Quantum Book Club: Far Sector at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Join the Quantum Book Club participants to read and discuss sci-fi and fantasy genre fiction with Joseph Bricker. This month’s selection is Far Sector: A Novel by author N.K. Jemisin.
This book is the winner of the 2022 Hugo award for Best Graphic Story or Comic.
The City Enduring, a booming metropolis at the edge of the universe, hasn’t experienced a violent crime in generations. The Emotion Exploit has erased its citizens’ full range of feelings, allowing three resident races to overlook their turbulent history and coexist peacefully—until now.
Rookie Green Lantern Sojourner “Jo” Mullein is still adjusting to her assignment to protect this strange world when a brutal murder rattles its social order, threatening to undo centuries of controversial progress. As the populace rises up against the legacy of the Emotion Exploit and leaders grapple for power under threat of a new war, Jo must rely on her unique instincts—as a Green Lantern and the only human in this sector—to solve the crime and guide the City Enduring toward a more promising future.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Monday the 29th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Westchester, Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.thebookjewel.com/quantum-book-club
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 29th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-642982737677
Book Group: A Mother Would Know by Amber Garza at Venice Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
The Venice Branch Library Book Group will discuss this month’s selection, Properties of Thirst, by author Marianne Wiggins.
A novel destined to be an American classic, this is a sweeping masterwork set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream.
Email venice@lapl.org for Zoom link.
Where: Venice Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 5 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/venice-book-club-1
Sharing True Stories at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
The Westwood Branch Library invites participants to share their true stories in this online event.
Come share something that happened to you. You can read a piece that you wrote or speak off-the-cuff. You are also welcome to just listen. The stories can be funny, sad, or simply slice-of-life. This is your opportunity to express yourself!
To receive a Zoom invitation, please contact wwood@lapl.org.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/life-stories-open-mic
Book Discussion: The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee at Santa Monica Public Library, SMPL – Online Event
The Santa Monica Public Library Book Discussion will be on The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,by Heather McGhee.
Register for the discussion here: https://tinyurl.com/SumOfUsDiscussion
Where: Santa Monica Public Library
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://smpl.org/uploadedFiles/May2023CalendarOfEvents.pdf
Crime Book Club: We Are All the Same in the Dark at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Join the Crime Book Club participants to discuss this month’s selection, We Are All the Same in the Dark: A Novel by author Julia Heaberlin.
Hosted by Eric Beetner, this book club reads crime and thriller fiction.
This story is about the discovery of a girl abandoned by the side of the road, which threatens to unearth the long-buried secrets of a Texas town’s legendary cold case, in this superb, atmospheric novel from the internationally bestselling author of Black-Eyed Susans.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Westchester, Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsW8tkLruGH/
Book Launch: Zev Yaroslavsky & Zev’s Los Angeles at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Zev Yaroslavsky will discuss his new memoir, Zev’s Los Angeles.
This book is the story of Zev Yaroslavsky, the son of Ukrainian Jews who immigrated to the United States in the early 1920s. His memoir charts the journey of a young social activist who battled to free Soviet Jews before becoming one of the most consequential elected officials in Southern California. Fiercely independent, he combined an activist’s passion with a seasoned politician’s skill to challenge the region’s power brokers. He fought the Los Angeles Police Department’s excessive force and political spying policies, led the effort to ban local taxes from funding the 1984 Olympics, teamed with President Clinton to avert a catastrophic county bankruptcy, helped develop L.A.’s modern transit system, won a bruising battle with real estate interests to save the Santa Monica Mountains from rapacious development, and was pivotal in the development of Walt Disney Concert Hall and the modernization of the iconic Hollywood Bowl. “I may be part of the establishment,” he said on the day he was first sworn into office, “but the establishment is not part of me.”
In a Los Angeles political career spanning four decades (City Council 1975-1994, County Board of Supervisors 1994-2014), Zev Yaroslavsky played a central role in shaping America’s largest metropolis. Health care, transportation, arts and culture, the environment, and fiscal policy were his domain. He received an MA in History and a BA in Economics and History, both from UCLA, where he currently teaches Public Policy and History.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/book-launch-zevs-los-angeles-by-zev-yaroslavsky-tickets-638272378867
Book Discussion: Cole Kazdin + Chana Porter at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Authors Cole Kazdin and Chana Porter will share a conversation about women, food, and rebellion when they present their books: What’s Eating Us and The Thick and the Lean, respectively.
Cole Kazdin’s What’s Eating Us: Women, Food, and the Epidemic of Food Anxiety takes us to the doorstep of the diet industry and research community, exposing the flawed systems that claim to be helping us, and revealing disordered eating for the crisis that it is: a mental illness with the second highest mortality rate (after opioid-related deaths) that no one wants to talk about. Along the way, she identifies new treatments not yet available to the general public, grass roots movements to correct racial disparities in care, and strategies for navigating true health while still living in a dysfunctional world.
Chana Porter’s The Thick and the Lean is a startling fable of the entwined perils of capitalism, body politics, and the stigmas women face for appetites of every kind, Chana Porter’s profound new novel explores the reclamation of pleasure as a revolutionary act. With the guidance of a mysterious cookbook written by a kitchen maid centuries ago, two women each grasp for a life of freedom—something more easily imagined than achieved in a world dominated by catastrophic corporate greed.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/530-600pm-cole-kazdin-and-chana-porter-on-women-food-rebellion/
An Evening with Marianne Wiggins & Properties of Thirst at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Join pages as the store hosts acclaimed author Marianne Wiggins for a discussion of her novel, Properties of Thirst.
Properties of Thirst is pages co-owner Linda McLoughlin Figel’s favorite book of 2022 and we could not be more excited to host its brilliant author, Marianne Wiggins for an evening of conversation and celebration of the paperback publication of this masterpiece of a novel. Don’t miss this rare opportunity.
Properties of Thirst is a “magnificent” (Colum McCann) novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country’s past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation’s essence—and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.
Marianne Wiggins is the author of eight novels, including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. She has won a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Heidinger Kafka Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She lives in Venice, California.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/evening-marianne-wiggins-tuesday-may-30th-630-pm
Steven Rowley & Byron Lane Present Their Books: The Celebrants and Big Gay Wedding at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Steven Rowley will present and discuss his book, The Celebrants.
The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living. It’s a deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley’s signature humor and heart.
Byron Lane will present and discuss his book, Big Gay Wedding.
Big Gay Wedding is a story about two grooms and one mother of a problem. There are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don’t want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It’ll be the biggest, gayest event in the town’s history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Steven-Rowley-Byron-Lane
At Skylight: Lan Duong and Diana Khoi Nguyen Present Books at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Lan Duong will present and discuss her book, Nothing Follows, a debut collection whose title is reappropriated from a government document establishing the beginning of a refugee family’s time in the United States. At every coordinate of their lives, the refugee family provides affidavits, letters, and reams of paperwork as they work to beseech those in power to grant them “family reunification” visas for those they had to leave behind in 1975 after the fall of Saigon.
Nothing Follows draws from the genres of memoir and poetry. Written from a young girl’s perspective, the center of this world is a military father, an absent mother, sisters who come and go, broken brothers, and friends she meets in San Jose. Spiked with violence, pleasure, and longing, these refuges are questionable sanctuaries for those refugee girls who have grown up during the 1980s in the aftermath of war.
Lan Duong is Associate Professor in Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Treacherous Subjects: Gender, Culture, and Trans-Vietnamese Feminism (Temple University Press, 2012). Dr. Duong’s second book project, Transnational Vietnamese Cinemas and the Archives of Memory, examines Vietnamese cinema from its inception to the present day. Her research interests include feminist film theory, postcolonial literature, and Asian/American film and literature. Duong’s critical works can be found in Signs, MELUS, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Journal of Asian American Studies, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Amerasia, Asian Cinema, Discourse, Velvet Light Trap, and the anthologies, Transnational Feminism in Film and Media, Southeast Asian Cinema, Recollecting Vietnam, and Gendering the Transpacific.
