Author Storytime with J.C. Baldwin at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
J.C. Baldwin, author of So Many Raisons to Be Happy! (so few raisins to complain), will present a storytime reading for children and their parents.
So Many Raisins to be Happy is the heartwarming story of a little raisin who gets through a challenging day with the help of friends who share the joy that they discover in small, overlooked places.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 10:30 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/author-storytime-jc-baldwin
Fairfax Book Club: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore at Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Fairfax Branch Library book club participants will read and discuss Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. This book is available at the circulation desk for checkout upon request.
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything―instead, they “check out” large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele’s behavior, seeking help from his various talented friends. But when they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore’s secrets extend far beyond its walls.
Where: Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 11 am
Address: 161 S. Gardner St., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/fairfax-book-club-1
Sherman Oaks Book Club: All Systems Red via Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Sherman Oaks Branch Library book club participants will read and discuss All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This book is available through the library for checkout upon request.
A murderous android discovers itself in All Systems Red, a tense science fiction adventure by Martha Wells that interrogates the roots of consciousness through Artificial Intelligence.
RSVP:
Please email shrmno@lapl.org for the Zoom link.
Where: Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/sherman-oaks-book-club-all-systems-red-martha-wells
Poetry Night Monday Open Mic & Featured Guests at The Platform, DTLA – In-Person Event
Join the Poetry Night Open Mic (Before the Comedy Open Mic) with Featured Guests, offered every Monday of the month at The Platform in DTLA.
Must RSVP on Instagram @ thekaliclub213.
Hosted by Lida Parent.
Featured poets TBA.
NOTE: RSVP required.
Where: The Platform, DTLA
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1056 Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90015
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159766485254891&set=a.263642949890
Main Library Book Group Discussion & Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol via Santa Monica Main Library – Online Event
Santa Monica Main Library Book Group participants will discuss Taras Bulba, by author Nikolai Gogol.
Taras Bulba is set between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries and it is an epic tale of a bloody Cossack revolt against the Poles (led by the bold Taras Bulba of Ukrainian folk mythology) and the trials of his two sons.
Email library@santamonica.gov for Zoom info.
NOTE: RSVP required.
Where: Santa Monica Main Library
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event (see site)
Website: https://smpl.org/uploadedFiles/Calendar%20of%20Events%20-%20July%202023.pdf
At Skylight: Chuck Tingle & Camp Damascus at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Internet icon Chuck Tingle will present and discuss his book, Camp Damascus, a searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.
Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective” gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.
And they’ll scare you straight to hell.
Chuck Tingle is a mysterious force of energy behind sunglasses and a pink mask. He is also an anonymous author of romance, horror, and fantasy. Chuck was born in Home of Truth, Utah, and now splits time between Billings, Montana and Los Angeles, California. Chuck writes to prove love is real, because love is the most important tool we have when resisting the endless cosmic void. Not everything people say about Chuck is true, but the important parts are.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books (RSVPS are now closed, so first come, first served)
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-chuck-tingle-presents-camp-damascus
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 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-675172036737
Under the Mic Influence & Open Mic & Feature TBA at LB Unified – In-Person Event
Join host Kuahmel Alyeeus KuahAllah and @djkevjam for poetry, Open Mic, rare grooves, cocktails, tasty bites.
Under the Mic Influence and Open Mic bring you poetry & battle rap dynamo @sistar_outspoken to set off 2023 in @lbunified with @djkevjam and yours truly. Vegan soul food from @anotherside0fsoul on deck all evening. BE THERE!
DM now to get at the #openmic!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, and details.
Where: LB Unified Bar & Lounge
Date: Monday the 17th
Time: 7:30 pm; Mic at 8 pm
Address: 2222 E. Anaheim, Long Beach, CA 90804
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/under-mic-influence-tickets-595248934587
Rise and Shine: A Morning Generative Writing Workshop with Nancy Lynee Woo and Shelley Holder – Online Event
Join this series of six weeks on Tuesday morning sessions of writing poetry and sharing in a supportive setting. Five of six sessions remain.
These workshops are ALL LEVELS, which means everyone is welcome to come and write! Seasoned writers and beginners are all welcome.
Sessions are offered by donation, to increase access to the arts. Please pay what you are able. Suggested: $5-25 per session.
Schedule:
These workshops meet every Tuesday for 8 weeks. You are welcome to come to one or to all of them. Facilitators are Nancy Woo and Shelly Holder. They will switch off teaching each week, so you may benefit from two different workshop leaders! (You will need to sign up for each session individually.)
Seven dates remain:
July 18 – Nancy
July 25 – Shelly
August 1 – Nancy
August 8 – Shelly
August 15 – Nancy
August 22 – Shelly
August 29 – Nancy
About the Facilitators:
Nancy Lynée Woo is a poet, writer, organizer, and climate activist who harbors a wild love for the natural world. Her debut poetry collection is I’d Rather Be Lightening (GASHER Press, March 2023). Nancy has received fellowships from Artists at Work, PEN America, Arts Council for Long Beach, and Idyllwild Writers Week. Her work has been published in The Shore, Tupelo Quarterly, Stirring, Radar Poetry, and other journals and anthologies. Nancy has an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University and a BA in sociology from UC Santa Cruz. Find her cavorting around Long Beach (Tongva land) in California, and online at nancylyneewoo.com or @fancifulnance on social.
