Story Writing Club: Teen Eventat Jefferson Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Join the Story Writing Club for Teens. Draw, learn the art of storytelling, and discover your ideas with other teens. For ages 11 – 18.
This event is scheduled for every Monday and Thursday, 4:30 – 5:30 pm.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Jefferson Regional Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 22nd (and Thursday the 25th)
Time: 4:30 – 5:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/story-writing-club
Author Talk: Taylor Kiland and Judy Gray & Unwavering at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Join pages as the store hosts co-authors Taylor Kiland and Judy Gray for a discussion of their book, Unwavering: The Wives Who Fought to Ensure No Man is Left Behind.
Unwavering is the compelling true story of the women who waged an epic home front battle to ensure our nation leaves no man behind. When some of America’s military men are captured or go missing during the Vietnam War, a small group of military wives become their champions.
Never had families taken on diplomatic roles during wartime, nor had the fate of our POWs and missing men been a nationwide concern. In cinematic detail, authors Taylor Baldwin Kiland and Judy Silverstein Gray plunge you directly into the political maneuvering the women navigated, onto the international stage they shared with world leaders, and through the landmark legacy they created.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 6:30 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/taylor-kiland-joins-pages
Big Read: Multigenerational Book Discussion of Interior Chinatown and American Born Chinese via Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join the Big Read Multigenerational Book Discussion of Interior Chinatown, by author Charles Yu, and American Born Chinese, by author Gene Luen Yang for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Email shrmno@lapl.org for the Zoom link. A limited number of free copies of these books will be available at the branch on a first-come, first-serve basis.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Sherman Oaks Martin Pollard Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-multigenerational-book-discussion
Mar Vista Book Club: Book sand Community Teaat Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join the Mar Vista Bench Book Club by contacting the branch for the book’s title for the month. No sign up is required, and the book is available at the Reference Desk for sign-out.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Address: 12006 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mar-vista-book-club-books-and-communi-tea
Book Launch: Ivy Pochoda, with Steph Cha, & Sing Her Down: A Novel at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Ivy Pochoda, in conversation with Steph Cha, will discuss her new novel, Sing Her Down.
This book is a gritty, feminist Western thriller from the award-winning author of These Women.
Florence “Florida” Baum is not the hapless innocent she claims to be when she arrives at the Arizona women’s prison—or so her ex-cellmate, Diosmary Sandoval, keeps insinuating. Dios knows the truth about Florida’s crimes, understands the truth that Florence hides even from herself: that she wasn’t a victim of circumstance, an unlucky bystander misled by a bad man. Dios knows that darkness lives in women too, despite the world’s refusal to see it. And she is determined to open Florida’s eyes and unleash her true self. When an unexpected reprieve gives both women their freedom, Dios’s fixation on Florida turns into a dangerous obsession, and a deadly cat-and-mouse chase ensues from Arizona to the desolate streets of Los Angeles.
Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, and These Women. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France and has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Edgar Award, among other awards. For many years, Ivy taught creative writing at Studio 526 in Los Angeles’s Skid Row. She is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. She lives in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Arielle Astoria & The Unfolding: An Invitation to Come Home to Yourself at Octavia’s Bookshelf – In-Person Event
Arielle Astoria will celebrate, present, and sign her poetry collection, The Unfolding: An
Invitation to Come Home to Yourself.
In this beautiful collection of poems, essays, and meditations, Arielle Estoria tenderly reveals the places in her life where she has been broken open and mended back together in new ways. In doing so, she shows each of us how when we walk through our own process of “unfolding,” though it may be uncomfortable at times, there is light on the other side.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Octavia’s Bookshelf
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1361 North Hill Ave., Pasadena, CA 91104
Website: https://www.octaviasbookshelf.com/events/arielle-estoria-the-unfolding
At Skylight: Francesca Bell Presents What Small Sound, with Guests at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Francesca Bell will present and discuss her book, What Small Sound: Poems, along with her guest readers: Douglas Manuel, Rebecca Faulkner, and Anders Carlson-Wee.
In Bell’s second collection of poems, What Small Sounds, she interrogates what it means to be a mother in a country where there are five times as many guns as children; female in a country where a woman is raped every two minutes; and citizen of a world teeming with iniquities and peril. In poems rich in metaphor and music and unflinching in their gaze, Bell offers us an exacting view of the audiologist’s booth and the locked ward as she grapples with the gradual loss of her own hearing and the mental illness spreading its dark wings over her family. This is a book of plentiful sorrows but also of small and sturdy comforts, a book that chronicles the private, lonely life of the body as well as its tender generosities. What Small Sound wrestles with some of the broadest, most complicated issues of our time and also with the most fundamental issue of all: love. How it shelters and anchors us. How it breaks us and, ultimately, how it pieces us back together.
Francesca Bell was born in Spokane, Washington into a family with deep, hardscrabble roots in the Northwest. Her maternal great-grandfather, the son of a prostitute and her client, was raised in a brothel. He raised his own six children, including Bell’s grandmother, on a 160-acre homestead in Plummer, Idaho. On her father’s side, the Norwegian Wikum family, when traced 700 years back, was already renowned for its spectacularly heavy drinking. The hard living continued in America where the clan was referred to around Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho as “the fighting Wikums.”
Bell was raised in Washington and Idaho and settled as an adult in California. She did not complete middle school, high school, or college and holds no degrees. She has worked as a massage therapist, a cleaning lady, a daycare worker, a nanny, a barista, and a server in the kitchen of a retirement home.
Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana and now resides in Long Beach, California. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University, an MFA in poetry from Butler University, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. His first collection of poems, Testify, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry, and his poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites, most recently Zyzzyva, Pleiades, and the New Orleans Review. He has traveled to Egypt and Eritrea with The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program to teach poetry. A recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts, he is a Bayard Rustin Fellow at Whittier College and teaches at Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.
Rebecca Faulkner is a London-born poet based in Brooklyn. The author of Permit Me to Write My Own Ending, (Write Bloody Press, 2023) her work appears in New York Quarterly, Solstice Magazine, The Maine Review, CALYX Press, Berkeley Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
In 2021 Rebecca was a Poetry Fellow at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. In 2022 she joined a cohort of poets and artists at a fall residency at the Kolaj Institute in New Orleans. In June she will be writer-in-residence at the Juniper Institute, UMass, Amherst, and artist-in-residence at Arts, Letters & Numbers in August. Rebecca holds a BA in English Literature & Theatre Studies from the University of Leeds, an MA in Performance Studies from NYU, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies from the University of London.
Her debut collection of poetry will be published in the US and UK on March 28, 2023 by Write Bloody Press UK, with tour announcements on the Events page. She is currently at work on her second collection of poetry, exploring female identity and artistic endeavor.
Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of DISEASE OF KINGS, forthcoming from W.W. Norton in October (PRE-ORDER NOW!). He is also the author of THE LOW PASSIONS (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and DYNAMITE (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harvard Review, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Sun, Oxford American, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, the Camargo Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the Poetry International Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. Anders holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Héctor Tobar & Our Migrant Souls at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Héctor Tobar will present and discuss his new book, Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino.”
This new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author is about the twenty-first-century Latino experience and identity.
“Latino” is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of “Latino” assembles Héctor Tobar’s personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people. Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States and seeks to give voice to the angst and anger of young Latino people who have seen latinidad transformed into hateful tropes about “illegals” and have faced insults, harassment, and division based on white insecurities and economic exploitation.
Investigating topics that include the US-Mexico border “wall,” Frida Kahlo, urban segregation, gangs, queer Latino utopias, and the emergence of the cartel genre in TV and film, Tobar journeys across the country to expose something truer about the meaning of “Latino” in the twenty-first century. .
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Hector-Tobar-Our-Migrant-Souls
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 22nd
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-637282147057
At Dynasty Typewriter: Jamie Loftus Presents RAW DOG at Skylight Books WTH Dynasty Typewriter – In-Person Event
Jamie Loftus will present and discuss her book, RAW DOG: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.
Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They’re high culture, they’re low culture, they’re sports food, they’re kids’ food, they’re hangover food, and they’re deeply American, despite having no basis whatsoever in America’s Indigenous traditions. You can love them, you can hate them, but you can’t avoid the great American hot dog.
Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs is part investigation into the cultural and culinary significance of hot dogs and part travelog documenting a cross-country road trip researching them as they’re served today. From avocado and spice in the West to ass-shattering chili in the East to an entire salad on a slice of meat in Chicago, Loftus, her pets, and her ex eat their way across the country during the strange summer of 2021. It’s a brief window into the year between waves of a plague that the American government has the resources to temper, but not the interest.
