site event.
Rosewater is debut, queer, coming-of-self novel by author Liv Little.
Liv Little is a writer of Jamaican and Guyanese descent via South London. She tells stories with heart about the people and places that matter to her. Her work spans journalism, audio, TV, and curatorial projects, for which she’s received various accolades, including LGBTQI+ Broadcaster of the Year and Rising Star at WOW. Her short story “The Sisters” was published in the critically acclaimed Hag, a collection of forgotten folktales retold. She was a BBC writer-in-residence for 2021, during which she developed an original pilot for a queer conspiracy thriller. Liv is most at peace in nature, and she now lives by the sea. Rosewater is her debut novel.
Get Lifted Books builds upon Get Lifted Film Co.’s mission of spotlighting stories from dynamic creatives and is led by its three partners: EGOT recipient and award-winning producer John Legend, Emmy® and Tony® Award-winning producer Mike Jackson, and Emmy® Award-winner and CEO of the management, media and social impact company Friends At Work, Ty Stiklorius. The imprint publishes brilliant authors who have the ability to transform the conversation, in both adult fiction and nonfiction as well as titles for young readers.
NOTE: See site for details on IRL tickets.
Where: Reparations Club at Second Home Hollywood
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 7 pm (doors at 6 pm)
Address: 1370 N. St. Andrews Pl., Los Angeles, CA 90028
Website: https://rep.club/products/rosewater-event
Book Launch: Andrew Amelinckx, with Dan Lopez, & Satellite Boy at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Spanning the underworld haunts of Montreal to Havana and Miami in the early days of the Cold War, Satellite Boy reveals the unlikely connection between an audacious bank heist and the “other Space Race” that gave birth to the modern communication age.
Andrew Amelinckx is a freelance journalist who has previously written three historical true crime books. He held down a variety of jobs, from bartending in New Orleans to burlesque dancing in New York City, before spending a decade as an award-winning investigative crime reporter for several news organizations, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Berkshire Eagle. His work has appeared in Business Insider, Smithsonian, Men’s Journal, Modern Farmer, and elsewhere. He lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Dan López is an editor at Counterpoint Press. He is also the author of the short story collection Part the Hawser, Limn the Sea, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and the novel The Show House. You can follow him on Twitter @dan_lopez82.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Holly Goldberg Sloan, with Julia Sweeney, & Pieces of Blue at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Holly Goldberg Sloan, in conversation with Julia Sweeney, will discuss her book, Pieces of Blue: A Novel.
What good was thinking the future only held cloudy skies? Wasn’t the reality that pieces of blue were always there, waiting to break through?
When Paul Hill drowns in a surfing accident, his broken-hearted wife, Lindsey, and their three children are left in huge financial trouble. Once Paul’s life insurance finally comes through, Lindsey impulsively uses the money to buy a charmingly ramshackle motel in Hawai’i, hoping for a fresh start. Teenage Olivia quickly develops a crush on a handsome but monosyllabic skateboarder. Twelve-year-old Carlos reinvents himself as a popular kid named Carl. And Sena, the youngest, will do whatever it takes to protect her beloved motel chickens.
But while the kids adjust, Lindsey is flailing, trying to pretend she knows how to bring a motel—and herself–back to life. Then a handsome stranger rolls into the motel parking lot, and she’s surprised to feel a long-dormant part of herself stirring. She accepts his offer to help, unaware that he may have secrets of his own. And all the while, out in the Pacific, the trade winds are fiercely blowing.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Holly-Goldberg-Sloan-Pieces-of-Blue
The Post Up: Readings & Open Mic hosted by Brenda Vaca at Casa Verde LA – In-Person Event & IG Live
Brenda Vaca hosts The Post Up Readings & Open Mic Event on every 3rd Friday of the month at Uptown Plants at Casa Verde LA.
Come for: Storytelling x Friends and Vendors x Vibes
This month’s features TBA.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Casa Verde LA
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 12909 Philadelphia St., Whittier, CA
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlS6SUp8NM/?hl=en
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music Event & Open Mic by Lorenzo Frank at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join us to hear a featured poet, plus an Open Mic, hosted by Lorenzo Frank on the first and third Friday of the month.