Shelly Holder is a poet, book club and workshop facilitator who is working on founding a library of literary magazines. She is a Women Who Submit chapter lead for the San Gabriel Valley. Her poetry can be found (in various formats) at Iron Horse Literary Review, One Art, and Gyroscope Review, among others, as well as on YouTube. You can follow up by visiting http://www.shellyholder.com or her Facebook profile /shellyholderpoet. Shelly lives in what she calls an “outer-outer-outer” suburb of Los Angeles, where she struggles to get an orange tree to fruit.
Where: Rise and Shine Workshops
Date: Tuesday the 18th (2nd of six dates)
Time: 8 am – 9:30 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://allevents.in/online/rise-and-shine-a-morning-generative-poetry-class/10000651332241267
CalArts Creates @ the Library: Creative Writing at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Sign up for a free 8-session, 4-week course. Participants will conceptualize and produce individual creative writing projects that will include fiction writing, poetry, zine-making, spoken word performance, and more!
Eligible participants should reside in Los Angeles County and be current high school students. All class meetings will take place at Teen’Scape. All materials will be provided. Class dates are 7/11/23 – 8/3/23.
RSVP at site link.
Check to see if space still available.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Teen Scape
Date: Tuesday the 18th (and Thursday the 20th): Week 2 of 4-week class
Time: 10 am – 12 pm
Address: 630 W, 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/calarts-creates-library-creative-writing-0
Mysterious Book Club: Creative Writing at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Mysterious Book Club participants will discuss Still Life, by author Louise Penny.
This is the first of Penny’s 18 Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries which take place in Quebec. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec and his team of investigators are called into the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal. The locals are certain it’s a tragic hunting accident and nothing more, but Gamache smells something foul in these remote woods.
We always welcome new members. Even if you haven’t read the book, come and meet the group, and you’ll know what the next book is.
Where: Palisades Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 1:30 pm
Address: 861 Alma Real Dr., Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mysterious-book-club-11
CalArts Creates @ the Library: Zines at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Sign up for a free 8-session, 4-week course. Some of the topics that will be covered in this workshop are image creation, creative writing, comics, world-building, narrative structure, printing and copying techniques, zine binding techniques, and more.
Eligible participants should reside in Los Angeles County and be current high school students. All class meetings will take place at Teen’Scape. All materials will be provided. Class dates are 7/11/23 – 8/3/23.
RSVP at site link.
Check to see if space is still available.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Teen Scape
Date: Tuesday the 18th (and Thursday the 20th): Week 2 of 4-week class
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 630 W, 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/calarts-creates-library-zines
Teen Book Discussion & Activity: Come On In at Pacoima Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
Teens are invited to join a discussion of Come On In, a collection of short stories on immigration by a diversity of young adult authors. Then learn about some of the cultures using the library’s resources and find out how to explore different communities in Los Angeles. The book is recommended for readers ages 12 and up / grades 7 and up.
RSVP:
Please RSVP to pcoima@lapl.org to attend the book discussion and pick up a copy of the book.
Where: Pacoima Branch Library, LAPL, Community Room
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 13605 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima, CA 91331
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/summer-library-my-la-come-teen-book-discussion-activity
Emerson Avenue Community Garden Book Club & Horse at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
The Emerson Avenue Community Garden Book Club will meet in the garden to discuss this month’s selection, Horse, by author Geraldine Brooks.
NOTE: Questions? Contact eacgelINFO @gmail.com
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045 (Verify at contact given above.)
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuYH5fFogh_/
Bilingual Reading Group at Re/Arte Centro Literario – In-Person Event
The Bilingual Reading Group meets to discuss Volume 1 of Capital by Karl Marx. Discussion is facilitated by Jose Prado, PhD, professor at CSUDH.
Where: Re/Arte Centro Literario
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 2123 East Cesar Chavez Ave., Boyle Heights, CA 90033
Website: https://reartela.com/pages/calendar-of-events
Book Club Author Event: Marianne Wiggins & Properties of Thirst at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Village Well book club participants will welcome author Marianne Wiggins to discuss her most recent novel. Properties of Thirst.
Marianne 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.
This book 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.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/27721
Mark Volman, with Michael Walker, & Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Mark Volman, in conversation with Michael Walker,will discuss his new book,Happy Forever: My Musical Adventures with the Turtles, Frank Zappa, T. Rex, Flo & Eddie, and More.
Happy Forever covers Volman’s musical life, along with subsequent forays into animation, a stint as a radio personality in Los Angeles and New York, and a midlife return to academia, which led Mark to create and run innovative college programs in LA and Nashville. But this is not the world according to Mark Volman, and it is not your average musical autobiography. Alongside his own comments, this uniquely insightful book contains contributions from more than one hundred of Mark’s peers, friends, and lovers who share their thoughts on the man himself and on topics that span the social and cultural landscape of past half-century.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/mark-volman
At Skylight: Simon Hanselman & Werewolf Jones & Sons at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Simon Hanselman will discuss his graphic novel, Werewolf Jones & Sons.
Werewolf Jones, drugged up to his eyeballs, believes he is the world’s greatest father, which is the most far-from-the-truth, delusional thought ever thought by any thinker. Parents can learn a lot about what NOT to do as a guardian by observing as Werewolf Jones deals with bullying, his own inebriation and sex addiction, his children’s blossoming sexuality, running out of alcohol in a recession, and coping with the kids.
Put together with lots of love by Simon Hanselmann and rising underground star and franchise newcomer, Josh Pettinger (Goiter, Power Wash).