Jamie Loftus is a comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, and podcaster. She’s worked as a staff writer on Teenage Euthanasia, Robot Chicken, and Star Trek: Lower Decks, and wrote and starred in her own web series for Comedy Central. She writes and hosts popular limited-run podcasts—“My Year In Mensa” (2019), “Lolita Podcast” (2020), “Aack Cast” (2021), and “Ghost Church” (2022)—and cohosts, with screenwriter Caitlin Durante, a podcast on the How Stuff Works Network called “the Bechdel Cast.” She has her baby teeth bronzed and loaded into a slingshot.
Tickets for this event can be found using the following link:
https://www.dynastytypewriter.com/events-calendar?loxi_pathname=%2Fjamie-loftus-raw-dog-release-4562
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Monday the 22nd
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
Andrew Rannels, with Danielle Schneider, & Uncle of the Year: & Other Debatable Triumphs at LiveTalks L. A. – In-Person Event
Andrew Rannels, in conversation with Danielle Schneider, will discuss his new book, Uncle of the Year: & Other Debatable Triumphs.
You don’t have to be a Broadway die-hard to find the observations of Andrew Rannells’ amusing and insightful. In the performer’s latest memoir, Uncle of the Year: And Other Debatable Triumphs, he finds himself wondering why, despite his success, he still feels like an anxious twenty-year old.
A gay man who never thought about having kids, Rannells discovers how important children are when he falls in love with a man with two of his own. He writes about dating, aging, mental health, bad jobs, and life’s unexpected detours, peeling away the filter of “adulting” and challenging us to take a long look at who we’re pretending to be—and who we want to become.
Tony-award nominee Andrew Rannells has starred in The Book of Mormon, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hamilton, Falsettos, and more. On screen he’s appeared in, among many others, Girls, The New Normal, and Welcome to Chippendales. He’s made his directorial debut adapting one of his Modern Love essays for Amazon Prime.
Danielle Schneider is a writer/performer with a background in improv and sketch comedy. Her credits with her writing partner, Dannah P hirman include Standing By, Cola Wars, Clone High, Black Monday, Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Kenanand The Hotwives of Orlando and The Hotwives of Las Vegas. She most recently guest starred on Hacks and previously starred in Champaign Ill, and on Community.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: LiveTalks LA at William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Arts Station
Date: Monday the 22nd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 2525 Michigan Ave., E-1, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/andrew-rannells/
Book Signing: Louise Penny & A World of Curiosities at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Louise Penny will sign her new book, A World of Curiosities.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny’s beloved series.
It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge.
But something has.
As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.
But to what end?
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 4 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Louise-Penny-signing-A-World-of-Curiosities
Book Bash Book Club: Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency via The Poetry Lab – Online Event
The Poetry Lab’s Book Bash Book Club will discuss this month’s selection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, by bestselling author and poet Chen Chen.
This meeting is held every 4th Tuesday of the month via Zoom, and will provide study guides, questions, and additional learning materials. The forum is always open for BookBash members to comment and discuss books.
This event is part of the NEW Poetry Lab membership. See site for details.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Poetry Lab
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 5:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/membership
Book Launch: Tim Cummings, with James Roday Rodriguez, & Alice the Cat at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person YA Event
Tim Cummings, in conversation with James Roday Rodriguez, will discuss his new novel, Alice the Cat.
On the verge of her thirteenth birthday, Tess’s life is falling apart. Her mother is dead. Her father is like a zombie. And now her beloved cat, Alice, has started running into the street when cars go by, trying to get run over. The only thing Tess can think of that might help? Running away. As she ventures from home, Tess stumbles upon a crew of manga-loving goth kids hiding out in the local haunted house performing sé ances. There, she discovers that the house’s ghostly entity desperately wants a cat to care for in the afterlife, and it has its sights set on Alice. With the help of an unexpected friend and the brilliant, adorkable kid who has a huge crush on her, Tess will do whatever it takes to save Alice the cat, help the ghost, heal her dad, and survive the summer in one piece.
Tim Cummings was born and raised in New York and currently lives in Los Angeles. Recent publications include works in F(r)iction, Scare Street, Lunch Ticket, Meow Meow Pow Pow, From Whispers to Roars, Drunk Monkeys, Hare’s Paw, and Critical Read/RAFT, for which he won the “Origins” essay contest. He teaches writing privately, for UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, and The Townies, Inc in Ojai. He earned his BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. He has performed in nearly 200 projects across theater, dance, film, TV, commercials, and voice-over, and is the recipient of more than a dozen awards for his work on the stages of NY and LA. He earned his MFA in Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Alice the Cat is his first book. timcummings.ink for more.
James Roday Rodriguez is a multihyphenate who is best known for his eight-year run as Shawn Spencer on the USA hit comedy “Psych.” He currently stars on ABC’s DJ Nash drama “A Million Little Things,” which is currently airing its fifth season. Rodriguez recently directed multiple episodes of the upcoming Disney+ series, “The Crossover.” He directed his own script, “Treehouse,” as part of the Blumhouse anthology series “Into the Dark” for Hulu. He also wrote and directed the USA pilot “Shoot the Moon.” He recently appeared in “The Buddy Games” (and the sequel) for writer/director Josh Duhamel and “The Hollywood Hills” movie (aka “Berserk”) for writer/director Rhys Wakefield.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-tim-cummingss-alice-the-cat-tickets-626554440197
Jenna Hermans, with Amirose Eisenbach, & Chaos to Calm at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Jenna Hermans, in conversation with Amirose Eisenbach, will read from, discuss, and sign her book, Chaos to Calm.
Chaos to Calm is a guide for busy parents that will help them streamline the endless tasks they face every day. By creating more time and less stress, they can spend more hours appreciating their family, making sure they have what they need, and giving themselves the space they need to live their lives with intention and joy. Chapters are targeted at Efficiency, Habits, Communication, Community, and Self-Care, and include how-tos and simple small tasks anyone can take to lower the frenetic pace of every day and move forward with practical well-thought-out plans that prove everything can get done without losing your cool. Using examples from a variety of parents as well as her own life, author Jenna Hermans (businesswoman and mother of four!) shows us that calm can be achieved and maintained and that anyone can take control of their busy lives and embrace what really matters.
Jenna Hermans is living proof that you can create a life of calm within chaos and overwhelm. She uses her bachelor’s degree in Psychology, master’s degree in Organizational Management, and 15+ years of human resources experience to build strong teams and company cultures, which she uniquely applies to her home life as well as work. Jenna is the co-founder and COO of Be Courageous along with her husband, helping individuals and organizations step into their courage all while owning their calm. She manages the businesses, family operations, and kids’ schedules, all while nurturing her sanity and wellbeing, and promoting calm. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and four kids.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Jenna-Hermans-Author-signing
Christine Barker & Third Girl from the Left at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Christine Barker will discuss her book, Third Girl from the Left: A Memoir.
As a middle child in a large military family, Christine just wants to dance. Her parents support her dreams, even if they seem beyond their comprehension. At 20, determined and talented, Christine heads across the country from Santa Fe to New York City and, in a made for Hollywood story, is chosen for the London cast of A Chorus Line.
While unwilling to fully cut ties with the traditional life her parents envision for her, she finds a new family with the dancers and more fluid, open characters that fill the theater world in London, and later New York, in the ’70s & ’80s. Christine learns that one member of her family is equally at home in her new world: Laughlin, her older brother—divorced, a father, ex-military and a corporate lawyer—also makes his way to New York City, where he meets, and begins to build a life, with rising fashion star Perry Ellis. The two men enjoy a partnership and a financial success that Christine both admires. and envies.
She spends much of her free time in their Upper West Side brownstone and Water Island retreat. Soon everyone is talking about a mysterious new disease. As deaths of dancers, theater folk, and eventually friends start to mount, Christine realizes she’s in the middle of an epidemic that neither her traditional family nor the public at large is ready to reckon with. As the AIDS crisis cuts closer and closer, eventually impacting those she loves most, Christine does what she has always done: she strikes her own path.
This memoir is an emotional, honest examination of what it takes to succeed in the competitive world of New York theater, how hard-won dreams can be quickly lost, what it means to redefine family, and the devastating toll AIDS exacted on a generation of artists.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Christine-Barker
Book Release: Venza Andrews & One With the Waves at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
The North Figueroa Bookshop welcomes Venza Andrews as we celebrate the release of her debut novel, One with the Waves.
Can surfing change your life? For Ellie, it most certainly does. Vezna Andrews’ debut novel is set in 1980s Southern California, where sixteen-year-old Ellie discovers herself through her love of surfing. Born and raised in New York City, Ellie’s world is turned upside down when her father unexpectedly dies and her mother sends her to Manhattan Beach, California to live with her Aunt Jen and her Uncle Charlie—both avid surfers.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, CA 90043
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/523-700pm-one-with-the-waves-release-with-vezna-andrews/
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with Jon Wesick via Online Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest Jon Wesick.