She has coedited an award-winning anthology called Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders in Literature and Art (University of Washington Press, 2013). Duong is a Founding Member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. She currently serves as the website editor for the group (www.criticalrefugeestudies.com) and is co-editor for the series, Critical Refugee Studies, at the University of California Press.
Diana Khoi Nguyen will present and discuss Ghost Of, which is a mourning song, not an exorcism or un-haunting of that which haunts, but attuned attention, unidirectional reaching across time, space, and distance to reach loved ones, ancestors, and strangers. By working with, in, and around the photographs that her brother left behind (from which he cut himself out before his death), Nguyen wrestles with what remains: memory, physical voids, and her family captured around an empty space.
Born in Los Angeles, DIANA KHOI NGUYEN is a poet and multimedia artist whose work has appeared widely in literary journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, PEN America, and The Iowa Review, among others. A winner of the 92Y’s Discovery / Boston Review 2017 Poetry Contest, she is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Denver.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-lan-duong-nothing-follows-and-diana-khoi-nguyen-ghost
Book Talk: Todd Milliner & Carlyn Greenwald, with Robbie Crouch, & Time Out at Vroman’s – In-Person YA Event
Todd Milliner and Carlyn Greenwald will be in conversationwith Robbie Crouch, to discuss their novel, Time Out.
This is a keenly felt coming-of-age story about a teen hometown hero who must find out who he is outside of basketball when his coming out as gay costs him his popularity and place on the team.
In his small Georgia town, Barclay Elliot is basically a legend. Here basketball is all that matters, and no one has a bigger spotlight than Barclay. Until he decides to use the biggest pep rally in the town’s history to come out to his school. And things change. Quickly.
Barclay is faced with hostility he never expected. Suddenly he is at odds with his own team, and he doesn’t even have his grandfather to turn to the way he used to. But who is Barclay if he doesn’t have basketball?
His best friend, Amy, thinks she knows. She drags him to her voting rights group, believing Barclay can find a bigger purpose. And he does, but he also finds Christopher. Aggravating, fearless, undeniably handsome Christopher. He and Barclay have never been each other’s biggest fans, but as Barclay starts to explore parts of himself he’s been hiding away, they find they might have much more in common than they originally thought.
As sparks turn into something more, though, Barclay must decide if he’s ready to confront the privilege and popularity that have shielded him his entire life. Can he take a real shot at the love he was fighting for in the first place?
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 30th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Todd-Milliner-Carlyn-Greenwald-Time-Out
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with Noah Arhm Choi via Online Zoom Event
The Virtual Cobalt Poets Series, presented by Rick Lupert via Zoom, will feature an Open Reading and guest Noah Arhm Choi.
Noah Arhm Choi is a is a poet and social justice educator, and the author of Cut to Bloom, the winner of the 12019 Write Bloody Prize. They received a MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and their work appears in Barrow Street, Blackbird, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Split this Rock and others. Noah was shortlisted for the Poetry International Prize and received the 2021 Ellen Conroy Kennedy Poetry Prize, alongside fellowships from Kundiman, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. They work as the Director of the Progressive Teaching Institute and Associate Director of DEI at a school in New York City.
NOTE: Details and Zoom link at event link.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday the 30th
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 30th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1699147113818899
Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic Night at Greenway Court – In-Person Event
The nation’s largest weekly Open Mic event is 25 years strong. They hold open mic nights. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in their audience.
Every Tuesday (except for 3rd Tuesdays which is Slam Night) we hold open mic nights. At an open mic, all are welcome to share their poetry or sit in our audience.
TIME LIMIT: Each artist has 3 minutes at the mic, and if you go over, our DJ will scratch you. Please be respectful of the time limit as we try to accommodate as many people as possible.
$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to theatre.
See sites for details.
$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to theater.
Masks are encouraged. All ages are welcome.
Where: Greenway Court Theatre and YouTube Live Stream
Date: Tuesday the 30th
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 30th
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
A Luncheon with Steven Rowley & Byron Lane at the Strand Bar with pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Join a luncheon event at the Strand Bar with authors Steven Rowley & Byron Lane, who are married to each other and both of whom have new books to launch.
Steven Rowley will present and discuss his book, The Celebrants.
The Celebrants is a moving tale about the false invincibility of youth and the beautiful ways in which friendship helps us celebrate our lives, even amid the deepest challenges of living. It’s a deeply honest tribute to the growing pains of selfhood and the people who keep us going, coupled with Steven Rowley’s signature humor and heart.
Byron Lane will present and discuss his book, Big Gay Wedding.
Big Gay Wedding is a story about two grooms and one mother of a problem. There are forces, both within this modern new family and in the town itself, that really don’t want to see this handsome couple march down the aisle. It’ll be the biggest, gayest event in the town’s history if they can pull it off, and after a glitter-filled week, nothing will ever be the same. Big Gay Wedding is an uplifting book about the power of family and the unconditional love of a mother for her son.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, tickets, and details.
Where: pages: a bookstore at the Strand Bar
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 11:30 am
Address: 117 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/luncheon-steven-rowley-byron-lane-strand-bar-may-31st-1130-am
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 31st
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
Good Trouble Reading Group: Vietnamese Poetry via Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
The Edendale Branch Library hosts Dr. Andrea Liss to read and discuss a selection of Vietnamese poetry from anthologies available at the library, including Two Rivers: New Vietnamese Writing From America and Vietnam, Poems From Captured Documents and Black Dog, Black Night: Contemporary Vietnamese Poetry.
Email us eden@lapl.org, and we’ll send you the Zoom link to attend and a link to read the poetry selection online.
The Good Trouble Reading Group shares books that engage themes of social justice with love and family at their core. Dr. Andrea Liss, an Echo Park resident, is Professor Emerita of Visual Culture and Cultural Theory at California State University San Marcos. Her teaching and research focus on feminist visual culture and writing, visual art, and photography related to historical events and representations of social justice, particularly through the work of African American women.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 4 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/good-trouble-reading-group-vietnamese-poetry
Quest Book Club: I’m Glad My Mom Died at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Join the Quest Book Club participants to discuss fiction and nonfiction literary works with bookseller Thera. This month’s selection is I’m Glad My Mom Died by author Jeanette McCurdy.
Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy.
So, she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.
In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail–just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly, she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer.
Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Westchester, Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.thebookjewel.com/quest-book-club
Book Talk & Signing: J. Ryan Stradal, with Christine Sneed, & Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
J. Ryan Stradal, in conversation with Christine Sneed, will discuss his latest novel,Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club.
From the New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal, comes a story of a couple from two very different restaurant families in rustic Minnesota, and the legacy of love and tragedy, of hardship and hope, that unites and divides them.
In this colorful, vanishing world of relish trays and brandy Old Fashioneds, J. Ryan Stradal has once again given us a story full of his signature honest, lovable yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love, loss, and marriage; what we hold onto and what we leave behind; and what our legacy will be when we are gone.
J. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest and national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Granta, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. His debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the American Booksellers Association Indie’s Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in California with his family.
Christine Sneed was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for her first book, Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, which received AWP’s Grace Paley Prize, and a number of other awards including the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. She has published 4 other works of fiction with Bloomsbury USA and UK that have been widely reviewed, her second, the novel Little Known Facts, received a cover review in the New York Times Book Review; it was also an Editor’s Choice selection and later featured in Paperback Row, as was her second novel Paris, He Said.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, tickets, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Find Your Fiction Workshop with Nikki Erlick at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Join the Find Your Fiction Workshop with Nikki Erlich for a writing workshop devoted to creating and exploring nuanced fictional characters.