Simon Hanselmann hails from Tasmania but resides with his family in Los Angeles, CA. His bestselling New York Times series Megg, Mogg and Owl has been translated into thirteen languages, nominated for multiple Ignatz and Eisner awards, and won Best Series at the Angouleme International Comics Festival in 2018.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-simon-hanselmann-presents-werewolf-jones-sons
Book Launch: Kathleen Alcott, with Aria Aber, & Emergency: Stories at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Kathleen Alcott, in conversation with Aria Aber, will present her book, Emergency: Stories. Alber is the author of Hard Damage.
From an “exquisite” (The New Yorker) writer, a searing volume of prizewinning stories starring women facing points of no return.
A professor finds a photograph of her deceased mother in a compromising position on the wall of a museum. A twenty-something’s lucrative remote work sparks paranoia and bigotry. A transplant to a new city must make a choice about who she trusts when her partner reveals a violent history. The summer after her divorce from an older man, an exiled painter’s former friends grapple with rumors that she attempted to pass as a teenager.
In this long-awaited debut collection, Kathleen Alcott turns her skills as a stylist on the unfreedoms of American life—as well as the guilt that stalks those who survive them.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Chang Sheng, with Wan-Chun Alex Ma, & Oldman Part 3 at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Chang Sheng, in conversation with Wan-Chun Alex Ma, will discuss his new book,Oldman Part 3.
In this story a beautiful queen rules her country with an iron fist. Unmarried and without an heir, she adopts orphans to prove that even commoners can reign as kings. Yet, as the years progress, she shows no sign of aging. Only one man knows the dark secret to her eternal youth: Oldman, a bearded magician the queen has locked in her darkest dungeon. One night, Oldman steps through the bars of his prison and disappears before the queen’s very eyes. Enraged, she sends her army after him in a desperate campaign to keep her secret hidden.
Having read comics from a young age, Chang Sheng has always preferred science fiction stories best. He admits to having been deeply influenced by the work of Yukinobu Hoshino, and his training in drawing and oil painting while studying at the Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School is likewise reflected in his exquisitely detailed and extremely realistic video game-like style. Chang Sheng has represented Taiwan at the Angoulême International Comics Festival three times and has won several prizes overseas. Oldman was a finalist in the 2013 International Manga Award in Japan.
Moderator Wan-Chun Alex Ma is Academy Sci-Tech Award Recipient in 2019. His work on facial performance capture contributed to many recent motion pictures, including the Hobbit trilogy, Iron Man 3, the reboot Planet of the Apes series.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, cost, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Chang-Sheng-with-Wan-Chun-Alex-Ma-Oldman-Part-3
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 18th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 3301 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405
Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups or https://www.facebook.com/events/213407634459999/?active_tab=discussion
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.
Masks are encouraged. All ages are welcome.
Where: Greenway Court Theatre and YouTube Live Stream
Date: Tuesday the 18th
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 18th
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
Book Club &The Beauty of Dusk at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Book Club participants will discuss this month’s selection, The Beauty of Dusk, by author Frank Brunt.
This book is a wise and moving memoir about aging, affliction, and optimism after partially losing one’s eyesight.
This story is a If you are unable to attend in person, please email grnhls@lapl.org for Zoom access to the discussion.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm
Address: 10640 Petit St., Granada Hills, CA 91344
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-beauty-dusk
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 19th
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 23600 Victory Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91367
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/write-your-novel
Tween Book Club: at Panorama City Branch Library, LAPL – Online Tween Event
Participants I the Tween Book Club for kids ages 9-12 will read and discuss Nothing Is Little, by Carmella Van Vleet.
The case of a missing father is hard to crack…even for Felix, a tiny kid with a huge heart and an eye for detail.
RSVP:
Please register at tinyurl.com/PanoramaCityTweens to receive Zoom Link.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Panorama City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 14345 Roscoe Blvd., Panorama City, CA 91402
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/tween-book-club
Middle Grade Book Club & Greenwild: The World Behind the Door at pages: a bookstore – In-Person MG Event
Middle Grade Book Club participants will discuss Greenwild: The World Behind the Door, by Pari Thompson.
Greenwild is a fantasy of world building reminiscent of Harry Potter, and in this story magic arises from the earth itself and plant magic is wielded by botanists in this series debut by the author.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 4:30 am
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/middle-grade%C2%A0book-club-1
Book Club for Adults & The Diamond Eye via Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join participants to discuss this month’s book club selection, The Diamond Eye, by Kate Quinn.
RSVP:
Please email studio@lapl.org for details.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Studio City Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-adults
Book Talk: Guinevere Turner & When the World Didn’t End at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Guinevere Turner will present her new book When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir.
In this memoir, an acclaimed screenwriter tells the story of her childhood growing up with the infamous Lyman Family cult—and the complicated and unexpected pain of leaving the only home she’d ever known.
On January 5, 1975, the world was supposed to end. Under strict instructions, six-year-old Guinevere Turner put on her best dress, grabbed her favorite toy, and waited with the rest of her community for salvation—a spaceship that would take them to live on Venus. But the spaceship never came.
Guinevere did not understand that her family was a cult. She spent most of her days on a compound in Kansas, living apart from her mother with dozens of other children who worked in the sorghum fields and roved freely through the surrounding pastures, eating mulberries, and tending to farm animals. But there was a dark side to this bucolic existence. Guinevere was part of the Lyman Family, a secluded cult spearheaded by Mel Lyman, a self-proclaimed savior, committed to isolation from a World he declared had lost its way.
Drawing from the diaries that she kept throughout her youth, Turner’s memoir is an intimate and heart-wrenching chronicle of a childhood touched with extraordinary beauty and unfathomable ugliness, the ache of yearning to return to a lost home—and the slow realization of how harmful that place really was.