Jon Wesick is a is a poet and writer and the author of Arugula and other Stories, The Alchemist’s Grandson Changes His Mind, Shaman in the Library Is Here!, and the John Clooney thriller series, among others. He is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, New Verse News, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Tales of the Talisman. His most recent novel is The Prague Deception.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the23rd
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 23rd
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699147113818899
Daniel J. Siegel, MD, with Luthern Williams, & Intraconnected at LiveTalks L. A. – In-Person & Virtual Event
Daniel J. Siegel, MD, in conversation with Luthern Williams, will discuss his new book, IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging.
Daniel Siegel explores the nature of how our experience of what we call “self” emerges across the lifespan.
How do we build an inclusive understanding of self in relation to others that promotes well-being?
Dr. Daniel J. Siegel’s new book, Intraconnected: MWe (Me & We) as the Integration of Self, Identity and Belonging combines personal reflections with scientific discussions of how the mind, brain and our relationships shape who we are.
Our culture may give us a message of separation as a solo, isolated self, Dr. Siegel says, but a wider perspective unveils that who we are may be something more—broader than the brain, bigger even than the body—and fundamental to social systems and the natural world.
Daniel J. Siegel, MD, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. He is the founding editor of Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) and best-selling author of Awake, Mind, The Mindful Therapist, and The Mindful Brain.
Luthern Williams is the Head of School at New Roads School in Santa Monica, California. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an Ed.M. in School Leadership from Harvard University. Luthern has over twenty-five years of experience as an administrator and English teacher in independent schools in New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. Throughout his career, he has drawn on his extensive knowledge of education to align schools’ programs with their missions and to build educational models where all children thrive; learn love, respect, empathy, and compassion; and develop the tools to create a world based on the inherent dignity and worth of each individual. He is deeply committed to democratizing meaningful access to high quality education for socio-economically disadvantaged students and developing schools, built on wellbeing, that are catalysts for societal transformation.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: LiveTalks LA at New Roads School, Ann & Jerry Moss Theatre
Date: Tuesday the 23rd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 3131 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/daniel-siegel-with-luthern-williams/
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 23rd
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
Neverspeak Tuesdays Open Mic at DiPiazza’s – In-Person Event
The 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 23rd
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
Mystery Book Group: A Mother Would Know by Amber Garza at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Event
The Mystery Book Group will discuss this month’s selection, A Mother Would Know, by author Amber Garza.
A mother questions everything she knows about her son when a local woman is found dead.
Valerie has been forgetting things. Her daughter worries about her being on her own in her big Victorian house—one rumored to be haunted after a tragedy decades-earlier—and truth be told, she is a little lonely. With few options, she asks her adult son to move home, but it’s not quite the reunion she hoped for. Hudson is taciturn, moody and frequently gone.
The neighbors already hold a grudge against Hudson, and they aren’t happy about his return. When a young woman is found murdered a block away, suspicion falls on him immediately, without a shred of evidence. While Valerie fights to defend her son, she begins to wonder who she really invited into her home.
It’s a horrible thing for a mother to even think…but is it possible she’s enabled a monster? A monster she is living with, alone?
We will be meeting to discuss the book outside of the shop in the circle in front of Star Cafe. You may still email your thoughts to share with our club if you are unable to attend in-person.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 9 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/book/9780778386483
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 24th
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
Vroman’s Live Webinar: Bec Evans & Chris Smith & Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts at Vroman’s – Online Event
Bec Evans & Chris Smith will discuss their new book, Written: How to Keep Writing and Build a Habit That Lasts.
Writing involves a mixture of craft and practice. To write, you need to be able to spell, understand the basics of grammar and grasp the rules of your particular genre, sub-genre or sub-sub-genre.
But to write, you need more than to know how. Knowing how is important, but that alone won’t get the writing done.
At some stage, you have to sit down and get it written. And that brings with it a whole other set of challenges. Challenges that, more often than not, are rooted in the knotty ball of emotions, fears, worries, doubts and hopes that we all have.
Bec Evans and Chris Smith are the co-authors of Written: How to keep writing and build a habit that lasts and the founders of Prolifiko, a coaching business that helps people build productive writing habits. Prior to Prolifiko, Bec worked in publishing, she’s led teams of writers and managed a writing centre for Arvon. She’s also the award-winning author of How to Have a Happy Hustle, published by Icon in 2019. Chris has a background as a ghostwriter and content consultant to global business brands, charities and the public sector. He worked as an agency director before setting up his own communications consultancy and has written for national newspapers and magazines.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 1 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Webinar-Bec-Evans-Chris-Smith-Written
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 24th
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
Theresa Tha “S.O.N.G.B.I.R.D.” & You So Black! Book Signing at Octavia’s Bookshelf – In-Person Event
Theresa Tha S.O.N.G.B.I.R.D. will celebrate, present, and sign her book, You So Black!
Based on Theresa Wilson’s beautiful, viral spoken word poem of the same name, You So Black is a picture book celebration of the richness, the nuance, and the joy of Blackness.
Black is everywhere, and in everything, and in everyone—in the night sky and the fertile soil below. It’s in familial connections and invention, in hands lifted in praise and voices lifted in protest, and in hearts wide open and filled with love. Black is good.
Accompanied by powerful yet tender illustrations by award-winning illustrator London Ladd, Theresa tha S.O.N.G.B.I.R.D. has adapted her poem, full of gorgeous lyricism and imagery, to show readers the love, joy, resilience, and universality in the beauty of Blackness.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Octavia’s Bookshelf
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 1361 North Hill Ave., Pasadena, CA 91104
Website: https://www.octaviasbookshelf.com/events/theresa-tha-songbird-book-signing
Fred Guttenberg, with Patton Oswald, & American Carnage at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Fred Guttenberg, in conversation with Patton Oswald, will present and discuss his new book,American Carnage: Shattering the Myths That Fuel Gun Violence.
Fred Guttenberg, who lost his beloved daughter Jaime in the 2018 Parkland school shooting, and International gun policy consultant Thomas Gabor team up in American Carnage to dismantle some of the most common myths about guns and gun violence.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Fred-Guttenberg
LeVar Burton & Banned Books Discussion at L.A. Times Book Club at ASU California Center – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Le Var Burton, in conversation with L. A. Times Editor Steve Padilla, will present a discussion about the State of Banned Books, and talk about this new documentary, “The Right to Read,” and Season 3 of “Star Trek: Picard.”
An actor, director and educator, LeVar Burton is best known for his roles as Kunta Kinte in “Roots” and Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” and for hosting the PBS series “Reading Rainbow” for 23 years. Burton’s most recent book is “A Kids Book About Imagination.” He also hosts “LeVar Burton Reads,” a podcast featuring short fiction stories.
We’re partnering with Arizona State University to bring you this community book club night live from the historic Herald Examiner Building in downtown Los Angeles. You can attend in person or join virtually.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, link, and details.
Where: Arizona State University, California Center
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1111 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015
At Skylight: Joanna Hedva, with Charlotte Cotton, & Your Love Is Not Good at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Joanna Hedva, in conversation with Charlotte Cotton, will present and discuss her book, Your Love Is Not Good.
A queer Korean American painter spots a woman who instantly controls the room: gorgeous and distant and utterly white, the center of everyone’s attention. Haunted into adulthood by her Korean father’s abandonment of his family, as well as the specter of her beguiling, abusive white mother, the painter finds herself caught in a perfect trap. She wants Hanne, or wants to be her, or to sully her, or destroy her, or consume her, or some confusion of all the above. Since she’s an artist, she will use art to get closer to Hanne, beginning a series of paintings with her new muse as model. As for Hanne, what does she want? Her whiteness seems sometimes as cruel as a new sheet of paper.
Johanna Hedva (they/them) is a Korean American writer, artist, and musician, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of the novels Your Love Is Not Good and On Hell, as well as Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays. Their albums are Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House and The Sun and the Moon. Their writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, frieze, The White Review, Topical Cream, Spike, and is anthologized in Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art. Their work has been shown in Berlin at Gropius Bau, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Klosterruine, and Institute of Cultural Inquiry; The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Performance Space New York; Gyeongnam Art Museum in South Korea; the LA Architecture and Design Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon; and in the Transmediale, Unsound, and Rewire Festivals. Their essay “Sick Woman Theory,” published in 2016, has been translated into 11 languages.