Find Your Fiction is a series of standalone writing workshops hosted by North Figueroa Bookshop and produced by Alex Aller. The workshop supports emerging writers as they find their unique voices with instruction from a rotating cast of published authors. Writers will read selections and respond to writing prompts to help them delve and explore the minds, lives and intentions of their fictional characters. Each writer will have an opportunity to read their work and receive feedback from the group, followed by a Q&A session with the featured author.
The first workshop leader is Nikki Erlick, author of The Measure.
Nikki Erlick is a writer and editor whose work has appeared on the websites of New York magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, the Huffington Post, Indagare Travel, BookTrib, and the Verge. As a travel writer, she explored nearly a dozen countries on assignment—-from rural villages in France to the arctic fjords of Norway. As a ghostwriter, she has lent her voice to CEOs, academics, and entrepreneurs. She graduated Harvard University summa cum laude and is a former editor of the Harvard Crimson. She earned a master’s degree in global thought from Columbia University. The Measure is her first novel.
Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious, and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope, and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, ticket cost, guidelines, and details.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/531-600pm-find-your-fiction-workshop-with-nikki-erlick/
Mystery & Thriller Book Club: Peril in Paris at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
The Studio City Branch Library’s Mystery & Thriller Book Club will read and discuss this month’s selection, Peril in Paris, by author Rhys Bowen, a Royal Spyness Mystery Book #16.
Lady Georgiana Rannoch and her dashing husband, Darcy, are awaiting a bundle of joy, but an unexpected trip to Paris will thrust them straight into a tangled web of international intrigue.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-thriller-book-club
Simone Stolzoff, with Joseph Bien-Kahn, & The Good Enough Job at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Simone Stoltzoff, in conversation with Joseph Bien-Kahn, will present and discuss his new book, The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work.
This book is a challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches.
From the moment we ask children what they want to “be” when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life’s ultimate objective. Many entangle their identities with their jobs, with predictable damage to happiness, wellbeing, and even professional success.
In The Good Enough Job, journalist Simone Stolzoff traces how work has come to dominate Americans’ lives—and why we find it so difficult to let go. Based on groundbreaking reporting and interviews with Michelin star chefs, Wall Street bankers, overwhelmed teachers, and other workers across the American economy, Stolzoff exposes what we lose when we expect work to be more than a job. Rather than treat work as a calling or a dream, he asks what it would take to reframe work as a part of life rather than the entirety of our lives. What does it mean for a job to be good enough?
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Simone-Stolzoff
At Skylight: Alex Pappademas, with Matthew Spector, & Quantum Criminals at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Alex Pappademas, in conversation with Matthew Spector, will present and discuss his book, Quantum Criminals.
Quantum Criminals presents the world of Steely Dan as it has never been seen, much less heard. Artist Joan LeMay has crafted lively, color-saturated images of her favorite characters from the Daniverse to accompany writer Alex Pappademas’s explorations of the famous and obscure songs that inspired each painting, in short essays full of cultural context, wild speculation, inspired dot-connecting, and the occasional conspiracy theory. All of it is refracted through the perspectives of the characters themselves, making for a musical companion unlike any other. Funny, discerning, and visually stunning, Quantum Criminals is a singular celebration of Steely Dan’s musical cosmos.
Alex Pappademas is the author of Keanu Reeves: Most Triumphant—The Movies & Meaning of an Irrepressible Icon and the writer and host of the acclaimed podcast The Big Hit Show. His work has also appeared in GQ, the New York Times, and Grantland.
Matthew Specktor is the author of the memoirs ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR and the forthcoming THE GOLDEN HOUR, and of the novel AMERICAN DREAM MACHINE. He is a founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
T.J. Newman & Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421 at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
T.J. Newman will present and discuss her new book, Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421.
Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes, and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.
More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.
Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.
There’s not much time.
There’s even less air.
With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them—against impossible odds.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/TJ-Newman-Drowning
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 31st
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.theworldstage.org/events.html
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop at Beyond Baroque – Online Zoom Event
Join Beyond Baroque’s longest-running free poetry workshop via Zoom online as we welcome new and seasoned poets to share their work and provide feedback. Please be prepared to share one poem. This workshop will be hosted via the Zoom video-conferencing platform. Please sign up for each workshop session at least 24 hours in advance of the meeting, and you will be contacted with instructions on how to join the meeting.
The workshop facilitator is James Cushing, who retired in 2020 after thirty-five years teaching literature and creative writing in San Luis Obispo, CA, where he served as the community’s poet laureate in 2008-2010. Cushing’s poems have appeared widely and his collections include The Length of an Afternoon, Undercurrent Blues, Pinocchio’s Revolution, The Magicians’ Union, Solace, and Tangled Hologram, all from Cahuenga Press in Los Angeles.
Please spend some time before the workshop learning how to share documents via Zoom. It will keep the session moving if you’re able to make your poem viewable quickly and easily. Here’s an instructive video that might help.
The workshop can sometimes reach high levels of attendance, which means not everyone will get a chance to read every session.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Wednesday the 31st
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-642982737677
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg & Feature Mike Vitale 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 Mike Vitale.
Mike Vitale is a musician, singer-songwriter, and performance artist. Join us for a wonderful musical feature this week.
The format is to welcome a featured artist 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 31st
Time: 8 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events or https://www.facebook.com/events/793984382136063/?ref=newsfeed
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 31st
Time: 8 pm (Sign-ups at 7:30 pm)
Address: 730 E. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.facebook.com/somopenmic/
Book Talk & Signing: Marianne Wiggins, with David Ulin, & Properties of Thirst at Diesel, a Book Store – In-Person Event
Marianne Wiggins, in conversation with David Ulin, will read from, discuss, and sign her book, Properties of Thirst.
Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has spent years fiercely protecting his California ranch from the LA Water Corporation. It is here where he and his beloved wife Lou raised their twins, Sunny and Stryker, and it is here where Rocky has mourned Lou in the years since her death. As Sunny and Stryker reach the cusp of adulthood, the country teeters on the brink of war. Stryker decides to join the fight, deploying to Pearl Harbor not long before the bombs strike. Soon, Rocky and his family find themselves facing yet another incomprehensible tragedy. Rocky is determined to protect his remaining family and the land where they’ve loved and lost so much. But when the government decides to build a Japanese American internment camp next to the ranch, Rocky realizes that the land faces even bigger threats than the LA watermen he’s battled for years. Complicating matters is the fact that the idealistic Department of the Interior man assigned to build the camp, who only begins to understand the horror of his task after it may be too late, becomes infatuated with Sunny and entangled with the Rhodes family.
Properties of Thirst is a novel that is both universal and intimate. It is the story of a changing American landscape and an examination of one of the darkest periods in this country’s past, told through the stories of the individual loves and losses that weave together to form the fabric of our shared history. Ultimately, it is an unflinching distillation of our nation’s essence—and a celebration of the bonds of love and family that persist against all odds.
Marianne Wiggins is the author of eight novels including John Dollar and Evidence of Things Unseen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award. She has won a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Heidinger Kafka Prize, and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She lives in Venice, California.
David L. Ulin is the author or editor of ten books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the Library of America’s Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. The former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times, he has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The Nation, The New York Times, and other publications. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Lannan Foundation.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Diesel, a Book Store (in the Courtyard)
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Marianne-Wiggins-Properties-Of-Thirst-Author-signing
Jeffrey Dale Lofton, with Rasheed Newson, & Red Clay Suzie at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Jeffrey Dale Lofton, in conversation with Rasheed Newson, will present and discuss his book Red Clay Suzie.