Guinevere Jane Turner is an American actress, screenwriter, and film director. She wrote the films American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page and played the lead role of the dominatrix Tanya Cheex in Preaching to the Perverted.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
L.A. Times Book Club: Luis Alberto Urrea & Good Night, Irene at L.A. Times – Online Event
Luis Alberto Urrea will present and discuss his new book, Good Night, Irene. In conversation with Times editor Iliana Limón Romero.
Urrea’s acclaimed new novel was inspired by his mother’s Red Cross service on the front lines of World War II. The book delves into the overlooked history of a group nicknamed the “Donut Dollies.”
“It’s a moving and graceful tribute to friendship and to heroic women who have shouldered the burdens of war,” says Publishers Weekly in a starred review.
Born in Tijuana and raised in San Diego, Urrea is the author of 19 books. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his nonfiction book, The Devil’s Highway. His novels include the national bestsellers The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The House of Broken Angels. He teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
Where: LA Times Book Club
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
40th Anniversary Celebration: Jackie Collins’s Hollywood Wives, with Rory Green and Tiffany Lermanat Book Soup – In-Person Event
Jackie Collins’ daughters, Rory Green and Tiffany Lerman, will participate in a Q&A and share stories about their mom to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her book, Hollywood Wives.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/40th-anniversary-celebration-jackie-collins
Sarah Hashem, with Carolyn Huynh, & The Hasad Heir at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice celebrates the release of The Hasad Heir, by author Sarah Hashem, in conversation with Carolyn Huynh.
In The Hasad Heir, a fugitive queen strikes a bargain with her greatest enemy and becomes embroiled in a complex game that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever In this unmissable Egyptian-inspired epic fantasy debut. Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic was outlawed. Its royal family was murdered. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe. The Heir of Jasad escaped the massacre, and she intends to stay hidden, especially from the armies of Nizahl that continue to hunt her people.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
At Skylight: Kate Flannery, with Stephanie Danler, & Strip Tees at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Kate Flannery will present and discuss her new memoir, Strip Tees, in conversation with Stephanie Danler.
Into the most glittering of supposed utopias, hipster L.A., Kate Flannery arrived with a Seven Sisters diploma in hand and a new job at an upstart clothing company called American Apparel. Kate threw herself into the work, determined to climb the corporate fashion ladder. Having a job at American Apparel also meant being a part of the advertising campaigns themselves, stripping down in the name of feminism.
She slowly began to lose herself in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cultlike devotion to the unorthodox CEO and founder of the brand. The line between sexual liberation and exploitation quickly grew hazy, leading Kate to question the company’s ethics and wrestle with her own.
Kate Flannery was born and raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Bryn Mawr College and currently works for the Emmy Award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race. She is the lead singer and frontwoman for LA’s premier Little Richard tribute band, Big Dick. Strip Tees is her first book.
Stephanie Danler is a novelist, memoirist, and screenwriter. She is the author of Stray and the international bestseller Sweetbitter. She is the creator and executive producer of the Sweetbitter television series on Starz.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-kate-flannery-presents-strip-tees-w-stephanie-danler
In Our Own Voices: An Evening of Play Readings with ALAP at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
In Our Own Voices is a play reading event consisting of short plays (and perhaps a monologue or two) written by the members of the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP). The plays will be read by local actors plus the playwrights themselves. This is ALAP’s longest running annual program and Village Well welcomes them to the store!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/27722
Sonali Kolhatkar Presents: Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Sonali Kolhatkar will present and discuss her book,Rising Up, a timely exploration of how truthful narratives by and about people of color can be used to advance social justice in the United States.
While people of color are fast becoming the majority population in the United States, the perspectives of white America still dominate most of the media created and consumed every day. Media makers of color, long shut out of the decision-making process, are “rising up” to advance a set of different narratives, offering stories and perspectives to counter the racism and disinformation that have long dominated America’s political and cultural landscape.
In Rising Up, award-winning journalist Sonali Kolhatkar delivers a guide to racial justice narrative-setting. With a focus on shifting perspectives in news media, entertainment, and individual discourse, she highlights the writers, creators, educators, and influencers who are successfully building a culture of affirmation and inclusion.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Sonali-Kolhatkar-Rising%20Up
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: William Hawkins;
- 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@gmail.com or call (323) 293-2451
Where: The World Stage
Date: Wednesday the 19th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.instagram.com/anansiwritersworkshop/
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 Ángeles.
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 19th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops.html or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-677321094627
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg & Feature Mike Sonksen 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 Sonksen.
Mike Sonksen aka Mike the PoeT is a 3rd-generation Southern Californian. Poet, professor, journalist, historian & tour-guide, his book Letters to My City was published by Writ Large Press. He’s been giving Los Angeles city tours for 25 years. He’s written for Poets & Writers, Metropolis, KCET, Alta, Wax Poetics, PBS, LA Taco, LA Review of Books, LAist, Boom and the Academy of American Poets. His poetry’s been featured on Public Radio Stations KCRW, KPCC & KPFK & Spectrum News. Sonksen studied with Mike Davis at UCLA in 1997, he’s the Coordinator of the First Year Experience Program at Woodbury University and he’s been awarded by the Los Angeles Press Club.
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 19th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://allevents.in/orange/mike-the-poet-at-the-ugly-mug/200024704631033
CalArts Creates @ the Library: Creative Writing at Central Library, LAPL– In-Person Teen Event
Sign up for a free 8-session, 4-week course. Participants will conceptualize and produce individual creative writing projects that will include fiction writing, poetry, zine-making, spoken word performance, and more!