Featured artist: “Polific Propoet”
Lorenzo Frank is the Arthur of ‘Nzinga Teaches/Learns a Lesson’ book series.
NOTE: See site for costs, guidelines, and details.
Where: Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 8 pm – 11 pm
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park, Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.facebook.com/swaampoetry or https://www.eventbrite.com/o/lorenzo-frank-31982333091
First Fridays Rapp Saloon Reading Series, with host Cynthia Alessandra Briano, via Rapp Saloon – Hybrid In-Person & Online Event
First Fridays at Rapp Saloon Open Mic & Featured Readers is an event offered every 1st Friday of the month, curated by host Cynthia Alessandra Briano.
This is a HYBRID event, with a return to live in-person events while maintaining at HISUA Zoom option for our performers and guests.
All languages are welcome.
Featured guest poets and artists this month: TBA
Share your voice at the Open Mic, where there is a time limit of 4 minutes max. Sign-ups are: 8 pm – 8:30 pm.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Rapp Saloon at HISUA
Date: Friday the 19th
Time: 8:30 pm – 11 pm
Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90401 (Zoom link in bio)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/RappSaloonReadingSeries/ or https://www.instagram.com/rappsaloon/?hl=en
Graphic Novel Book Club: In LImbo via Bel Canto Books KUBO – Online Event
Bel Canto Books’ Graphic Novel Book Club is held on the 3rd Saturday of the month, and this month’s selection for discussion is In Limbo, by author Deb JJ Lee.
This book is a debut graphic novel memoir about a Korean-American girl’s coming-of-age story―and a coming home story―set between a New Jersey suburb and Seoul, South Korea. It features page after page of gorgeous, evocative art, and is a cross section of the Korean American diaspora and mental health, in a moving and powerful read.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Saturday the 20th
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/graphic-novel-book-club-hosted-by-bel-canto-books-tickets-492235929917
Book Club for Middle Grade Readers: When You Trap a Tiger at Palisades Branch Library, LAPL – Online Kids & MG Event
The selection for discussion by Book Club participants will be When You Trap a Tiger, by author Tae Keller.
Please email Miss Ashley at akagan@lapl.org or Ms. Gail at gkim@lapl.org for the Zoom session login information.
Where: Palisades Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 10:30 am
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-middle-grade-readers-7
Japanese Storytimes at Little Tokyo Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Kids Event
Children, parents, and caregivers, please join us for our fun-filled Japanese storytime with our STAR volunteer readers! Geared for families and children of all ages.
Where: Little Tokyo Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 11 am
Address: 203 S. Los Angeles St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/japanese-storytimes
Listening to Images: A Workshop with Diana Khoi Nguyen at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
This event is a workshop with a focus on tracing how writers approach the intersection of text and image, led by Diana Khoi Nguyen.
Scholar Tina Campt’s Listening to Images will inform how we’ll tune into the “lower frequencies” of an image so that we can register “‘felt sound[s]’—sound that, like a hum, resonates in and as vibration.” Via discussions of nonfiction and poetry texts, we’ll trace how writers approach the intersection of text and image: Victoria Chang and Mai Der Vang, among others. Participants should identify at least one image or document of their own choosing to work with and “listen” to. Our goal is to pay attention to materials that impact us, to tap into what is left unsaid.
In this hands-on session, we’ll compose in the intersection of (photographic) image and text, building upon our practice of Campt’s Listening to Images. What happens when text embodies the visual modality to produce a lyrical experience?
NOTE: See site for further details, costs, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA 90291
Celebrate AAPI Heritage Month: Double Book Launch with Cathy Lin Che and Benson Shum at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Kids & Family Event
This event will feature tow new books released by two amazing authors and members of the community: Cathy Lin Che and Benson Shum.
Cathy Lin Che will present her book, Asian American A to Z: A Children’s Guide to Our History. This is a comprehensive and spirited exploration of Asian American history–its movements, cultures, and key figures–beautifully illustrated and compellingly told for readers of all ages.