Charlotte Cotton is an independent photography curator and writer. She is the founding and current Artistic Director of Photo Festival Qatar. She has held positions including head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, head of programming at the Photographers’ Gallery, creative director at the National Media Museum, curator of photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and curator in Residence at Metabolic Studio at Los Angeles, where she participated in a program celebrating the legacy of the Woman’s Building, founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Arlene Raven. Cotton has curated a number of exhibitions on contemporary photography and her publications include The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Imperfect Beauty, Then Things Went Quiet, Guy Bourdin, and Photography is Magic. She is also the founder of wordswithoutpictures.org (2008-9) and eitherand.org (2012). Words Without Pictures was published as a print and eBook by Aperture in 2010.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Kara Jackson & Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love at Stories LA Books & Café – In-Person Event
Kara Jackson is a singer-songwriter and the author of Bloodstone Cowboy. She is also the 2019 Youth Poet Laureate.
Kara Jackson will perform music from her new record, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Joe Ide & Fixit: An IQ Novel at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Joe Ide will present and discuss his new book, Fixit: An IQ Novel.
Isaiah Quintabe’s first love, Grace, has been kidnapped by his sworn enemy, the professional hitman Skip Hanson. Skip is savage and psychotic, determined to punish Isaiah for sending him to prison and destroying his life. Isaiah and his sometimes partner, ex-hustler Juanell Dodson, together again, must track scant clues through L.A.’s perilous landscape as Grace’s predicament grows more uncertain.
A complication arises in the form of Winnie Hando, a homicide detective with something to prove. Stubborn and effective, Winnie sees Isaiah’s efforts as an obstruction to the investigation and a possible embarrassment: an unlicensed PI can’t be seen doing the department’s job better than the department. Winnie tries to stop Isaiah while pursuing the case herself, each hindering the other’s progress. As the desperate hunt winds on, Isaiah fears that even if he can bring Grace home alive, things between them will never be the same. This latest series installment is an explosive collision of larger-than-life characters, shotguns, vicious dogs, stampeding horses, and Ide’s signature energy, grit, and profundity.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Joe-Ide-Fixit
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
Writer’s Bloc and Los Angeles World Affairs Council Present: Senator Amy Klobuchar and Jay Leno at The Ebell of Los Angeles – In-Person Event
Writers Bloc and Los Angeles World Affairs Council present Amy Klobuchar.
In case you missed it, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota ran for President in 2020. When she dropped out of the race, she threw her unwavering support to Joe Biden in his race against Donald Trump. Senator Klobuchar has sponsored hundreds of bills, with a knack for backing legislation that has become law. She has sponsored legislation on dozens of issues, including gun violence prevention, the opioid crisis, expansion of veterans’ education and job opportunities, antitrust and banking industry bills, and so many more.
Senator Klobuchar’s exultant new memoir, The Joy of Politics: Surviving Cancer, a Campaign, a Pandemic, An Insurrection, and Life’s Other Unexpected Curveballs, is the story of an exceptional woman who strives for humor and grace in the face of personal peril, professionally challenging relationships in the Senate, and some heartbreak. The Joy of Politics is resplendent in Klobuchar’s signature wit, compassion, and sobering take on the state of American politics and democracy.
Jay Leno hosted The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for twenty years. He’s very funny. He’s a stand-up guy, a stand-up comedian, author, a car builder and mechanic. He hosts Jay Leno’s Garage on CNBC. Along the way, he amassed a shelf full of awards for his distinguished career in comedy and television, including Emmys, the Mark Twain Prize, and Congressional Medal of Honor Society’s Patriot Award, and so many more.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, tickets, and details.
Where: The Ebell Theatre
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 7:30 pm
Address: 741 S. Lucerne Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90005
Website: https://writersblocpresents.com/main/sen-amy-klobuchar/
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 24th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg & Donato Martinez 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 Donato Martinez.
Donato Martinez was born in in small pueblo, Garcia de la Cadena, Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated into USA at six years old. He teaches English composition, Literature, and Creative Writing at Santa Ana College. He has also taught classes in Chicano Studies. He has also been a co-coordinator of the Puente Program for 25 years and has presented workshop sessions at the both the regional and state level. He has also spoken at many motivational and educational conferences. He hosts and curates many artistic events that feature poetry and music at his campus or in the community. These events generate large crowds and active participation.
He is also a poet and writes about his barrio upbringing, his community, his culture, his bi-cultural and bilingual identities and other complexities of life. He is influenced by the sounds and pulse of the streets, people, music, and the magic of language. He has a self-published collection with three other Inland Empire poets, Tacos de Lengua. His work has been published by City Works, Eastside Rose, Acentos Review, The San Diego Poetry Annual, Ofrenda Magazine, Mixtape Literary Journal, Latin@Literatures, and La Raiz Magazine. His full-length collection of poetry, Touch the Sky, will be published in May by El Martillo Press. He loves the outdoors and is inspired by music and books and other artistic expressions, and his children, Gabriel and Abigail.
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 24th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events
SOM Wednesdays Open Mic at Roscoe’s Lounge – In-Person Event
The SOM Open Mic is held Wednesdays at venue Roscoe’s Lounge with music, comedy, and poetry + an open mic. Hosted by Kyle Davis.
Check to verify.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Roscoe’s Lounge
Date: Wednesday the 24th
Time: 8 pm (Sign-ups at 7:30 pm)
Address: 730 E. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.facebook.com/somopenmic/
Teen Book Discussion: The Sum of Us at Pico Branch Library, SMPL – In-Person Teen Event
Teens are invited to a book discussion of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by author Heather McGhee.
Where: Pico Branch Library Annex, SMPL
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 2201 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90404
Website: https://smpl.org/uploadedFiles/May2023CalendarOfEvents.pdf
Persian Poetry Forum of Los Angeles: Meetingat Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
The Mar Vista Branch Library hosts a meeting of the Persian Poetry Forum of Los Angeles, held on every last Thursday of the month.
This program series offers a forum for people of all backgrounds to come together and learn about Persian poetry. We look forward to building bridges, engendering dialogue, and creating a sense of community among Angelenos and those who join our programs from other places.
Through talks, presentations, and poetry reading by our resident or guest speakers, we discover and discuss one specific topic in the first part of each session. The second portion is dedicated to creating a safe, welcoming, and judgment-free space for the participants to share their own poetry. For more information or to RSVP and send your poems to be placed on the agenda of our programs, please contact persian@lapl.org. We will offer these programs via Zoom while COVID-19 restrictions are in place. This program is presented in the Persian (Farsi) language.
RSVP: Registering for this event is highly encouraged: persian@lapl.org.
Where: Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/poetry-forum-los-angeles-persian
Book Talk & Signing: Mary Ortiz, with Janet Fitch, & BURST at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Mary Ortiz, in conversation with Janet Fitch, will read from, discuss, and sign her debut novel, BURST.
Award-winning author Mary Otis delivers an arresting debut novel that explores the complexities between mothers and daughters, and the conflicting desires for connection and escape.
Viva has always found ways to manage her mother Charlotte’s drinking because, for her entire life, it’s been Viva and Charlotte against the world. The pair spend years on the move, living in a trailer on Cape Cod, the family home of one of Charlotte’s romantic entanglements, and finally the home of Charlotte’s sister and brother-in-law whose generosity comes with the pressure of intrusion and resentment.
Along the way, Viva accidentally discovers an innate talent for dance and chases her new passion with the same fervor that her mother chases the bottle. Over the years, Viva’s talent becomes her ticket to a life of her own, and Charlotte’s investment in Viva’s dance training is tinged with her own past failures and insecurity. As Viva moves further away geographically and emotionally to pursue her dream, Charlotte struggles to make peace with her own past as a failed artist, a distant mother, and an alcoholic. When tragedy strikes, Viva begins a downward spiral that forces her to decide whether she will repeat her mother’s mistakes or finally take control of her life.
Told from interwoven perspectives with writing as deft as a choreographed dance, this story delves into a mother-daughter relationship filled with immense heart in the face of heartbreak.
Mary Otis is the author of the short story collection Yes, Yes, Cherries. Her fiction, essays, and poetry have been published in Best New American Voices, Electric Literature, Tin House, Zyzzyva, McSweeney’s, Bennington Review, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies. She has taught fiction at UCLA and was a founding professor in the UC Riverside Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program. Originally from the Boston area, Mary lives in Los Angeles.
Janet Fitch is an American author. She wrote the novel White Oleander, which became a film in 2002. She is a graduate of Reed College. Fitch was born in Los Angeles, a third-generation native, and grew up in a family of voracious readers.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-talk-signing-mary-otis-burst-tickets-635019529507
Chris Hauty & The Devil You Know: A Thriller at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Chris Hauty will present and discuss his book The Devil You Know: A Thriller.
When a justice of the Supreme Court is killed by the police officer assigned to protect him, the country is shocked. Hayley Chill’s superiors suspect the assassination is part of a major conspiracy.
In Maui, where one member of the Supreme Court owns a vacation home, a busload of children is taken hostage with the justice’s death as ransom. Together with a deputy US marshal, Hayley embarks on the monumental task of rescuing the children while also protecting the justice. But with danger around every corner and no one to trust, has Hayley finally bitten off more than she can chew?