Eligible participants should reside in Los Angeles County and be current high school students. All class meetings will take place at Teen’Scape. All materials will be provided. Class dates are 7/11/23 – 8/3/23.
Register at https://tinyurl.com/LAPLSummer2023
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 10 am – 12 pm
Address: 630 W. 6th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/calarts-creates-library-creative-writing
CalArts Creates @ the Library: Zines at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Teen Event
The Los Angeles Public Library is proud to present a free four-week zine making course for teens. Some of the topics that will be covered in this workshop are image creation, creative writing, comics, world-building, narrative structure, printing and copying techniques, zine binding techniques, and more.
Eligible participants should reside in Los Angeles County and be current high school students. All class meetings will take place at Teen’Scape. All materials will be provided. Class dates are 7/11/23 – 8/3/23.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Teen Scape
Date: Thursday the 20th (week 2 of 4)
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Where: 630 W. 5ht St, Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/calarts-creates-library-zines
Venice Branch Book Club: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek at Venice Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
This book club reads fiction and non-fiction on the third Thursday of each month. Copies of each month’s selection are available at the Circulation Desk. New members welcome!
July 20: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek: A Novel by Kim Michele Richardson.
Inspired by the true, blue people of Kentucky and the brave and dedicated Kentucky Pack Horse library service of the 1930s, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman’s belief that books can carry us anywhere—even back home.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Venice-Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 6 pm
Where: 501 S. Venice Bvld., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/venice-library-book-club
West L.A. Regional Branch Book Club: The Road at West L.A. Regional Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
This book club alternates between fiction and non-fiction on the third Thursday of each month. Copies of each month’s selection are available at the Circulation Desk. If you would like more information, please email cdavies@lapl.org.
July 20: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
This novel is a searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son’s fight to survive.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: West Los Angeles Regional Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 6 pm
Where: 11360 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/west-la-library-book-club-2
An Evening with Authors: South Central Noir at Mark Twain Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join contributors Gary Phillips, Penny Mickelbury, and Désirée Zamorano for a special evening celebrating the 2022 anthology South Central Noir as they share the stories of the people, places, and happenings that make the neighborhood’s past and present.
RSVP:
No RSVP necessary for in-person program. For Zoom link please email mtwain@lapl.org.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 6 pm
Where: 9621 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90003
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/south-central-noir-evening-authors
Playa Vista Women’s Book Club: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Playa Vista Women’s Book Club participants will discuss Gabrielle Zevin’s book, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, about two college friends who become creative partners in an intricately designed world of video games, which brings them fame, joy and many problems.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: The Book Jewel, Westchester
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuZvFWEsptG/
Evan Kennedy, with Elaine Kahn, Reading: Metamorphoses at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Evan Kennedy and Elaine Kahn will read from: Metamorphoses.
Metamorphoses springs from Ovid’s epic poem to explore the slipperiness of identity, its propensity for change and transience. In poems that shift registers from travelogue to elegy, from nature documentary to a simple record of the realities of daily life, Evan Kennedy focuses on transformation, personal and collective, in an empire in decline, in a world transfigured by ecological upheaval.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/evan-kennedy
Tamarindo Presents Charley Stoever & Money Chisme Event at The Pop Hop – In-Person Event
This event is a money mindset workshop and mixer.
Charly Stoever is a formerly undocumented digital nomad helping first gen clients embody their millionaire selves. Charly’s clients go from feeling guilty and anxious about money to feeling empowered to make money moves and PLAY more. They are the host of the Unicorn Millionaire podcast and you can learn more about them here: unicornmillionaire.com.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: The Pop Hop
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 5002 York Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://www.thepophop.com/calendar/2023/7/20/money-chisme-con-tamarindo
At Skylight: Cristina Garcia, with Alex Espinoza, & Vanishing Maps at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Cristina Garcia, in conversation with Alex Espinoza, will present and discuss her new follow-up novel to Dreaming in Cuban, that tracks four generations of the del Pino family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, the U.S., Germany, and Russia in the new millennium.
Celia del Pino, the matriarch of a far-flung Cuban family, has watched her descendants spread out across the globe, struggling to make sense of their transnational identities and strained relationships with one another. In Berlin, the charismatic yet troubled Ivanito performs on stage as his drag queen persona, while being haunted by the ghost of his mother. Pilar Puente, adrift in Los Angeles, is a struggling sculptor and the single mother of a young son. In Moscow, Ivanito’s cousin Irina has become the wealthy owner of a lingerie company, but she remains deeply lonely in the wake of her parents’ deaths and her estrangement from her Cuban heritage. Meanwhile, in Havana, Celia prepares to reunite with her lost lover, Gustavo, and wonders whether age and the decades spent apart have altered their bond.
Cut off from their Cuban roots, yet still feeling the island’s ineluctable pull, Ivanito and his extended family try to reimagine where—and with whom—they belong. Over the course of a momentous year, each will grapple with their histories as they are pulled to Berlin for a final, explosive reunion.
Set twenty years after the events in Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina García’s new novel is an epic tale of family, devotion, and the timeless search for home.
Cristina Garcia is the author of eight novels including Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, King of Cuba and Here in Berlin. García’s work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into fifteen languages. She’s taught at universities nationwide and is currently resident playwright at Central Works Theater in Berkeley.
Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico to parents from the state of Michoacán. He graduated from the University of California-Riverside, then went on to earn an MFA from UC-Irvine’s Program in Writing. His first novel, Still Water Saints, was published by Random House in 2007. His second novel, The Five Acts of Diego León, was published by Random House in March 2013. Alex’s work has appeared in several anthologies and journals, and he has received numerous awards. His latest book is Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime (Unnamed Press 2019). His newest novel, The Sons of El Rey, is forthcoming from Simon and Schuster. Alex teaches at UC-Riverside where he serves as the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Book Launch: Caitlin Dee & Meditations for Party Girls at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Presented by @dreamboybookclub a book launch for Meditations for Party Girls by Caitlin Dee (@caitlindeee). Through journals, poems, notes, and reflections, author Caitlin Dee traces her journey from partying in the punk/underground scene in Los Angeles, CA to seeking healing everywhere from the mountains of Santa Cruz to the beaches of San Pancho, Mexico. Meditations for Party Girls is a dream-like guide to contemporary spirituality outlining a new sort of approach to locating meaning in the modern world. Containing 10+ years of refracted documentation of her adventures, traumas, hangovers, hallucinations, breakups, breakdowns, scorpion stings, lovers, animal friends, and survival, Dee has created a new and powerful map for a voyage towards a radical understanding of the self.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events
Bruce Burgos & The Bitter Past: A Mystery at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Bruce Burgos will present and discuss his new book,The Bitter Past: A Mystery.
The Bitter Past begins a compelling series set in the high desert of Nevada featuring Sheriff Porter Beck.
Porter Beck is the sheriff in the high desert of Nevada, north of Las Vegas. Born and raised there, he left to join the Army, where he worked in Intelligence, deep in the shadows in far off places. Now he’s back home, doing the same lawman’s job his father once did, before his father started to develop dementia. All is relatively quiet in this corner of the world, until an old, retired FBI agent is found killed. He was brutally tortured before he was killed and clues at the scene point to a mystery dating back to the early days of the nuclear age. If that wasn’t strange enough, a current FBI agent shows up to help Beck’s investigation.
In a case that unfolds in the past (the 1950s) and the present, it seems that a Russian spy infiltrated the nuclear testing site and now someone is looking for that long-ago, all-but forgotten person, who holds the key to what happened then and to the deadly goings on now. (Minotaur Books)
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, cost, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Bruce-Borgos-The-Bitter-Past
Skulls & Stairs: A Beyond Baroque Reading Series at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
Beyond Baroque presents a new reading series as poets take over, in the infamous staircase of the original Venice City Hall building!
The series showcases poets beyond text dwelling on the gothic and the illuminating void. This initial installment features performances from poet and tarot reader Ingrid M. Calderón-Collins; Mexico-City book artist & poeta Alan Sobrino with artist Steph Smith for a special duo performance, and Acid Verse Literary Journal Editor-in-Chief, Tauri. Before and after the readings, Calderón-Collins’s video-poem An American Exorcism will be screened in the theater.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Thursday the 20th
Time: 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm (doors at 7 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/skulls-stairs-a-beyond-baroque-reading-series-tickets-663420156547
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 21st
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shonceuponatime.com/event/spectacular-story-time-41
Bookish Discussion Event: Jillian Lauren and Eliza Jane Brazier, presented by Southern California News Group via Once Upon a Time Bookstore – Online Event
This event is a monthly, one-hour presentation featuring conversations with authors, thinkers, and performers.
Discover new book releases, meet interesting people, and learn about a variety of topics with host Sandra Tsing Loh, writer, actress and radio personality.
Features today:
Jillian Lauren will present and discuss her new book, Behold the Monster: Confronting America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer.
New York Times bestselling author and lead of the Starz docuseries Confronting a Serial Killer Jillian Lauren delivers the harrowing report of her unusual relationship with a psychopath. But this is more than a deep dive into the actions of Samuel Little. Lauren’s riveting and emotional accounts reveal the women who were lost to cold files, giving Little’s victims a chance to have their stories heard for the first time.
Eliza Jane Brazier will present and discuss her new book, Girls and Their Horses.
Set in the glamorous, competitive world of showjumping, this is a novel about the girls who ride, their cutthroat mothers, and a suspicious death at a horse show. Girls and Their Horses is from the author of Good Rich People.
Sandra Tsing Loh is the host of BOOKISH, produced by the Southern California News Group. She is the author of several books including The Madwoman and the Roomba, which was selected as one of the New York Times’ 100 Most Notable Books. A well-known voice on NPR, she is the producer of the Loh Down on Science and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. Her previous book, Mother on Fire, was inspired by her hit solo show about Los Angeles public education. Her other solo shows include Aliens in America and Bad Sex with Budd Kem.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event (see site)
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/bookish-july-2023
Jeffrey Toobin & Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right Wing Extremism at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Jeffrey Toobin will discuss his new book, Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right Wing Extremism.
This book is the definitive account of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the enduring legacy of Timothy McVeigh, leading to the January 6 insurrection—from acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin.
Timothy McVeigh wanted to start a movement.
Speaking to his lawyers, days after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Gulf War veteran expressed no regrets: killing 168 people was his patriotic duty. He cited the Declaration of Independence from memory: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” He had obsessively followed the siege of Waco and seethed at the imposition of President Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban. A self-proclaimed white separatist, he abhorred immigration and wanted women to return to traditional roles. As he watched the industrial decline of his native Buffalo, McVeigh longed for when America was great.
New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin traces the dramatic history and profound legacy of Timothy McVeigh, who once declared, “I believe there is an army out there, ready to rise up, even though I never found it.” But that doesn’t mean his army wasn’t there. With news-breaking reportage, Toobin details how McVeigh’s principles and tactics have flourished in the decades since his death in 2001, reaching an apotheosis on January 6 when hundreds of rioters stormed the Capitol. Based on nearly a million previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and documents, including detailed communications between McVeigh and his lawyers, as well as interviews with such key figures as Bill Clinton, Homegrown reveals how the story of Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing is not only a powerful retelling of one of the great outrages of our time, but a warning for our future.