Co-authors Cathy Linh Che and Kyle Lucia Wu take us on a journey through stories of celebration and resistance: the Third World Liberation Front, the Muslim Ban, Japanese American incarceration camps, Padma Lakshmi, Rashida Tlaib, Sunisa Lee, and more. It is a history of struggle, but also one of great triumph, brought to life with colorful and dynamic illustrations by Kavita Ramchandran.
Benson Shum will present his new book, Cindy and Panda, a perfectly baked story about the messy delight of baking and making new friends.
Cindy loves to bake, but she doesn’t always follow a recipe! One day, she runs out to grab ingredients for a pie and comes back with something sweeter–a panda who wants to help! Their freestyle recipe may lead to chaos in the kitchen and a bit of a messy meltdown, but together, the pair have the perfect ingredients for a sweet-as-pie friendship.
This book includes a pie recipe in the back with its very own freestyle section for young bakers excited to explore!
NOTE: See site for further details, guidelines, and information.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
Big Read: Book Club Discussion of Interior Chinatown at Benjamin Franklin Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander month with The Big Read. Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown is a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Where: Benjamin Franklin Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 1 pm
Address: 2200 E. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-book-club-discussion
Book Party: Beat Not Beat Anthology by Moon Tide Press at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
This event is a Book Party of poets, food, drink and good times to celebrate the Beat Not Beat anthology from Moon Tide Press.
Hosted by Rich Ferguson, S.A. Griffin, Alexis Rhone Fancher and Kim Shuck.
Lead editor and CA Beat Poet Laureate Rich Ferguson, who coined the phrase beatnotbeat, responds to what it means: “It’s not another history focused solely on the Beat tradition. There are some incredible names and poems from that era in this anthology, including Bob Kauffman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diane Di Prima. There are also artists on the fringe of Beat, including Jim Morrison and Wanda Coleman. But the heart of the anthology contains contemporary poets of today and they are on fire. Living, breathing, combustible and beautiful beatnotbeat voices, with so much to say about the times we’re in right now.”
Numerous poets featured in the anthology, published by Moon Tide Press, will be part of this beat not beat marathon reading, and a special musical performance featuring Petty Chavez.
Featured contributors/poets:
Iris Berry
Elisabeth Adwin Edwards
Kevin Ridgeway
Don Kingfisher Campbell
Susan Hayden
Bill Mohr
Jerome Dunn
Luke Johnson
Kim Dower
Brendan Constantine
Richard Modiano
Nelson Gary
Michael C. Ford
K.R. Morrison
Pam Ward
Conney Williams
Steve Abee
Cassandra Dallett
Harry Northup
Nicelle Davis
Milo Martin
David Ulin
Sarah Maclay
Kathryn deLancellotti
A.K. Toney
Henry Mortensen
King Daddy
A. Razor
Matt Sedillo
Luivette Resto
Majid Naficy
Bucky Sinister
Pegarty Long
Bob Branaman
Daniel Yaryan
Books will be for sale and authors will sign after the show.
NOTE: See site for further details and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 6 pm (doors at 1:30 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice Beach, Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beat-not-beat-tickets-610300644657
Expose Tobacco: National Middle & High School Poetry Showcase at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
This event is a national poetry showcase to expose the tobacco industry! Hosted by The Poet Life, and featuring students from local high schools in L.A.
The Poet Life, in collaboration with the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council (AATCLC), is curating a national poetry showcase to expose the tobacco industry. Students will first learn how the tobacco industry targets kids, Black Americans, and other communities with its deadly and addictive products—and will then learn how to use poetry to educate others and demand action.
NOTE: RSVP, guidelines, and details at site.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 2702 West Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/expose-tobacco-youth-poetry-showcase-la-tickets-621298900737
18th Annual Celebrating Words Festival at Vaughn G3 Academy with Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Celebrating Words Festival is Tia Chucha’s annual art and literacy festival held in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.
Featured Guest: Shonda Buchanan, author of the prize-winning memoir Black Indian, is also an educator, curator, and professor of creative writing.
See site for schedule and details.
NOTE: RSVP, guidelines, and details at site.
Where: Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 7 pm
Address: 11200 Herrick Ave., Pacoima, CA 91331
Website: https://www.facebook.com/TiaChuchasCentroCultural/?locale=sc_IT
Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series & Open MIc at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Expressions L.A. is held every first and third Saturday of the month, and features poetry readings and an open mic of readers sharing their work.