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Chris-Hauty
Something Poetic: Ode to Poets Vol. 4 Readings at Public Works Improv & Lyrical Flames – In-Person Event
Something Poetic: Ode to Poets Vol. 4 presents readings by:
Lee Boek, Iya Isoke-Herd, Ideas Aubrey, Lisbeth Coiman, SC Mero, Richard McDowell, LIda Parent Harris, Paul Fleisher, Jeff Rogers, & Jessica Wilson Cardenas.
Where: Public Works Improv & Lyrical Flames
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 201 W. 7th St., Los Angeles, CA, 90071
Website: http://publicworksimprov.com/
Elise Hu, with Alisa Chang, & Flawless at North Figueroa Bookshop Off-site at Crawford Family Forum– In-Person Event
Elise Hu, in conversation with Alisa Chang, will discuss and celebrate the release of her book, Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital.
This book by podcaster Elise Hu examines the enduring power of standardized beauty, how that intersects with capitalist imperatives, and where we go from here, when technology is making our exteriors so vital. Using her background in geopolitical reporting and her personal experiences as an Asian American woman, Elise hopes to highlight the voices and insights from the hundreds of Korean women she interviewed and change what empowerment looks and feels like. Ailsa Chang (she/her), award-winning journalist and host of NPR’s All Things Considered, will talk with Elise about the book, K-beauty’s global rise, and how we can change appearance expectations and claim a more inclusive, intersectional, and community-centered ethic around “self-care.”
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop at Crawford Family Forum
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 474 S. Raymond Ave., -Pasadena, CA 91105
Christine Imperial: Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir In Tongues at Poetic Research Bureau – In-Person Event
PRC presents a reading by Christine Imperial from her new memoir, Mistaken for an Empire: A Memoir in Tongues. The reading will be hosted by Sarah Sophia Yanni, with co-readers Jhani Randhawa and Vinhay Keo also featured.
Born in postcolonial Philippines into a family—and country—with a complicated history, Christine Imperial learns from a lifetime of experiences that there is no easy path to understanding or belonging. Setting out to renew her relationship to Tagalog, the language she had previously distanced herself from, she contends with the meaning of her dual Philippine/US citizenship along with the conditions surrounding it, reflecting on imperialist and class systems and the history of her birth country. Beginning with an attempt to translate into Tagalog Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden”—Kipling’s ode to American imperialism after the US takeover of the Philippines – Imperial reflects on and writes against Kipling’s poem as she unspools her fractured family’s story.
Reckoning with both the anguish and promise of hybridity, Mistaken for an Empire expands into an exploration of the author’s relationship to English and Tagalog, history, family and state, origin and belonging. By interrogating the many intricacies of individual and national identity and the legacies that shape them, Imperial grapples with the tangled nature of allegiance, whether it be to family, to country, or to self.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7:30 pm (doors at 7 pm)
Address: 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90057
Website: https://www.poeticresearch.com/events/christine-imperial-mistaken-for-an-empire
Author Chat: Helena Andrews-Dyer, with Naima J. Keith, & For the Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me at Salt Eaters Bookshop – In-Person Event
Author Helena Andrews-Dyer, in conversation with Naomi J. Keith, will discuss her book, For the Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me.
This rank, hilarious and authentic conversation with author and award-winning culture reporter for The Washington Post (and mama!) Helena Andrews-Dyer and Vice President of Education and Public Programs at LACMA (and mama!) Naima J. Keith as they discuss Andrew-Dryer’s latest, The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me.
In The Mamas, Andrews-Dyer chronicles the challenges she faces in a group where systemic racism can be solved with an Excel spreadsheet and where she, a Black, professional, Ivy League-educated mom, is overcompensating with every move. Andrews-Dyer grapples with her own inner tensions, like “Why do I never leave the house with the baby and without my wedding ring?” and “Why did every name we considered for our kids have to pass the résumé test?” Throw in a global pandemic and a nationwide movement for social justice and she ultimately tries to find out if moms from different backgrounds can truly understand one another.
With sharp wit and refreshing honesty, The Mamas explores the contradictions and community of motherhood—white and Black and everything—against the backdrop of the rapidly changing world.
Helena Andrews-Dyer is an award-winning culture reporter for The Washington Post, covering the intersection of popular culture, race, politics and art in the nation’s capital. She’s written about actress Sheryl Lee Ralph finally getting her flowers, how DJ D-Nice saved all of our lives, Vice President Kamala Harris’s deep connection to her Black sorority, and the portrayal of black fatherhood in the film “King Richard.”
In 2020, Helena was awarded two National Association of Black Journalists’ Salute to Excellence Awards for her longform feature “This Isn’t Another Horror Story About Black Motherhood.”
Her third book, The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class and Race From Moms Not Like Me, was published by Crown in August 2022. Helena’s second book, Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters co-written with R. Eric Thomas, was published in 2020. Her first book, the memoir-in-essays Bitch is the New Black, was published in 2010. “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes optioned Bitch is the New Black as a feature film for Fox Searchlight Pictures.
Naima J. Keith is the Vice President of Education and Public Programs at LACMA. Within her role, she oversees all aspects of and sets the vision for LACMA’s innovative and exhibition-driven educational programming that serves more than 650,000 community members annually. Prior to her position at LACMA, Keith was the Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the California African American Museum where she guided the curatorial and education departments as well as marketing and communications. She was the 2017 recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize in recognition of her contributions to the field of African American art history and was co-artistic director of Prospect 5 in New Orleans in 2021. As an associate curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem (2011–16), her historical survey, Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974–1989 (2014), traveled to the Hammer Museum in spring 2015. She has lectured extensively and her essays have appeared in numerous publications.
Where: Salt Eaters Bookshop
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 am
Address: 302 E. Queen St., Inglewood, CA 90301
At Rainbow Bar: John Wray, with J. Bennett, & Gone to the Wolves at Rainbow Bar – In-Person Event
John Wray, in conversation with J. Bennett, will discuss his novel. Gone to the Wolves.
Kip, Leslie, and Kira are outliers—even in the metal scene they love. In arch-conservative Gulf Coast Florida in the late 1980s, just listening to metal can get you arrested, but for the three of them the risk is well worth it, because metal is what leads them to one another.
In his most absorbing and ambitious novel yet, John Wray dives deep into the wild, funhouse world of heavy metal and death cults in the 1980s and ’90s. Gone to the Wolves lays bare the intensity, tumult, and thrill of friendship in adolescence—a time when music can often feel like life or death.
John Wray is the author of critically acclaimed novels including Lowboy, The Right Hand of Sleep and Canaan’s Tongue. He was named one of Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists in 2007. The recipient of a Whiting Award, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
When J. Bennett isn’t writing for The Creative Independent, Decibel, Revolver or Bandcamp Daily, he enjoys dressing in the style of 1970s African dictators, shaking his fist at the sky and wondering where all the flowers have gone. But mostly he is just exhausted. He lives in an abandoned missile silo on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books at the Rainbow Bar (upstairs)
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9015 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/rainbow-bar-john-wray-presents-gone-wolves-w-j-bennett
At Skylight: Santi Elijah Holley & An Amerikan Family at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Santi Elijah Holley will present and discuss his book, An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created.
They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family—one of the most famous names in contemporary Black American history—has never been told.
For over fifty years, the Shakurs have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. Many people are only familiar with Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or the late rapper Tupac. But the branches of the Shakur family tree extend widely, and the roots reach into the most furtive and hidden depths of the underground.
An Amerikan Family is a history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced and shaped by the Shakur family. It is the story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. An Amerikan Family is not only family genealogy; it is the story of Black America’s long struggle for racial justice and the nation’s covert and repressive tactics to defeat that struggle. It is the story of a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often perilous measures in the quest for freedom. In short, the story of the Shakurs is the story of America.
Santi Elijah Holley is an award-winning journalist and author of An Amerikan Family: The Shakurs and the Nation They Created. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Republic, The Washington Post, LA Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-santi-elijah-holley-presents-amerikan-family
Charlotte Maya & Sushi Tuesdays at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Local author Charlotte Maya will discuss her new memoir, Sushi Tuesdays, and share her personal and powerful story of grief and resilience as well as writing advice for those interested in sharing their own stories. After the presentation she will be available for questions and a book signing.
Charlotte Maya writes about suicide loss, resilience, and hope on her blog, SushiTuesdays.com. Widowed at 39, when her children were 6 and 8, Charlotte’s writing explores the intersections of grief, parenting, and self-care. Her work has been highlighted in Hippocampus Magazine and The New York Times (Modern Love). Charlotte lives in Southern California with her family and enjoys hiking in the local foothills, as well as downward-dogging with her so-called hunting dog. She received her B.A. from Rice University and her J.D. from UCLA.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/25663
Stephanie Rodriguez, with Julio Salgado, & Doodles From the Boogie Down at Vroman’s – In-Person MG Event
Stephanie Rodriguez, in conversation with Julio Salgado, will present and discuss his new book Doodles From the Boogie Down.