Fueled by tomato sandwiches and green milkshakes, and obsessed with cars, Philbet struggles with life and love as a gay boy in rural Georgia. He’s happiest when helping Grandaddy dig potatoes from the vegetable garden that connects their houses. But Philbet’s world is shattered and his resilience shaken by events that crush his innocence and sense of security; expose his misshapen chest skillfully hidden behind shirts Mama makes at home; and convince him that he’s not fit to be loved by Knox, the older boy he idolizes to distraction. Over time, Philbet finds refuge in unexpected places and inner strength in unexpected ways, leading to a resolution in the form of a letter from beyond the grave.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Jeffrey-Dale-Lofton
Open Mic Night at MOBAR Coffee Co. – In-Person Event
Calling all Musicians, Authors, Poets, Stand Up Comedians and much more! Share your art with our local community and enjoy half off drinks!
This event is offered on every 1st Thursday of the month.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: MOBAR Coffee Co.
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 4884 Huntington Dr. South, Los Angeles, CA 90032
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mobar-coffee-co-open-mic-tickets-399851465497
At Skylight: K. Iver & Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
K. Iver will discuss Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco.
n small-town Mississippi, before the aughts, a child “assigned ‘woman’” and a boy “forced to call / himself a girl” love one another—from afar, behind closed doors, in motels. The child survives an injurious mother and the beast-shaped men she brings home; the boy becomes a soldier. Years later, the boy—the eponymous beloved, Missy—dies by suicide, kicking up a riptide of memory. This is where K. Iver writes, at the confluence of love poem and elegy.
“I say to the water if you were here, / you’d be here.” With cinematic precision, they conjure dorm room landlines, the lingering sweetness of shared candy, a ballet strap and “soft / fingers tracing it, afraid to touch / the skin.” They punctuate depictions of familial abuse and the cruel politics of the Deep South with fairy tales: a girl who endures abuse refusing to grow into a mother who inflicts it herself, queer youth kissing fearlessly, bodies transcending the violence of a reductive gender binary. In these fantasies, “there’s no / reason to leave town no hidden / torches waiting for us to fall asleep.”
Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco sees us through a particular kind of grief—one so relentless, it’s precious. It presses us, also, to continue advocating for a world in which queer love fantasies become reality and queer love poems “swaddle the impossible / contours of joy.”
K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet born in Mississippi. Their work has appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Adroit, Tri-Quarterly, and elsewhere. They are the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the recipient of the 2022 Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Grant. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry at Florida State University. They live in Madison, Wisconsin.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Book Launch: I Could Not Believe It – The 1979 Teenage Diaries of Sean DeLear at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Hosted by Stories Books & Cafe and The Wrinkle Room.
Panel discussion moderated by Lina Lecaro in conversation with Michael Bullock, Jeppe Laursen, Cesar Padilla and Markus Zizenbacker.
When Sean DeLear died prematurely in Vienna in 2017, his friends discovered—among other treasures—an extensive diary kept at the age of fourteen. Still living with his Christian parents in the notoriously racist Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley, Sean wrote almost every day about crushes and hustling, waterbeds, blackmail, Donna Summer, gloryholes, racism, and shoplifting gay porn.
DeLear would go on to become the frontman for the Los Angeles punk/powerpop band Glue. He was a punk musician, visual artist, intercontinental scenester, video vixen, party host, marijuana farmer, and sometime-collaborator of artists such as Kembra Pfahler and Vaginal Davis.
DeLear’s forgotten diaries capture a moment in Los Angeles’s underground and queer history when, as his friend the writer Cesar Padilla notes, “It wasn’t cool at all to be trans, gay, queer or whatever. Those words weren’t even in the vocabulary.” I Could Not Believe It, Padilla continues, “is a raw fearless innocent gay Black kid’s journey coming out into life at an incredible pre-AIDS period. It’s not cognizant of being literature. It’s as naïve and forthcoming as it gets. It wasn’t written with the desire to be published so Sean didn’t hold back. Sean’s goal was to be true to himself.”
NOTE: See site for guidelines, and details.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Tonalli Thursdays Open Micvia Los Angeles Poet Society – Online Event
The Tonalli Open Mic event is offered every 1st Thursday of the month online via Zoom.
All artists are welcome!
NOTE: See site for guidelines, and details.
Where: Los Angeles Poet Society
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapoetsociety.org/events
Kathleen Glasgow & Liz Lawson, with Sofia Lapuente & Jarrod Shusterman, & The Night in Question at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Last October, Alice Ogilvie’s ex-best friend, Brooke Donovan, was killed—and if it weren’t for Alice’s unlikely alliance with her tutor, Iris Adams, and her library of the complete works of Agatha Christie, the wrong person would almost certainly be sitting in prison for the crime. The Castle Cove police aren’t exactly great at solving crimes. In fact, they’re notorious for not solving crimes.
Which is why, on the night of Castle Cove High’s annual Sadie Hawkins dance, Alice takes the opportunity to explore Levy Castle–the site of one of Castle Cove’s most infamous deaths. Mona Moody—the classic film star—died there almost a century ago, and Alice is pretty sure the police got that investigation wrong, too. But before she can even think about digging deeper, she walks right into the scene of a new crime. Rebecca Kennedy, on the ground in a pool of blood. And standing over Kennedy? Another one of Alice’s ex-friends—Helen Park.
The Castle Cove Police Department thinks it’s an open-and-shut case, but Alice and Iris are sure it can’t be that simple. Park isn’t a murderer—and the girls know all too well that in life, and in mysteries, things are rarely what they appear to be. To understand the present, sometimes you need to look to the past.
Castle Cove is full of secrets, and Alice and Iris are about to uncover one of its biggest—and most dangerou—secrets of all.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 1st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Kathleen-Glasgow-Liz-Lawson-discuss-The-Night-In-Question
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 2nd
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
First Fridays Book Club at Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
First Fridays Book Club requires participants to call or email to find out the book selection for the month.
E-mail dmatthews@lapl.org for more information.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 1 pm
Address: 4625 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90019
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/first-fridays-book-club-0
Will Leitch & The Time Has Come at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Will Leitch will present his book, The Time Has Come: A Novel.
The author of the Edgar nominated and ALEX Award-winning How Lucky, blends suspense, humor, and compassion in a new novel about seven strangers and one very intense evening at a small-town Georgia pharmacy.
Lindbergh’s Pharmacy is an Athens, Georgia, institution—the type of beloved mom and pop shop that once dotted every American town but has mostly disappeared. But Lindbergh’s has recently become the object of attention of a local fourth grade teacher Tina Lamm (“Ms. Lamm to my students”). Tina is certain something very, very bad is happening behind its famous black door and she intends to do something about it.
Her suspicions—and the drastic actions she plans—are the unlikely glue that will connect her to a group of six employees and customers inside the pharmacy one hot Georgia evening. They include Theo, the Lindbergh’s scion with a secret of his own; Daphne, a nurse and Army veteran struggling with her faith; Jason, a local contractor uncertain how to deal with his gifted teenage son; Karson, a young lawyer and activist wrestling with a job offer that makes him uncomfortable; David, an Athens music scene lifer whose sobriety has been sorely tested by isolation; and Dorothy, a widow just beginning to regain her bearings.
The fates of these individuals—and their fateful encounter with Tina Lamm—become intertwined in a story that is by turns funny, touching, and tense. As he did in How Lucky, Will Leitch illuminates how we live today through a story of human beings struggling to do their best.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/calendar
Kelly Balch & Aphrodite’s Sister at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Kelly Balch will present and discuss her book Aphrodite’s Sister: The Goddess of Emotion.
Petra Ambrosi is a Goddess with empathic abilities, though she is emotionless herself. She is overconfident and stubborn until she is sent down to Earth to live with mortals. Everything she believed she knew about the world turns upside down when she meets a young woman who unleashes emotions that have remained dormant in her for a century. Petra must now cope with a new vulnerability, as well as learn the hard way that the path to true love isn’t always easy. She is challenged at every turn as she discovers her true self and feelings towards a mortal girl.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/Kelly-Balch
SERPENTINE Poetry Open Mic: Nikolai Garcia & Ivan Salinas at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
SERPENTINE Poetry Open Mic is hosted by Ingrid Calderon Collins, and is offered on every First Friday night of the month.