Jeffrey Toobin is the New York Times bestselling author of American Heiress, The Oath, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, Too Close to Call, A Vast Conspiracy, The Run of His Life: The People vs. O.J. Simpson, and Opening Arguments. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, he lives with his family in New York.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Chevalier’s Books
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/homegrown-by-jeffrey-toobin-tickets-662634566827
Guinevere Turner & When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Guinevere Turner will present and discuss her new book When the World Didn’t End: A Memoir.
On January 5, 1975, the world was supposed to end. Under strict instructions, six-year-old Guinevere Turner put on her best dress, grabbed her favorite toy, and waited with the rest of her community for salvation—a spaceship that would take them to live on Venus. But the spaceship never came.
Guinevere did not understand that her family was a cult. She spent most of her days on a compound in Kansas, living apart from her mother with dozens of other children who worked in the sorghum fields and roved freely through the surrounding pastures, eating mulberries, and tending to farm animals. But there was a dark side to this bucolic existence. Guinevere was part of the Lyman Family, a secluded cult spearheaded by Mel Lyman, a self-proclaimed savior, committed to isolation from a World he declared had lost its way.
Drawing from the diaries that she kept throughout her youth, Guinevere Turner’s memoir is an intimate chronicle of a childhood touched with extraordinary beauty and unfathomable ugliness, the ache of yearning to return to a lost home—and the slow realization of how harmful that place really was.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/guinevere-turner
At Skylight: Sarah Rose Etter, with Tommy Pico & Morgan Parker, & RIPE at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Sarah Rose Etter, in conversation with Tommy Pico and Morgan Parker, will discuss her surreal novel RIPE.
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.
Sarah Rose Etter is the author of the chapbook Tongue Party and The Book of X, winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. Her work has appeared in Time, Guernica, BOMB, the Bennington Review, The Cut, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan in Iceland. She earned her BA in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles. For more info, visit SarahRoseEtter.com.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a poet, podcaster, and tv writer. He is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, and Feed. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! is poetry editor at Catapult Magazine, writes on the TV shows Reservation Dogs and Resident Alien, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker’s debut book of nonfiction is forthcoming from One World. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has been hailed by The New York Times as “a dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence to American poetry.” She lives in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Open Mic Night at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Every second Friday of the month (with the exception of July 7th), Village Well stays open a bit later in order to provide a platform for local performers through our open mic! All performers are welcome, including musicians, poets, storytellers, comedians, and magicians!
Acts are limited to 5-7 minutes in length and must be family friendly. Sign-ups begin at 6:30 pm and conclude at 7:00 pm!
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/27553
Dr. Aomawa Shields, with Allen Zadoff, & Life on Other Planets: A Memoir at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Dr. Aomawa Shields, in conversation with Allen Zadoff,will present and discuss her new book Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe.
This book is a stunning and inspiring memoir charting a life as an astronomer, classically trained actor, mother, and Black woman in STEM, searching for life in the universe while building a meaningful life here on Earth.
As a kid, Aomawa Shields was always bumping into things, her neck craned up at the sky, dreaming of becoming an astronaut. A year into an astrophysics PhD program, plagued by self-doubt and discouraged by a white male professor who suggested that she—a young Black woman who also loved fashion, makeup, and the arts—didn’t belong, she left astronomy and pursued acting professionally for a decade, before a day job working for NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope drew her back to the stars. She was the oldest and the only Black student in her PhD cohort. This time, no professor, and no voice in her own head, would stop her. Now an astronomer and astrobiologist at the top of her field, Dr. Shields studies the universe outside our Solar System, researching and uncovering the planets circling distant stars with just the right conditions that could support life—while also using her theater education to communicate the wonder and magic of the universe with those of us here on Earth. But it’s been a journey as winding and complex as the physics she has mastered.
Allen Zadoff is an award-winning author of books for teens and adults. A former stage director, Allen is a graduate of Cornell University, the Harvard University Institute for Advanced Theater Training, and the Warner Bros. Writers Workshop. His latest book, “The AI Revolution for Writers,” explores the intersection of artificial intelligence and the creative process, helping writers and organizations use AI in ethical and innovative ways. Visit him on the web at www.allenzadoff.com.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, cost, and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Dr-Aomawa-Shields-Life-on-Other-Planets
The Post Up: Featured Readings & Open Mic hosted by Brenda Vaca at Casa Verde LA – In-Person Event & IG Live
Brenda Vaca hosts The Post Up Readings & Open Mic Event on every 3rd Friday of the month at Uptown Plants at Casa Verde LA.
Come for: Storytelling x Friends and Vendors x Vibes.
This month’s features:
Mauricio Moreno is a 1st generation Colombian American artist and writer, and the author of the new poetry collection, Soul on Fire. He is also co-creator and host of the monthly reading series Trenches Full of Poets.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Casa Verde LA
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 12909 Philadelphia St., Whittier, CA
Website: https://www.instagram.com/iambrendavaca/?hl=en
Exiled Joy Readings: Randa Jarrar, Ghayath Almadhoun, Sarah Yanni at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
Beyond Baroque presents Exiled Joy, an evening of readings with authors Randa Jarrar and Ghayath Almadhoun, in conversation with scholar and editor Sarah Yanni.