A young Dominican girl navigates middle school, her strict mother, shifting friendships, and her dream of being an artist in this debut coming-of-age graphic novel inspired by the author’s tween years.
Eighth grade in New York City means one thing: It’s time to start applying to high schools! While her friends are looking at school catalogs and studying for entrance exams, Steph is doodling in her notebook and waiting for art class to begin. When her art teacher tells her about LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, Steph desperately wants to apply. But she’s in the Bronx, and LaGuardia is a public school in Manhattan—which her mom would not approve of. Steph comes up with a plan that includes lying to her mom, friends, and teachers. Keeping secrets isn’t easy, and Steph must decide how far she’ll go to get what she wants.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Stephanie-Rodriguez-Doodles-from-the-Boogie-Down
Farewell L.A.: A Poetry Reading by Anna Journey & David St. John at Beyond Baroque – Online Zoom Event
Poets David St. John and Anna Journey will be moving from Los Angeles to Richmond, Virginia, in June. Come celebrate their years in Venice by joining us for a casual evening of poetry and tacos on the patio!
David St. John has been honored with many prizes, including both The Rome Fellowship and The Award in Literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters; the O. B. Hardison Prize from The Folger Shakespeare Library; and the George Drury Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from Beyond Baroque. He is the author of twelve collections of poetry, most recently, The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems. He first moved to Venice in June, 1987.
Anna Journey is the author of the poetry collections The Judas Ear (2022), The Atheist Wore Goat Silk (2017), and Vulgar Remedies (2013), all from LSU Press, and If Birds Gather Your Hair for Nesting (University of Georgia Press, 2009), which was selected by Thomas Lux for the National Poetry Series. She’s also published the essay collection An Arrangement of Skin (Counterpoint, 2017). Her poems appear in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, FIELD, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Journey has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. She’s an associate professor of English at the University of Southern California.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Thursday the 25th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Pete Oswald & The Noise Inside Boys via Children’s Book World – Online Kids Event
Author and illustrator Pete Oswald will present his picture book, The Noise Inside Boys: A Story About Big Feelings, via a virtual school/book talk event, and you may participate by contacting the store for details.
Pete Oswald’s The Noise Inside Boys: A Story About Big Feelings unravels the confusing emotions inside boys today against the backdrop of a day at the beach.
When two older brothers tease their younger brother, overwhelming feelings surface, along with the urge to push them away. Highlighted with a rainbow of vibrant colors, this important book shows how the turbulent emotions we experience can be managed by naming and understanding them. Based on real life experience, this story about three brothers offers insight and wisdom that all kids—and grown-ups—will take to heart.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Friday the 26th
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 26th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
NoHo Online Book Club: Lowland via North Hollywood Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
NoHo Online Book Club will discuss Lowland, by author Jhumpa Lahiri.
This book is an engrossing family saga steeped in history: the story of two very different brothers bound by tragedy, a fiercely brilliant woman haunted by her past, a country torn apart by revolution, and a love that endures long past death. Moving from the 1960s to the present, and from India to America and across generations, this dazzling novel is Jhumpa Lahiri at the height of her considerable powers.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: North Hollywood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 10 am
Address: Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/noho-online-book-club
Your Author Series: Laurel Snyder & The Witch of Woodland via Central Library, LAPL – Online MG Event
Your Author Series presents author Laurel Snyder to present her middle grade book The Witch of Woodland.
The Witch of Woodland introduces Zipporah Chava McConnell, aka Zippy, a young girl preparing for her bat mitzvah who discovers she has mysterious abilities in this magical contemporary coming-of-age story.
Streaming live on the library’s YouTube channel.
Those attending the virtual program will have an opportunity to win a free book.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/your-author-series-laurel-snyder-0
NPR’s Elise Hu, with Rachel Swaby, & Flawless at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Elise Hu, in conversation with Rachel Swaby, will present her book Flawless.
Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital braids international reporting, cultural commentary and memoir to explore the global rise of Korean skincare, cosmetics and aesthetic surgery culture, the power of appearance standards worldwide, and the conflicting pleasure and pain of having to upgrade ourselves and keep up with beauty norms.
Elise Hu is a correspondent and host at-large for NPR, the American news network; and the inaugural host of TED Talks Daily, the daily podcast from TED that’s downloaded a million times a day in all countries of the world. For nearly four years, she was the NPR bureau chief responsible for coverage of North Korea, South Korea, and Japan. Her work has earned the national DuPont Columbia, Edward R. Murrow and Gracie awards, along with a Gannett Foundation Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism. She lives in Culver City with her three daughters.
Elise will be in conversation with another Culver City-based author, Rachel Swaby, author of Headstrong and Mighty Moe!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/24544
Mic Night at Midnight: Open Mic & Features Event at Midnight Bookstore – In-Person Event
This Open Mic event is presented by the L.A. Poet Society on every last Friday of the month.
Featured Artists TBA.
Where: Midnight Bookstore
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 7201 Greenleaf Ave., Suite D, Whittier, CA 90602
Website: https://www.instagram.com/midnightbooksla/?hl=en or https://www.instagram.com/losangelespoetsociety/
LGBTQ Open Mic Nightat Café con Libros Press & Bookstore – In-Person Event
This Open Mic event is presented by the Café con Libros in Pomona every last Friday of the month.
Liam and Charlie host a fun LGBTQ+ meeting. Share in a poem (serious, fun, or saucy) or enjoy a fun round of BEST STORY WINS!
Where: Café con Libros Press
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 280 W. 2nd St., Pomona, CA 91766
Website: https://cafeconlibrospress.org/event-calendar/
AAPI Latinx Heritage Series: Karen Tei Yamashita & Tropic of Orangeat Museum of Latin American Art (MOOLA) – Online Event
Join MOOLA as we meet with UC Presidential Chair in Feminist Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Author, Karen Tei Yamashita, Japanese American writer whose book, Tropic of Orange is a novel set in Los Angeles and Mexico with a diverse, multi-ethnic cast of characters.
Tropic of Orange: This talk will explore the cross-culturalism between Asian and Latinx communities; the Asian and/or Latinx influence/inspiration on magical realism as a genre; and how living in CA and experiencing LA influenced her writing and the cross-culturalism in the book.
This event includes a lecture, Q&A, and a brief reading.
Where: Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://molaa.org/events/2023/5/25/aapi-karen-tei-yamashita
Grief Speak: A Poetry Reading on Loss & Healing at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Live on YouTube Event
Beyond Baroque presents Grief Speak, a poetry reading with authors of Southern California who share their perspectives on this broad and important topic that resonated with multiple communities over the last few years.
The Poetry Coalition, an alliance of more than 25 independent poetry organizations across the United States, has devoted March through May 2023 to explore the theme “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief.” The line “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson” is from Ed Roberson’s poem “once the magnolia has blossomed.”
Poets Crystal AC Salas, Cynthia Guardado, Diana Khoi Nguyen & Nicholas Reiner will read their work, inspired by the poetry collection’s thee, “and so much lost you’d think / beauty had left a lesson: Poetry & Grief.”
Crystal AC Salas is a Xicanx poet, essayist, educator, and community organizer. Her poetry chapbook Grief Logic is co-winner of the inaugural Alta California Prize, from Gunpowder Press. She has work in Omnium Gatherum Quarterly, Alta Journal, Northwest Review, [PANK] Magazine, World Literature Today, Chaparral Poetry, Acentos Review, and others. A founding member of the BreakBread Literacy Project, which elevates the voices of young creatives under 25, she serves as poetry editor for BreakBread Magazine. She holds an M.F.A. from University of California, Riverside and is the recipient of a 2021-2022 California Arts Council Established Individual Artist Fellowship.
Cynthia Guardado is a Los Angeles–born Salvadoran poet and professor. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Cenizas and ENDEAVOR. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, U.S. Latinx Voices in Poetry, and The Wandering Song. Guardado won the Concurso Binacional De Poesía Pellicer-Frost in 2017, and Cenizas was a finalist for the National Poetry Series in 2019.