Featured poets for this event are Nikolai Garcia and Ivan Salinas.
Nikolai Garcia grew up in South Central Los Angeles; currently works with homeless youth in East Hollywood; and has been sleeping in Compton for the last fifteen years. His poems have been published in various journals and anthologies, and his chapbook, Nuclear Shadows of Palm Trees, was released by DSTL Arts. He’s co-curator of the reading series Trenches Full of Poets at Page Against the Machine.
Ivan Salinas is an undocumented poet born en Ciudad de México and has lived in the San Fernando Valley (Tongva-Tativiam territory) for most of his life. He received a BA in English, Creative Writing, from Cal State Northridge. He is Assistant Editor at Drifter Zine, a publication highlighting artists of the 818 and beyond. He’s a recipient of the 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship of the California Arts Council. His poetry & prose has appeared in Backlash Lit, Curious Publishing, La Raíz Magazine, El Tecolote, and more. Iván is the Programs Coordinator at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/events/62-7pm-serpentine-poetry-open-mic/
At Skylight: Grace Lavery & Pleasure and Efficacy at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Grace Lavery will present and discuss her book, Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques.
A leading trans scholar and activist explores cultural representations of gender transition in the modern period.
In Pleasure and Efficacy, Grace Lavery investigates gender transition as it has been experienced and represented in the modern period. Considering examples that range from the novels of George Eliot to the psychoanalytic practice of Sigmund Freud to marriage manuals by Marie Stopes, Lavery explores the skepticism found in such works about whether it is truly possible to change one’s sex. This ambivalence, she argues, has contributed to both anti-trans oppression and the civil rights claims with which trans people have confronted it. Lavery examines what she terms “trans pragmatism”—the ways that trans people resist medicalization and pathologization to achieve pleasure and freedom. Trans pragmatism, she writes, affirms that transition works, that it is possible, and that it happens.
Grace E. Lavery is a writer and academic who lives in New York. Her book Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan (Princeton) won the NAVSA Best Book of the Year prize from the North American Victorian Studies Association. A noted scholar and prominent trans activist, she is the author of the transition memoir Please Miss.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-grace-lavery-presents-pleasure-and-efficacy
Book Launch: Wendy Baker & My Name Was Mushroom at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
The Source Family presents My Name was Mushroom featuring author Wendy Baker & a special mystery guest.
As one of the first and youngest members of The Source Family commune, Wendy Baker shares her experiences from her time as a teenager runaway within the cult-group in her memoir. She will be joined by a mystery guest from The Source Family and will be sharing more about her experiences at this book signing, reading, and audience Q&A.
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Vroman’s Live Presents: Jodie Hollander & Nocturne at Vroman’s – Online Crowdcast Event
Jodie Hollander will present her poetry collection Nocturne (in paperback).
Set in a technicolor world of dreams, ghosts, classical music, and Key West storms, Jodie Hollander’s compelling second collection charts the emotional journey of the daughter of a professional classical pianist. These bold and arresting poems, rich with musicality, and fierce in their emotional honesty, chart the complicated repercussions of family dysfunction and musical obsession while traversing the landscape of the human condition and exploring the need for refuge in the natural world.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Jodie-Hollander-discusses-Nocturne
What Books Press Reading: Gail Wronsky, Gronk, ash good, Jan Wesley at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Live on YouTube Event
Celebrate recently published What Books Press authors, featuring: Jan Wesley, ash good, Gail Wronsky, and Gronk.
ash good (they/them) is the author of us clumsy gods (What Books Press, 2022), cofounding editor of First Matter Press in Portland, OR (a 501c3 nonprofit), and a reader for Frontier Poetry. Their writing has been nominated for Best of the Net & appears in Faultline, Cimarron Review, 45th Parallel, Chautauqua, Bird Coat Quarterly, Voicemail Poems & others. http://www.ashgood.com.
Gail Wronsky is the author, coauthor, or translator of sixteen books of poetry and prose. Her latest collection of poems, The Stranger You Are, with artwork by the renowned artist Gronk, is recently out from Tía Chucha Press. Other titles include the poetry collections Under the Capsized Boat We Fly: New & Selected Poems (White Pine Press); Dying for Beauty (Copper Canyon Press); Poems for Infidels (Red Hen Press); and Fuegos Florales/Flowering Fires, a translation of Argentinean poet Alicia Partnoy’s poems, winner of the American Poetry Prize from Settlement House Press.
Painter, printmaker, and performance artist Gronk has exhibited artwork at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, the San Francisco Mexican Museum, the Craft Contemporary Museum, the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Gronk has created stage designs for director Peter Sellars, as well as for the Santa Fe Opera, the LA Opera, Latino Theater Company, and the East West Players. He is a founding member of ASCO, a multimedia arts collective of the 1970s, and a member of the Glass Table Artists Collective.
Jan Wesley is the author of Living in Freefall and has two published chapbooks. Only So Much, from What Books, is her second full-length poetry book. Poems have appeared in Askew, Blue Mountain Review, The Iowa Review, Rattle, Spillway, Beyond Words, and anthologies, among others, and she received a Pushcart nomination. She worked in post-production in the film business for many years, and after receiving an MFA at Vermont College she taught writing at The University of Redlands and The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandizing. Currently, she facilitates writing workshops in Los Angeles.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 8 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/what-books-press-reading-tickets-621126866177
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music Event & Open Mic by Lorenzo Frank at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join us to hear a featured poet, plus an Open Mic, hosted by Lorenzo Frank on the first and third Friday of the month.
Featured artist: “Rich Flow”
“Rich Flow” is a poet and luminous songwriter who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the epoch of classic hip hop. He was raised on artists Nas, Lupe Fiasco, Lauryn Hill, and many more conscious-hearted artists who emerged during his teenage years.
Lorenzo Frank is the Arthur of ‘Nzinga Teaches/Learns a Lesson’ book series.
NOTE: See site for costs, guidelines, and details.
Where: Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 8 pm
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park, Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.facebook.com/swaampoetry/ or https://www.depoet.info/swaam
First Fridays Rapp Saloon Reading Series, with host Cynthia Alessandra Briano, via Rapp Saloon – Hybrid In-Person & Online Event
First Fridays at Rapp Saloon Open Mic & Featured Readers is an event offered every 1st Friday of the month, curated by host Cynthia Alessandra Briano.
This is a HYBRID event, with a return to live in-person events while maintaining at HISUA Zoom option for our performers and guests.
All languages are welcome.
Featured guest poets and artists this month: TBA
Share your voice at the Open Mic, where there is a time limit of 4 minutes max. Sign-ups are: 8 pm – 8:30 pm.
NOTE: See site for event details.
Where: Rapp Saloon at HISUA
Date: Friday the 2nd
Time: 8:30 pm – 11 pm
Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90401 (Zoom link in bio)
Website: https://www.facebook.com/RappSaloonReadingSeries / or https://www.instagram.com/rappsaloon/?hl=en
The Poem as an Object: Constructing Poems Through the Page with Kelsey Bryan-Zwick at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
This event is a workshop experience with poet Kelsey Bryan-Zwick, titled The Poem as an Object: Constructing Poems Through the Page.
In this workshop we will explore the physicality of poetry by practicing forms that challenge the presentation of poetry in traditional 2-dimensional print. As a group we’ll have the chance to read and discuss examples from poets such as Douglas Kearney, Diana Khoi Nguyen, and Jubie Arriola-Headly. After which we will go through a series of prompts to try our own hand at forms that subvert the page. In spending this time exploring the poem as a physical object we will practice writing tactics that will help us enhance our craft and help to avoid any self-imposed limitations we may subconsciously be harboring when it comes to creating poetry.