Please email studio@lapl.org for instructions on how to join the program.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 3 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/expressions-la-poetry-reading-series-and-open-mic-1
Poetry Readings: Radomir Vojtech Luza, Meri Tumanyan & Preeti Vangani, with Spectrum Poets via Saturday Afternoon Poetry – Online Event
Saturday Afternoon Poetry will feature readings by poets:
Radomir Vojtech Luza has won many Poetry and Writing Awards and is the Publisher of “Voices in the Library” and “California East” Literary Magazines. He is a member of Marquis Who’s Who in America (2003-Present) and Who’s Who in The World (2005-Present). He is also a member of The American Academy of Poets and The Poetry Society of America. He has written 21 books, of which 17 are Poetry Collections. He has hosted and organized numerous Readings in New York City, Northern NJ and Los Angeles.
Meri Tumanyan, mother, teacher and adjunct professor, is the author most recently of the collection, Shadows.
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet, writer and educator. Born and raised in Mumbai, she is the author of Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions). Her poetry has been published in Gulf Coast, Hobart, Threepenny Review, and others. Her essays have been published in Buzzfeed India, The Ladies Finger, Huffington Post among other places. Her debut short story, Work Wives, was awarded the 2022 PEN America/Robert J. Dau Prize. She is the Poetry Editor for Glass and has worked as a Poet Mentor with Youth Speaks.
Hosted by Don Kingfisher Campbell, poets published in Spectrum: The Sonneteers will also read their work.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 3 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Double Book Launch: Auto Body and Nerve Curriculum at Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-Person Event
Re/Arte will feature a double book launch with readings by two poets: Vickie Vértiz and Manuel Paul Lopez.
Vickie Vértiz will present and discuss her new collection, Auto Body.These poems are a sensual exploration of what it means to repair, to remake, to keep going even when rebuilding feels impossible. The book connects the vulnerability of the narrating queer body to the language of auto mechanics to reveal their shared decadence.
Manuel Paul Lopez will present and discuss his collection, Nerve Curriculum. In this book, lyric fabulist Lopez embeds parallel worlds that unite dreamtime and memory, a punk playbook for survival with deep, ferocious love for the world and its humans.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: 2123 E. Cesar Chavez Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/pages/calendar-of-events
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club: Babel (Chapter 16-End) at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
The Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Babel (Chapter 16-End) by R.F. Kuang.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 20th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 5225 Canyon Crest Dr., #30A, Riverside, CA 92507
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/sci-fi-fantasy-book-club-babel-chapter-16-end
A Renaissance Tour of Our Own: Rachel Cargle + Mara Brock Akil & A Renaissance of Our Own at Reparations Club at The Gathering Spot – In-Person Event
Author, activist, entrepreneur, and innovator Rachel Cargle will present and discuss her deeply resonant debut memoir A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir & Manifesto on Reimagining, alongside legendary writer + director, Mara Brock Akil, hosted at The Gathering Spot in West Adams.
This memoir is an insightful testament to how to dismantle the frameworks and systems that no longer serve us while building new ones that do.
The evening will open with a special performance from storyteller & magician Nicole Cardoza (called “Solange meets David Blaine”)
Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an activist, entrepreneur, and philanthropic innovator. She is the founder of The Loveland Group; a family of companies including Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre, a literary space that celebrates marginalized voices and The Great Unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded The Loveland Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for Black women and girls. Cargle is a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, Atmos, and The Cut, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her debut memoir A Renaissance of Our Own will be published in May.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details on IRL tickets.
Where: Reparations Club at The Gathering Spot
Date: Friday the 20th
Time: 7 pm (doors at 6 pm)
Address: 5211 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: https://rep.club/products/may-20-rachel-cargle
Griot Café Open Mic with Sistah Shy & Samuel Rain & Featured Guest TBA 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 20th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1001 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://shadesofafrika.com/griot-cafe-open-mic-poetry/
LIWANAG: THE STORYBOOK: Celebration with Jean Donnaferl Belidhon at Bel Canto Books KUBO – In-Person Kids Event
Jean Donnaferl Belidhon and the Filipino Migrant Center celebrate LIWANAG: THE STORYBOOK.