A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (Omnidawn 2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and forthcoming collection, Root Fractures (Scribner 2024). Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow, recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Currently, she is core faculty in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Nicholas Tino Reiner is an American poet of Mexican heritage. His debut poetry chapbook Levitations is co-winner of the inaugural Alta California Chapbook Prize, available in a bilingual edition from Gunpowder Press. His poems appear in Spillway, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Western Humanities Review, Zocalo Public Square, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Nicholas is Senior Press Strategist at the ACLU of Southern California, where he works to protect the liberty of all people. He holds degrees in English from Stanford University and University of California, Irvine, where he completed an M.F.A. He lives in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/grief-speak-poetry-on-loss-healing-tickets-629486118927
Poetry Showcase: Finding Your Voice Through Creative Writing at Wrigley Coffee Co. – In-Person Event
Poetry Showcase: Finding Your Voice Through Creative Writing is directed by Ann Waldman & Derrick Engoy.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Wrigley Coffee Co.
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm)
Address: 437 W. Willow St., Long Beach, CA 90806
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=546396864346337&set=
At Skylight: Mallory O’Meara & Jen Vaughn Launch Girls Make Movies at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Mallory O’Meara and Jen Vaughn will present and discuss their book, Girls Make Movies.
Girls Make Movies puts you in the driver’s seat as you create a fictitious zombie blockbuster and are guided through each stage of production and learn about the processes, techniques, and people involved in making a Hollywood hit. Luckily, every path through this nonfiction book results in the film being made, but you will be asked to make choices that will affect the outcome of the movie. Will you shoot on location or on a studio lot? Use practical or special effects? Hire a greensperson or a someone to do pyrotechnics? The choices are up to you!
Written by critically acclaimed author Mallory O’Meara and paired with eye-catching, graphic illustrations by popular comic book artist Jen Vaugh, this unique, practical book provides young girls with advice and inspiration while offering a sense of adventure as they learn how to create a movie!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-mallory-omeara-and-jen-vaughn-launch-girls-make-movies
Book Launch: Conor Tomás Reed & New York Liberation School at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Celebrate the book launch of NEW YORK LIBERATION SCHOOL, by Conor Tomás Reed.
In the 1960s and ’70s—when Toni Cade Bambara, Samuel Delany, David Henderson, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Guillermo Morales, Adrienne Rich, and Assata Shakur all studied and taught at CUNY—New York City’s classrooms and streets radiated as epicenters of Black, Puerto Rican, queer, and women’s liberation.
Conor Tomás Reed is part of the next generation of insurgent CUNY thinkers nourished by these legacies. Highlighting the decolonial feminist metamorphosis that transformed our educational landscape, New York Liberation School explores how study and movement coalesced across classrooms and neighborhoods. Reed’s immersive and wide-ranging narrative brings us into the archives and up close to the stories of its main participants in order to reactivate these vibrant histories. The result is a radiant reclamation of collective history that charts a vision for liberating education and society today.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Friday the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Kitty Donohoe & How to Ride a Butterfly via Children’s Book World – Online Kids Event
Debut author Kitty Donohoe will discuss her picture book How to Ride Dragonfly and talk about her journey from dedicated teacher to children’s book author.
Kitty Donohoe will present her children’s picture book and sign copies of the book for store pickup or shipping.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 10:30 am
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.childrensbookworld.com/event/author-kitty-donohoe-picture-book-debut-how-ride-dragonfly-saturday-may-27-1030am
Indie Bookstore Field Trips #13: Gatsby’s Books, Once Read Books + Bel Canto Books at KUBO LB by Bel Canto Books – In-Person Event
Bel Canto Books’ Indie Bookstore Field Trips #13 will explore three bookstores in Long Beach: Gatsby’s, One Read Books + Bel Canto KUBO.
Once a month, we’ll host a FREE Saturday morning meetup at 1–2 bookstores in varying neighborhoods around SoCal. We’ll begin with free browsing time and end by circling up outside to introduce ourselves and share/discuss any new books we bought or discovered. In certain months, we may even be given private tours by the bookshop owners, as well!
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 11 am – 1:30, As Follows:
11am – Gatsby Books, 5535 E Spring St, Long Beach, CA 90808
12pm – Once Read Books, 5422 E Village Rd, Long Beach, CA 90808
1pm – Bel Canto Books at KUBO LB, 3976 Atlantic Ave, Long Beach, CA 90807
Addresses: See Above
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/graphic-novel-book-club-hosted-by-bel-canto-books-tickets-492235929917
Mystery Book Club: We Begin at the End at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The selection for discussion by Mystery Book Club participants will be We Begin at the End, by author Chris Whitaker.
“A vibrant, engrossing, unputdownable thriller that packs a serious emotional punch. One of those rare books that surprise you along the way and then linger in your mind long after you have finished it.”
―Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Four Winds
Right. Wrong. Life is lived somewhere in between.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 11 am
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-club-14
Felicia’s Free-From Drop-In Writing Session at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
This event is a “Free-form” Drop in Writing Workshop with the Sims Library of Poetry and the 44 Poetry Class.
NOTE: RSVP, guidelines, and details at site.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: 2702 West Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/felicias-free-form-drop-in-writing-session-tickets-638805022017
Always Running Book Festival: Celebrating 30 Years of Always Running, by Luis J. Rodriguez at MKM Cultural Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join the Los Angeles Poet Society to celebrate the Always Running Book Festival, celebrating 30 years of Luis J. Rodriguez’s award-winning memoir, ALWAYS RUNNING!
FREE EVENT
The festival will take place on May 28, 12-5pm PST at MKM Cultural Arts Center in North Hollywood, 11401 Chandler Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601!
Celebrating the impact of 30 years of Always Running, and resiliency through literacy!
Where: MKM Cultural Arts Center
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 12 pm – 5 pm
Address: 11401 Chandler Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601
Website: https://www.lapoetsociety.org/alwaysrunningbookfestival
Open Mic Poetry at Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for our first open mic poetry reading. Share your original poems, lyrics, spoken word, or just enjoy listening. Each poet will have five minutes to read an original work. If you wish to read, sign up when you arrive.
Our featured speaker will be storyteller and poet Mary Torregrossa. She is the author of the chapbook My Zócalo Heart.
Where: Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 1 pm
Address: 5027 Caspar Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90041
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/open-mic-poetry
Big Read: Book Club Discussion of American Born Chinese via Central Library, LAPL – Online Event
Celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander month with The Big Read. Gene Luen Yang’s graphicnovel American Born Chinese.
This prize-winning book tells the story of three apparently unrelated characters: Jin Wang, who moves to a new neighborhood with his family only to discover that he’s the only Chinese-American student at his new school; the powerful Monkey King, subject of one of the oldest and greatest Chinese fables; and Chin-Kee, a personification of the ultimate negative Chinese stereotype, who is ruining his cousin Danny’s life with his yearly visits. Their lives and stories come together with an unexpected twist in this action-packed modern fable. American Born Chinese is an amazing ride, all the way up to the astonishing climax.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 2 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/big-read-book-club-discussion
The Battle of Lincoln Place: Reading & Conversation with Venice Activists & Author Dennis Hathaway at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
Beyond Baroque welcomes author, journalist, and housing activist Dennis Hathaway to present his book, The Battle of Lincoln Place, followed by a moderated conversation with former president of Lincoln Place Tenants Association Sheila Bernard, Lincoln Place activist and attorney Amanda Seward, & Venice activist and human rights attorney John Raphling.
The book documents a struggle increasingly waged by tenants throughout Los Angeles and the nation; a stirring account of the courage and perseverance shown by the tenants of a large, historic apartment complex in Venice Beach, California. They stand up to the greed and heartlessness of their corporate landlords whose quest for profit threatens to destroy the tenants’ long-time homes. It follows four women who lead the hundreds of working-class and elderly tenants in a desperate struggle on the streets, in the halls of government, and in the courts of law and public opinion, along with a fifth woman who fights to recognize the forgotten Black architect whose innovative ideas about community and social interaction informed the design of the apartment complex.
Join us for an afternoon of Venice housing history and community. Presented in collaboration with Where Has All The (Affordable) Housing Gone, a community-based art project that explores the loss of affordable housing in Venice, the event will feature an in-depth discussion of the events at Lincoln Place in the early 2000s that have resonated across LA ever since.
Enjoy a reception with light refreshments served after the reading & conversation.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Fourth Saturdays Poetry: Donna Spruijt-Metz & Carol V. Davis at Claremont Helen Renwick Library – In-Person Event
The Fourth Saturdays Poetry Reading will feature Donna Spruijt-Metz and Carlo V. Davis.
Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, a psychology professor, and a recent MacDowell Fellow. Her first career was as a classical flutist. She also translates Dutch poetry to English. Her chapbooks are Slippery Surfaces and And Haunt the World. Camille Dungy chose her first full-length collection, General Release From the Beginning of the World, is one of the 14 recommended poetry collections for 2022. Her micro-chapbook Dear Ghost will be released in June 2023.