Class will include:
Poem Packet
Craft Terms and Definitions
And a Series of Prompts.
Kelsey Bryan-Zwick is a multi-modal artist and writer, published across many genres. Their debut collection of poetry, Here Go the Knives (Moon Tide Press), part memoir, part magical realism, part illustration—focuses on their decades surviving with debilitating scoliosis. Kelsey is The Poetry Lab’s Assistant Director, a Los Angeles Poet Society organizer, Chair of Produced Media for the Stonewall Democratic Club, and a staff writer for Cultural Daily. Kelsey is a UC Santa Cruz alum (go banana slugs!) and they’ve been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and twice for the Best of the Net. On the gram @theexquisitepoet.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Book Discussions Event: The Quiet Before at Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
This Book Discussions event invites neighbors for a lively discussion of a selection from a wide range of books and topics. Copies available at reference/information desk and as ebooks.
The book selected for this discussion is The Quiet Before: The Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas (2022) by Gal Beckerman.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 11 am
Address: 2920 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-discussions
Storytime & Book Signing: LeUyen Pham & The Together Tree at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Kids Event
Children’s book illustrator LeUyen Pham will present and sign her picture book The Together Tree.
At his new school, quiet Rumi feels small and unwelcome, and a few kids bully him for his brown skin and bright shoes. He finds refuge beneath the old willow tree by the playground and builds his own world of hope and dreams of belonging.
One day, when Rumi is made a target again, one of his classmates bravely steps in to defend him. It’s in that moment of solidarity Rumi’s class finally realizes that under the shade of the willow tree, all are welcome, and they create a space they can all play in—together.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 11 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
Los Feliz Book Club: How Much of These Hills Is Gold at Los Feliz Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
The selection for discussion by Los Feliz Branch Book Club participants will be How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel, by author C. Pam Zhang.
This novel is an electric debut novel set against the twilight of the American gold rush, when two siblings are on the run in an unforgiving landscape—trying not just to survive but to find a home.
Where: Los Feliz Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 11 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-7
Dear Cairo…My Dear Cairo: A Multimedia Performance by author Zeena Pliska at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
This event is a multimedia performance by author Zeena Pliska, titled Cairo…My Dear Cairo. It isa performance and exhibition highlighting Arab culture through the work of Zeena Pilska, author of Egyptian Lullaby.
This is an art exhibition combining photos, videos, a soundscape of Cairo, Egyptian pop music, and the reading of the children’s picture book, Egyptian Lullaby by Egyptian/American artist/children’s book author Zeena M. Pliska. The presentation is in conjunction with a photo exhibit of Cairo titled the same, currently showing at the Los Angeles Public Library Venice branch (501 S. Venice Blvd.) and at the independent bookstore, Village Well Books and Coffee (9900 Culver Blvd.) with different photos at each venue and the release of Zeena’s latest children’s picture book, Egyptian Lullaby. It is the hope of the artist/author that this installation, the photo exhibitions, and the book will normalize Arab culture for those who are unfamiliar and celebrate Arab culture with those who are to counter the demonization and frequent negative portrayals in the media.
Zeena M. Pliska is a kindergarten teacher by day and a children’s book author by night in Los Angeles. Her blog posts can be found on http://www.teachingauthors.com. Her picture book Hello Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story (Page Street Kids) came out May 12, 2020. Egyptian Lullaby (Roaring Brook Press) was released April 18, 2023.
Zeena is drawn to stories with BIPOC protagonists and stories of social justice because of her own lived experiences both as a social justice activist and as a brown woman in the US (her mother is Filipina, and her father is Egyptian). For nearly 35 years, her activism has taken many forms both locally and globally. Her work has specifically focused on justice for Latinx and Black communities. As a visual artist, photographer and theater director and children’s book author, her storytelling primarily focuses on social justice issues that highlight the fact that she brings race, class, and gender/sexual orientation analysis to everything she does. Her blog posts can be found on http://www.teachingauthors.com. For more info, see her at http://www.zeenamar.com or on social media: IG @zeenamar, Twitter @zeenamar1013, Facebook Zeena M. Pliska (author) or Zeena Mar.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Drag Story Hour at Central Library, LAPL – Online Event
It’s just what it sounds like! Join us for an extra sparkly storytime with a drag performer bringing humor, play, and fantasy to read progressive children’s books to delight families and their kids of all ages. We’re excited to celebrate diversity and individuality and invite you to be yourself and bring your imagination! Post-storytime photos with the performer are encouraged!
For more information, please get in touch with children@lapl.org.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Children’s Literature
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 2 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/fabulous-stories-and-more-pickle
Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join us either in-person or via Zoom for Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series, featuring poetry readings and open poetry mic.
Please email studio@lapl.org for instructions on how to join the program.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://apl.org/whats-on/events/expressions-la-poetry-reading-series-and-open-mic-0
Poetry Writing Workshop via Saturday Afternoon Poetry – Online Event
Poetry Writing Workshop is offered online via Saturday Afternoon Poetry. (Submit up to 3 poems totaling no more than 117 lines for Spectrum: The Villanelle Masters online edition by emailing donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59pm, June 10th).
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry on Zoom
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Event Only (see site)
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
At Skylight: Teresa Ann Power & Yoga at the Aquarium at Skylight Books – In-Person Kids Event
Teresa Ann Power will present and discuss her children’s book, Yoga at the Aquarium.
Lovable, curious Little Mouse is back to help children use yoga to solve problems and manage emotions in Yoga at the Aquarium, the fifth book in the Little Mouse Adventures series, written by award-winning author Teresa Power and illustrated by Emma Allen.
Join Little Mouse on a hot summer day as he visits the aquarium for the first time with his best friend, Mr. Opus the orange tabby cat. Together, they meet and learn about all kinds of animals, such as octopi, dolphins, crabs, turtles, and even sharks Along the way, Little Mouse has lots of yoga fun and learns to appreciate the similarities he shares with his new aquatic friends, as well as the differences.
Yoga at the Aquarium is a fun introduction to both yoga and aquatic life, gently blending humor, whimsy, and adventure with crucial life skills.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 3 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-teresa-anne-power-presents-yoga-aquarium
Author Event: Rosanna Staffa and Louise Steinman at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Authors Rosanna Staffa and Louise Steinman will present and discuss their books: The War Ends at Four and The Crooked Mirror, respectively.
Rosanna Staffa is an Italian-born playwright and author living in Minneapolis, St. Paul. She holds a Ph.D. in Modern Foreign Languages from Universita degli Studi in Milan and an MFA in Fiction from the Naslund-Mann, formerly Spading University’s School of Creative and Professional Writing. She is also a Licensed Acupuncturist from the California Acupuncture College in Los Angeles and The Zhejiang College of Acupuncture in Hangzhou, PR of China.
Louise Steinman is an LA based writer, artist, and literary curator. Her work often deals with memory, history and reconciliation, and she is the author of several books. Her features have been published in many newspapers and magazines. She was the founder of the award-winning ALOUD at Central Library series for the Los Angeles Public Library and curated the series for twenty-five years. Louise is currently co-director of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities at USC.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/25276
Local Poet Celebration: What We Leave / What We Take by Rebecca Gonzalez at LibroMobile – In-Person & IG Online Hybrid Event
Rebecca Gonzalez presents her artistic exhibit and literary sources in What We Leave / What We Take.
Experimental artist Rebecca Gonzales creates a site-specific paper installation of her own body from a collection of words and stories, history, images and poems collected throughout her life.
New Exhibition, Crear Studio’s fist visiting artist:
We experience love and pain in our body, we hold history in our body, secrets and memories and joys in our body. The installation asks, “What is it?” and “where did you put it?”