This book is a creative multimedia project highlighting the stories of Filipina frontline workers in Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. In collaboration with community organizations, our team of immigrant youth artists and filmmakers produced Liwanag—both a film documentary and illustrated storybook to uplift these narratives and invite the community to learn more about the lives of these courageous women who continue to fight back and organize for change.
Jean Donnaferl Belidhon is a youth artist based in Los Angeles. As early as she could remember, drawing was a fun way to learn and visually capture concepts to understand and convey life and the world around her. In elementary school, drawing math concepts like 10 doves minus 5 doves made studying enjoyable. She grew up in the Philippines and migrated to the US with her family in 2016.
The Filipino Migrant Center (FMC) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2010 to address the needs of Filipinos in the South Bay cities of Southern California and has since expanded to serve throughout the entire region. We are a Filipino immigrant-led organization who aims to educate, organize, and mobilize low-income, working-class Filipino families.
KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and Women led small businesses. KUBO LB is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Address: 3976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Local Author Day: Janet Webb & Hawaiian Walking at Vroman’s – In-Person Kids Event
Janet Webb will present Hawaiian Walking, a story about a young Hawaiian boy devastated by the death of his beloved grandfather, who sets off walking alone. He experiences a flood of memories walking by areas where he shared time with his grandfather. He eventually discovers a sacred place which causes a spiritual healing.
Hawaiian language is sprinkled throughout this beautifully illustrated book by the famed artist, Guy Buffet. Universal themes of love, family, loss and transformation surface with tension, humor, a driving question ,and a turning point when nothing is ever the same.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Vromans-Local-AuthorDay-Kids-Edition-Janet-Webb-Hawaiian-Walking
Maribel’s Year: Celebration with Michelle Sterling at Bel Canto Books KUBO – In-Person Kids Event
Filipina American children’s book author Michelle Sterling will celebrate her new book, Maribel’s Year.
This book is a celebration of the special connection between father and daughter that knows no bounds. This evocative, lyrical picture book from author Michelle Sterling and artist Sarah Gonzales recounts the year a little girl and her mother spend in America while waiting for her father to join them from the Philippines.
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.
KUBO LB is a creative community space for Filipinx, BIPOC, LGBTQ, and Women led small businesses. KUBO LB is a space to support and educate small businesses through retail, business workshops and more.
Where: Bel Canto Books, KUBO Long Beach
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 3976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
The Golden Age of Hollywood: Harlan Lebo, Arthur Dong, Darrell Rooney at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Harlan Lebo, Arthur Dong, and Darrell Rooney will present their new books. All of which are about the Golden age of Hollywood.
Harlan Lebo is the author of Citizen Kane: A Filmmaker’s Journey.
Arthur Dong is the author ofHollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Feature Films.
Darrell Rooney is the author ofHarlow in Hollywood.
Learn about the important role that Chinese and Chinese Americans held in early Hollywood, the history of classic films like “Citizen Kane,” and how the blonde bombshell Jean Harlow shaped glamour in the film industry.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/25272
Roar Shack Reading Series with David Rocklin at Echo Park Time Travel Mart – In-Person Event
Roar Shack monthly reading series is hosted by David Rocklin and will feature:
Bonnie S. Kaplan, Lisa Cheby, Carolina Rivera, Hanna Pachman, Leah Zeffren, and last month’s Live Write winner Ashli Lomeli! You don’t want to miss this lineup!
Bonnie S. Kaplan is an educator and published poet, and her poem, “Mastectomy, Simple” was a 2021 finalist for the Marica and Jan Vilcek Poetry Prize at Bellevue Literary Review.
Lisa Cheby is a Los Angeles poet and educator. She received an MFA from Antioch University, works on the Board of Directors of the Valley Contemporary Poets, and is the editor of Annotation Nation Poetry.She is the author of the chapbook Love Letters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Carolina Rivera Escamilla is a bilingual educator, writer, actor, and documentarian. She is the author most recently of In a Corner of Your Country.