Carlo V. Davis is the author of Below Zero, Because I Cannot Leave This Body, and Between Storms. She won the 2007 T. S, Eliot Prize for Into the Arms of Pushkin: Poems of St. Petersberg. She was awarded a Fulbright Specialist Grant for Siberia, which has been postponed twice, among her many other awards.
Where: Claremont Helen Renwick Library
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 208 N. Harvard Ave., Claremont, CA
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=711700084297297&set=pb.100063719346046.-2207520000
Local Poet Celebration: Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat – In-Person & IG Online Hybrid Event
A Local Poet Celebrates a New Book featuring: Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat.
Tanya Sangpun Thamkruphat is a Thai-Vietnamese American writer and editor. She has a B.S. in Biological Sciences from University of California, Irvine, and a technical communication professional certificate from University of California, San Diego Extension. She is the author of Em(body)ment of Wonder (Raine Poetry Publishing, 2021) and It Wasn’t a Dream (Fahmidan Publishing & Co., 2022).
Where: LibroMobile
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St., #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Poetry Readings: Nancy Lynée Woo, with Four Feathers Press Poets at Saturday Afternoon Poetry – In-Person Event
Print & Internet Publishing Workshop led by NANCY LYNEE WOO + Poets published in Four Feathers Press RHYTHMS OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: RHYMING POETRY anthology.
Nancy Lynee Woo is the author of I’d Rather Be Lightning: Poems, her debut full-length collection, is an invocation to the climate crisis through language and hope.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry in Thelma’s Backyard
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1438 Atchison St., Pasadena, CA
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Release Party: Christian Aldana & The Water We Swim In at Pilipino Workers Center – In-Person Event
Sunday Jump Presents: Christian Aldana & The Water We Swim In release party at the Pilipino Workers Center.
Christian Aldana’s debut poetry collection, The Water We Swim In, is an ode to radical care. Through community organizing and deeply held love, Aldana follows in the footsteps of Grace Lee Boggs against a carceral state, questioning the broken system and reaching across diasporic distances for the future within our grasp. Empowering, mobilizing, and unrelenting, The Water We Swim In is a poetic revolution, a manifesto for all who believe in fighting for more.
The author’s reading and talk will include appearances by: Steady, Jason Magabo Perez, Angelea Peñaredondo, Ror, Rachelle Cruz, Adrian De Leon, & Maria Bolaños.
Tathfly PINAY, DJ
HiFi Kitchen, Food Vendor
Where: Pilipino Workers Center, 1st Floor
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 153 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://sampaguitapress.com/product/the-water-we-swim-in/
The Los Angeles Press Presents: Volume 8: The Chainat Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
This summer, the Los Angeles press will be showcasing three new solo poetry collections from Frankie Tan, Rosalind Brenner, and Bernadette McComish. The poets will be reading some selections from their works A Jungle Refuses To Give Up, Life in the Body, and Mother Lore, with support from guest readers:
Featuring: Diana Dinerman, Melanie Zoe Weinstein, Rick Luoert, Roksana Zeinapur.
Plus: Yago Cura, Ronna Magy, David Romero, Christy Roberts Berkowitz, Darren de Loen, X.C. Adkins, Raffi Wartanian, Christina Cha, Linda Ravenswood.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/25271
Author Talk: Venza Andrews & One with the Waves at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Join pages as the store hosts author Venza Andrews for a discussion of her book, One with the Waves.
Can surfing change your life? For Ellie, it most certainly does. Vezna Andrews’ debut novel is set in 1980s Southern California, where sixteen-year-old Ellie discovers herself through her love of surfing. Born and raised in New York City, Ellie’s world is turned upside down when her father unexpectedly dies and her mother sends her to Manhattan Beach, California to live with her Aunt Jen and her Uncle Charlie—both avid surfers.
Ellie’s new home is a sharp contrast to the loft in New York City’s garment district where she grew up. Heartbroken about her dad, and worried about her mom, who drinks too much, Ellie doesn’t fit in with the preppie girls at her new California high school, who eventually gang up on and bully her. Thankfully, with the encouragement of Aunt Jen and Uncle Charlie, Ellie discovers surfing, which becomes her passion and her refuge.
When not writing, Vezna Andrews is either surfing with the dolphins, at the skate park with her son, or painting in her studio. An artist as well as an author, Vezna is especially proud to be a “soul surfer” mom sponsored by her local surf shop. She is excited to share her debut novel, One with the Waves, with readers. She lives with her family in the South Bay of Los Angeles. You can visit her at VeznaAndrews.com.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
The Musical Mosaic: A Celebration of Spoken Word and Soundscape, with Featured Guest Yong Toledo at The Aurora Theater, Long Beach – In-Person Event
Yong Toledo is a Sacramento-born artist currently based in Long Beach. With a passion for music production and a love for writing, Yong Toledo has been creating captivating sounds and content for five years. As the host of Kill the Poet podcast, he engages in dynamic conversations and explores the depths of artistic expression. He blends music, storytelling, and podcasting, he continues to captivate audiences and push the boundaries of craft.
This is a free event.
Where: The Musical Mosaic at the Aurora Theater
Date: Saturday the 27th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 6:15 pm)
Address: 4412 East Village Rd., Long Beach, CA 90808
Website: N/A
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 27th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1001 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://shadesofafrika.com/griot-cafe-open-mic-poetry/
Los Angeles Zine Fest: Celebrating 10 Years of L.A. Zine Fest at EXPO Arts Center, Long Beach – In-Person Event
Join the Los Angeles Zine Fest to celebrate 10 Years of the Festival, this year in Long Beach!
FREE EVENT
The festival will take place on May 28, 11 am – 6 pm PST at EXPO Cultural Arts Center in Long Beach!
Check the list of vendors and related events by reviewing the schedule at the site.
Where: EXPO Arts Center, Long Beach
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 11 am – 6 pm
Address: 4321 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: https://www.lazinefest.com/
Always Running Book Festival: Celebrating 30 Years of Always Running, by Luis J. Rodriguez at MKM Cultural Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join the Los Angeles Poet Society to celebrate the Always Running Book Festival, celebrating 30 years of Luis J. Rodriguez’s award-winning memoir, ALWAYS RUNNING!
FREE EVENT
The festival will take place on May 28, 12-5pm PST at MKM Cultural Arts Center in North Hollywood, 11401 Chandler Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601!
Celebrating the impact of 30 years of Always Running, and resiliency through literacy!
Where: MKM Cultural Arts Center
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 12 pm – 5 pm
Address: 11401 Chandler Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91601
Website: https://www.lapoetsociety.org/alwaysrunningbookfestival
Burning Issues Book Club: Consumed at Bel Canto Books – Online Event
Burning Issues Book Club participants will discuss May’s selection, Consumed: The Need for Collective Change: Colonialism, Climate Change, and Consumerism, by Aja Barber.
Consumed is a call to action for consumers everywhere, and it asks us to look at how and why we buy what we buy, how it’s created, who it benefits, and how we can solve the problems created by a wasteful system.
We live in a world of stuff. We dispose of most of it in as little as six months after we receive it. The byproducts of our quest to consume are creating an environmental crisis. Aja Barber wants to change this—and you can, too.
Barber challenges us to challenge the system and our role in it. The less you buy into the consumer culture, the more power you have. Consumed will teach you how to be a citizen and not a consumer.
Where: Bel Canto Books, Long Beach
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 12 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
The Poetry Salon Book Club: Boat Burned at The Poetry Salon – Online Event
The Poetry Salon Book Club participants will discuss May’s selection, the amazing collection, Boat Burned, by author Kelly Grace Thomas.
Learn from the spotlighted poet’s themes and craft through casual discussion with other Poetry Salon members. Hosted by Shelley Holder.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: The Poetry Salon
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Poet Runner: Poetry Reading & Open MIc at All Power Books – In-Person Event
All Power Books presents a Poetry Reading & Open Micon Sunday, May 28, 2023 from 3 pm – 5 pm.
See calendar of events posted at site.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: All Power Books
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 4874 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles, CA
Website: https://allpowerbooks.org/ or https://www.instagram.com/allpowerbooks/?hl=en
Historical Romance Book Club: Always Be My Duchess at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents the May Historical Romance Book Club every 4th Sunday of the month, and today’s selection is Always Be My Duchess by author Amalie Howard.
The Historical Romance book club is led by Katie S., the store’s Orders Manager. Participants read all historical romance titles, all eras, both new and old. Ballrooms, carriages, and corsets oh my!
This book is a witty historical take on the 90s rom-coms. When Lord Lysander Blackstone has his life accidentally saved by ballerina Genevieve Valey, he offers her a job: act as his his fake fiancée in exchange for fortune enough to start over.
Only neither is prepared when very real feelings begin to grow between them. They both stand to win…but only if they’re willing to risk their hearts.
No membership is necessary, feel free to show up!
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 28th
Time: 7:15 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 