Where: LibroMobile & Crear Studio
Date: Saturday the 3rd (through August 5th)
Time: 6 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St., #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/what-we-leave-what-we-take-rebecca-gonzales
Monthly Poetry Open Mic with Kunthon “Katon” Meas at LibroMobile – In-Person & IG Online Hybrid Event
Join LibroMobile on 1st Saturdays for our open mic series hosted by Local Poet Kunthon “Katon” Meas, as he’ll be featuring local writers & hold the mic for all of you!
RSVP
Where: LibroMobile Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St., #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
In Conversation: Brandon Taylor, with Chris Heiser, & The Late Americans: A Novel at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Brandon Taylor, in conversation with Chris Heiser, publisher of Unnamed Press, will discuss his book The Late Americans: A Novel.
The Booker Prize finalist and widely acclaimed author of Real Life and Filthy Animals returns with a deeply involving new novel of young men and women at a crossroads.
In the shared and private spaces of Iowa City, a loose circle of lovers and friends encounter, confront, and provoke one another in a volatile year of self-discovery. Among them are Seamus, a frustrated young poet; Ivan, a dancer turned aspiring banker who dabbles in amateur pornography; Fatima, whose independence and work ethic complicate her relationships with friends and a trusted mentor; and Noah, who “didn’t seek sex out so much as it came up to him like an anxious dog in need of affection.” These four are buffeted by a cast of artists, landlords, meatpacking workers, and mathematicians who populate the cafes, classrooms, and food-service kitchens of the city, sometimes to violent and electrifying consequence. Finally, as each prepares for an uncertain future, the group heads to a cabin to bid goodbye to their former lives—a moment of reckoning that leaves each of them irrevocably altered.
A novel of friendship and chosen family, The Late Americans asks fresh questions about love and sex, ambition and precarity, and about how human beings can bruise one another while trying to find themselves. It is Brandon Taylor’s richest and most involving work of fiction to date, confirming his position as one of our most perceptive chroniclers of contemporary life.
Brandon Taylor is the author of Real Life, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and of the national bestseller Filthy Animals, for which he won The Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Iowa, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Highland Park, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Latinx Digital Poetics: An Electronic Literature Folio with Anthony Cody J. Michael Martinez at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Celebrate the debut of Los Angeles Review’s Electronic Literature Folio with contributors Anthony Cody, J. Michael Martinez & readings by Latinx poets.
This is a special in-person celebration of LATINX DIGITAL POETICS: An Electronic Literature Folio. Published in the Los Angeles Review, the digital anthology features newly commissioned works of six poets, among them Tina Escaja, Leonardo Flores, Loss Pequeño Glazier, and Urayoán Noel.
To celebrate this groundbreaking work, contributors Anthony Cody and J. Michael Martinez will be presenting their new works in addition to readings from their most recent publications. Local poets Vickie Vertiz and heidi andrea restrepo rhodes will be opening the event with a special set of selected readings from their newest collections. As the evening’s guest of honor, Chicano poet and former L.A. Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez will be delivering a brief response to these cutting-edge works transcending language, format, and tradition. The program will be hosted by Los Angeles Review’s Poetry Editor, Brent Ameneyro.
Anthony Cody is the author of The Rendering (Omnidawn, 2023) and Borderland Apocrypha (Omnidawn, 2020), winner of the 2018 Omnidawn Open Book Contest selected by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and the 2021 American Book Award.
J. Michael Martinez is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Museum of the Americas, with a fourth, Tarta Americana, forthcoming from Penguin Press in fall 2023. A multimedia artist, Martinez is an assistant professor of poetry at San Jose State University’s MFA creative writing program.
Vickie Vértiz is an award-winning Mexican American poet, writer, and professor whose work has appeared in the New York Times magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her book Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut won the 2018 PEN America literary prize in poetry. She is the author of Auto/Body (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), winner of the Sandeen Prize. A graduate of Williams College, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of California, Riverside, she teaches in the Writing Program at UC Santa Barbara.
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes is a queer, Colombian/Latinx, poet, artist, scholar, & activist. Her poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting was selected by Ada Limón for the 2018 Letras Latinas Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for a first book for a Latina/o/x poet & was published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2019. Her chapbook, ephemeral won the 2022 Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize and will be published in 2023 by EcoTheo Collective.
Luis J. Rodríguez was born in 1954, in El Paso Texas to Mexican Immigrant Parents. He is a poet, journalist, memoirist, and author of children’s books, short stories, and novels. His documentation of urban and Mexican immigrant life has made him one of the most prominent Chicano literary voices in the United States. Rodríguez grew up in Los Angeles, where in his teen years he joined a gang, lived on the streets, and became addicted to heroin. In his twenties, after turning his back on gang violence and drugs, Rodríguez began his career as a journalist and then award-winning poet, writing such books as the memoir Always Running, 1993. Rodríguez maintains an arts center, bookstore, and poetry press in L.A., Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore where he continues writing and working to create community honoring ancestral wisdom in the San Fernando Valley.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/los-angeles-review-latinx-digital-poetics-an-electronic-literature-folio-tickets-633691978767
CLI Culmination Season 10 at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
This event is CLI Culmination Season 10! This evening we honor the students from the San Diego, Inland Empire, and Long Beach chapters. In-person and virtual.
Community Literature Initiative invites you to celebrate the students of Season 10 from the San Diego, Inland Empire, and Long Beach chapters. After 10 months of hard work, sweat, and tears, they have completed their books. We are so happy to honor their achievements and hope you can join us on Saturday, June 3rd at 7 pm PT. In-person or virtually. RSVP to receive Zoom link.
We will have poetry (of course!), guest speakers, and awards!
Light snacks will be served.
NOTE: RSVP, guidelines, and details at site.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 3rd
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2702 West Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
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 3rd
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1001 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://shadesofafrika.com/griot-cafe-open-mic-poetry/
Every Body Is a Rainbow: A Kid’s Guide to Bodies Across the Gender Spectrum at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Kids Event
Author Caroline Carter will present and discuss her picture book:Every Body Is a Rainbow: A Kid’s Guide to Bodies Across the Gender Spectrum.
This event will provide tools for parents to discuss gender diversity and body inclusivity with young children. The reading is meant for parents of cisgender and TGNB kids alike.
Caroline Carter, PsyD (pronouns: she/her) is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist in Southern California. Her passion and expertise are in working with transgender and gender nonbinary (TGNB) children, teens, and their families. What motivated her to write Every Body is a Rainbow is her belief in the power of all kids seeing their lived and embodied experiences mirrored back to them. Caroline is the co-creator of Gender Camps, a summer program for TGNB children ages 6-12 in Pasadena, CA.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/26854
Book Launch: Bridget Morrissey, with Falon Ballard, & That Summer Feeling at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents Bridget Morrissey, in conversation with Falon Ballard, to present her book That Summer Feeling
When a divorced woman attends a sleepaway camp for adults, she reconnects with a man from her past—only to fall head over heels for his sister instead.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 1 pm – 3 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Author Event: Tim Cummings and Caroline Thompson at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Author Tim Cummings, with Caroline Thompson, will present and discuss his book, Alice the Cat, a middle grade novel and paranormal coming-of-age adventure.
Tim Cummings was born and raised in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and a BFA from New York University/Tisch School of the Arts. Some of his recent publications include 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 and received a Pushcart nomination for his essay, “You Have Changed Me Forever.” He teaches writing for UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.
Caroline Thompson is a novelist, screenwriter, film director, and producer. She wrote the screenplays for the Tim Burton-directed films Edward Scissorhands and Corpse Bride and the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas. She co-wrote the story for Edward Scissorhands and co-adapted a new stage version of the film with director and choreographer Matthew Bourne. Thompson also adapted the screenplay for the film version of Wicked Lovely, a bestselling fantasy series, in 2011, but the production was put into turnaround. She directed Black Beauty (1994); Buddy (1997), which she also wrote; and the television film Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001), also as producer and co-writer.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/25273
Map that Beat: Writing Workshop at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
In Map that Beat, we’ll discuss how to craft romantic leads with goals and clear, easy-to-follow arcs that allow you to show characters growing and changing as they live out their story from page one to the end.