Hanna Pachman is host and curator of Beatnik Café, a poetry reading series at Hey Hey. She is a poet and writer and appears in VerseVille-Review of Melissa Studdard’s Dear Selection Committee.
Leah Zeffren is a poet and writer and is best known for The Trophy Case (2014) and Do Over (2016).
Where: Roar Shack at Echo Park Time Travel Mart, Echo Park
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 1714 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/245929921263302
Local Author Day: Clarence Irvin, Anthony J. Mohr, and Melina Maria Morry Present Books at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Clarence Irvin presents his book, The Fourth Canton: Adventures of The Rhett Family and Co.
Unity and being aware of each other’s differences can strengthen communities. This family saga, literary fiction, novel The Fourth Canton Adventures of the Rhett Family and Co., reveals sapiens—people of different cultural backgrounds discovering cantonal dishes from the Collection of Cantons in a close galaxy, and experience visits from the evening spirits.
Anthony J. Mohr presents his book, Every Other Weekend.
Anthony’s father, Gerald Mohr, is a well-known radio actor before slipping to the Hollywood B-list thanks to the advent of television. Accepting the lead in a dying Swedish TV series, he falls for the script girl and divorces Mohr’s mother, who goes on to meet and marry another divorcee, credit card industry pioneer Stanley Dashew.
As his stepfather’s career rises and his biological father’s eases downward, Anthony tries to find his place. One weekend he’s sailing on his stepfather’s fifty-eight-foot catamaran; the next, his Swedish stepmother tells him that they’re poor. Coming of age in a time when divorce is rare and viewed as shocking, Anthony lives at the edges of what others regard as a dream world, a place where reality and fantasy blend, maps lead to the homes of the stars, and obstacles abound.
Melina Maria Morry presents her book, The Manhattan Mishap.
Margot Moss, a gregarious and witty woman, lives her life with abandon. She knows exactly what she wants and isn’t afraid to pounce after it with full-throttle ferocity. Although, she can’t quite seem to get it right.
When a coveted promotion falls through, Margot finds herself struggling to actualize her dreams and is forced to reconsider her so-called fabulous future. However, when one catwalk ends, another begins. A job in New York City comes knocking and Margot doesn’t hesitate to seize the opportunity, setting out on a wild adventure towards love, success, and self-discovery.
Unfortunately, nothing is how she imagined it-not the company, the city, or the people. Awaiting Margot is a drama-addicted boss who may or may not be out to get her, and a whirlwind of wealthy men, scams, and scandals.
Yet, as if that weren’t enough, Margot’s life is made even more complicated when a steamy new beau enters the picture-and even he isn’t what he seems.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 4 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
May Focus on Craft Book Club: A Marvelous Light at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents the May Focus on Craft Book Club every 3rd Sunday of the month, and today’s selection is An Extraordinary Union: An Epic Love Story of the Civil War by author Alyssa Cole.
This book is the first in award-winning author Alyssa Cole’s highly-acclaimed Loyal League series! As the Civil War rages between the states, a courageous pair of spies plunge fearlessly into a maelstrom of ignorance, deceit, and danger, combining their unique skills to alter the course of history and break the chains of the past…
Elle Burns is a former slave with a passion for justice and an eidetic memory. Trading in her life of freedom in Massachusetts, she returns to the indignity of slavery in the South—to spy for the Union Army.
Malcolm McCall is a detective for Pinkerton’s Secret Service. Subterfuge is his calling, but he’s facing his deadliest mission yet–risking his life to infiltrate a Rebel enclave in Virginia.
Two undercover agents who share a common cause—and an undeniable attraction—Malcolm and Elle join forces when they discover a plot that could turn the tide of the war in the Confederacy’s favor. Caught in a tightening web of wartime intrigue, and fighting a fiery and forbidden love, Malcolm and Elle must make their boldest move to preserve the Union at any cost—even if it means losing each other.
Developmental editor and teacher Jeanne De Vita leads this book club that focuses on examining popular romance novels from a writer’s viewpoint. But everyone is welcome, you don’t have to be a writer!
No membership is necessary, feel free to show up!
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 21st
Time: 7:15 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 