Come with your character ideas, laptop, or favorite notebook, and questions! In this 90-minute workshop, we’ll discuss: what each romantic lead needs in a romance novel; how to map out your story by starting with character beats; what a character beat is (and discuss how they differ from story beats), and how you know if you have one, and we’ll complete a character map that can form the basis of an outline for your romance novel.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 4 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
At Skylight: Exposition Review Launches Issue VIII at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Join us at Skylight for a celebration of Exposition Review’s Issue VIII! Featuring the following contributors:
Ishan Dylan is a conservation biologist and fiction writer from the Chesapeake region. Read more at ishandylan.com.
Max Tachis is an actor/writer from San Jose, California, with plays produced at theater companies across the Bay Area including the world premiere of Perishable, Keep Refrigerated at Renegade Theater Experiment in 2014 and an annual gig writing original short plays for the Ohlone College Theatre and Dance Department in Fremont. The Wobble is his debut work of short fiction.
LaVie Saad is a Greek mythology enthusiast, then a cat lover, then a teen writer from Los Angeles, California. She has been recognized internationally by the Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation and Ringling College, as well as by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Her works are featured in the Lascaux Review, Cathartic Literary Magazine, and The Echo, among others. If she could be any animal, she would be an owl, but if heaven were a place on Earth, she would be a lavender owl.
Lisa Eve Cheby is a librarian, poet, school library advocate, and daughter of Hungarian immigrants. She holds an MFA from Antioch University and an MLIS from San José State University. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in journals and anthologies including Santa Ana River Review, So to Speak, Ruminate, TAB, Drawn to Marvel, and Coiled Serpent. She was writer-in-residence at Sundress Academy for the Arts’ Firefly Farms and Dorland Mountain Arts. Her two chapbooks are available from dancing girl press, with a third one forthcoming in fall 2023. lisacheby.wordpress.com
Vincent Terrell Durham is a Black, Queer American playwright. His voice has been shaped by each of these identities and a desire to create stories that are missing from the American stage. He is a Samuel French Short Play Festival winner and an O’Neill semi-finalist. He has received several play commissions and his short plays have been published by Concord Theatricals and Theatrical Rights Worldwide. He comes from a family of vibrant storytellers, and he hopes his work will honor their legacy.
Bree Bailey (she/her) is a Latine mom and poet who lives in Southern Austin, Texas, with her beautiful family. She is a mental health advocate who speaks openly about her experiences with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, while also doing her best to bask in the light and good of the world. Her poems have been featured in All My Relations, Sledgehammer Lit, Ample Remains, Olney Magazine, Serotonin, Wrongdoing Magazine, and West Trade Review, and are forthcoming in Gulf Stream Magazine, among others. She was most recently named a finalist in the Write Bloody Jack McCarthy National Book Prize. When not celebrating her friends’ publications or slam events in real life, you can find her on Zoom dancing and smiling like your biggest fan. Follow her on Instagram @breebaileypoetry or Twitter at @thebreebailey.
Zac Picker is a physicist, writer, and former RollerCoaster Tycoon champion from Kansas City or Sydney, Australia (depending who’s asking). He currently is a postdoc at the University of California, Los Angeles, looking at black holes. He’s been published in magazines such as Overland, Going Down Swinging, and Island—see more at zacpicker.com/writing and let him know where to get the best pupusa.
Kristen Huizar is an artist born and raised in Commerce, California, who is currently pursuing her BFA in Drawing & Painting at California State University, Long Beach. Inspired by Latin American feminist art, Los Angeles, and current events, Huizar’s work explores feminism, political commentary, mental health, and identity. She works with ink, wax pastels, acrylic paint, and graphite on a variety of surfaces. The texture and surfaces she uses as ground encompass what makes up her environment; whether it be Post-its, the street, brown packaging paper, or scraps, it is all a part of living in L.A.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-exposition-review-launches-issue-viii
Sunday Jump Readings & Open Mic Seriesat Pilipino Workers Center – In-Person Event
Sunday Jump Presents Readings and an Open Mic series at the Pilipino Workers Center, every 1st Sunday of the month, May-November.
This is Sunday Jump’s 11th season!
Features include:
Soul Tree, Multi-disciplinary artist;
Nina Nguyen, Comedian;
Jireh Deng, Writer;
Espina, Art Vendor;
Gender Justice L.A.; Community Spotlight;
Feed the People, Food Vendor.
Marginalized genders are prioritized and encouraged to share on the open mic, but all are welcome to sign up.
NOTE: See site for guidelines, sign-ups, and details.
Where: Pilipino Workers Center, 1st Floor
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 153 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/sunday-jump-open-mic-series-tickets-619259450687
Book Launch: Alex Manley, with & Aleš Kot, & The New Masculinity at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Alex Manley, in conversation with Aleš Kot, presents The New Masculinity: A Roadmap for a 21st-Century Definition of Manhood.
From AskMen senior editor and non-binary writer Alex Manley comes The New Masculinity: A Roadmap for a 21st-Century Definition of Manhood, a guide for escaping the shackles of toxic masculinity, unlearning what it means to be a man, and pushing back against the various ways masculinity teaches people to hurt rather than help, and to harm rather than heal. Manley charts a course for a wholly new future of the self, that’s neither particularly manly nor particularly masculine, but responsive, invested, and caring.
Alex Manley is a Montreal-based non-binary editor, translator, and award-winning writer whose work has been published by Hazlitt, The Walrus, Vulture, Catapult, Electric Literature, Maisonneuve magazine and THIS magazine, among others. Their prior books include the poetry collection We Are All Just Animals & Plants, published by Metatron Press in 2016, and Made-Up: A True Story of Beauty Culture Under Late Capitalism, a translation of Daphné B.’s Maquillée, published by Coach House Books in 2021.
Aleš Kot is a post-Chernobyl, pre-revolution, Czech-born, California-based writer/producer who started in graphic novels and nowadays makes films and tv, but really, right now they’re striking and having a very good time. A. believes in art and community. A. doesn’t believe in borders nor cops. Most of all, they believe in love, which they know is a very Libra answer. I mean, do you believe in life after love? Is love a continuous stream?
NOTE: Details at event link.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Happily Ever After Book Club: The Romantic Agenda at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents the June Happily Ever After Book Club every 1st Sunday of the month, and today’s selection is The Romantic Agenda by author Claire Kann.
The Happily Ever After book club is led by Katherine Z., the store’s Orders Manager. Participants read widely across the romance genre.
Thirty, flirty, and asexual Joy is secretly in love with her best friend Malcolm, but she’s never been brave enough to say so. When he unexpectedly announces that he’s met the love of his life—and no, it’s not Joy—she’s heartbroken. Malcolm invites her on a weekend getaway, and Joy decides it’s her last chance to show him exactly what he’s overlooking. But maybe Joy is the one missing something…or someone…and his name is Fox.
Fox sees a kindred spirit in Joy—and decides to help her. He proposes they pretend to fall for each other on the weekend trip to make Malcolm jealous. But spending time with Fox shows Joy what it’s like to not be the third wheel, and there’s no mistaking the way he makes her feel. Could Fox be the romantic partner she’s always deserved?
Claire Kann is the author of several novels and an award-winning online storyteller. In her other life she works for a non-profit you may have heard of where she daydreams like she’s paid to do it. She loves cats and is obsessed with horror media (which makes the whole being known for writing contemporary love stories a little weird, tbh). Find more stories and random anecdotes on her website.
No membership is necessary, feel free to show up!
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 4th
Time: 7:15 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 
This lineup of literary events in Los Angeles offers something for every book lover! Are you a fan of sci-fi and fantasy?
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