Born in Damascus, Syria, Ghayath Almadhoun is a writer who has lived in exile throughout Europe, including Sweden, and is now based in Berlin. He’s currently a fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles where he is formulating a new book of poetry on his experiences as an immigrant-refugee.
Randa Jarrar is a celebrated author and translator who grew up in Egypt and moved back to the U.S. at thirteen. Her latest memoir, Love is an Ex-Country, recollects a life lived with daring autonomy and survival. From surviving domestic assault as a child and later as a wife, as well as threats and doxxing after her viral tweet about Barbara Bush, Jarrar offers a bold look at domestic violence, single motherhood, and sexuality through the lens of the punished-yet-triumphant body.
After the readings, authors will engage in a brief Q&A led by scholar and Mexican-Egyptian writer Sarah Yanni. The conversation will expand on how Arab diasporas experience joy in a position where their identity and culture is antagonized in the Western world and prosecuted in their homelands. These topics, and more, will be discussed in-depth from the perspective of writers living in exile in the aftermath of political conflicts in the Middle East.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday the 21st
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm (doors at 7:30 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
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: TBA
Lorenzo Frank is the author 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 21st
Time: 8 pm – 11 pm
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Leimert Park, Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.facebook.com/swaampoetry
Third Fridays Rapp Saloon Reading Series: 12th Year Anniversary with host Elena Secota, via Rapp Saloon – In-Person & Online Event
Third Fridays at Rapp Saloon Open Mic & Featured Readers is an event offered every 3rd Friday of the month, curated by host Elena Secota.
RSVP at site.
Featured guest poets and artists this month: TBA, plus Surprise Guests for 12th year anniversary reading,
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 21st
Time: 8:30 pm – 11 pm
Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90401 (Zoom link in bio)
Website: https://www.facebook.com
Sounds of Summer Workshops: A DSTL Arts x LAPL Collaboration – Online Event
This new, 8-week series of writing workshops for novice writers and English Language Learners explore the origins of Language across multiple cultures and a variety of poetic tools for creative expression.
This date is the 3rd of eight workshops.
Attend one workshop or attend all eight; this series is free and will help you think of Summer in a whole new way.
*Note: this workshop series is offered via Zoom only, and occurs weekly from Saturday, July 8–Saturday, August 26th, at 10:30 AM–12 PM. Handouts will only be provided to workshop attendees.
DSTL Arts invites you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81185877271?pwd=dFRibWhicW1mYVlITFpTZkcyeDBwUT09
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: DSTL Arts & LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd (until August 26th)
Time: 10:30 am – 12 pm
Address: 2011 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.dstlarts.org/calendar or https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81185877271?pwd=dFRibWhicW1mYVlITFpTZkcyeDBwUT09
Mystery Book Club: The Broken Window at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Mystery Book Club participants will discuss this month’s selection, The Broken Window, by author Jeffrey Deaver.
The Broken Window is a Lincoln Rhyme series thriller, in which Lincoln and partner/paramour Amelia Sachs return to face a criminal whose ingenious staging of crimes is enabled by terrifying access to information.
When Lincoln’s estranged cousin Arthur Rhyme is arrested on murder charges, the case is perfect—too perfect. Forensic evidence from Arthur’s home is found all over the scene of the crime, and it looks like the fate of Lincoln’s relative is sealed.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 11 am
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-club-14
Poetry Workshop for Adults at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
This event is an inclusive, in-person poetry workshop for adults, where poets of all levels can come together, share their work, and foster a vibrant poetry community. Participants are invited to bring a poem, no longer than one page, to read and receive valuable feedback from fellow poets. Engage in thoughtful discussions and provide your own insights on the work of others. Whether you’re a seasoned poet or just starting out, this workshop offers a supportive environment to refine your craft, connect with like-minded individuals, and celebrate the power of words.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Literature & Fiction Study Rooms
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/poetry-workshop-0
Unearthing Roots: the heritages we herald and hide, A Poetry Workshop & Reading with Glendale Poet Laureate Raffi Joe Wartanian & Guests – In-Person Event
Glendale Poet Laureate Raffi Joe Wartanian presents the first Glendale Poet Laureate Poetry Workshop & Reading featuring Lynne Thompson (Los Angeles Poet Laureate) & Linda Ravenswood (The Los Angeles Press).
Free and open to the public
Registration is encouraged but not required
All levels of experience are welcome
Light refreshments
Activities: reading, writing, workshopping, performance, discovery
Learn more at www.eglendalelac.org/poetlaureate
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Brand Library Recital Hall, Glendale
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 1601 W. Mountain St., Glendale, CA 91201
Website: http://glendaleca.libnet.info/event/8812365
Book Launch: Doug McIntyre & Frank’s Shadow at Gatsby’s Books – In-Person Event
This event is a book launch and party for Doug McIntyre and his book, Frank’s Shadow, which is a novel about suspense, family, forgiveness, and Frank Sinatra.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Gatsby’s Books
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 12 pm
Address: 5535 E. Spring St., Long Beach, CA 90815
Website: https://www.gatsbybooks.com/events
Felicia’s Free-Form Drop-In Workshop via Sims Library of Poetry – Online Event
Felicia’s “Free-Form” Drop-In Writing Workshop with the Sims Library of Poetry and the 44 Poetry Class will be held online. This event is offered on the 4th Saturday of every month.
Felicia Taylor E. is a poet, actress, author, writer, and arts educator. She’s performed with the award-winning companies, Deaf West Theater and Dallas Children’s Theater and toured with companies in California performing Shakespeare, Contemporary plays, and Poetry. As an Arts Educator, she’s worked within the community creating workshops and performances for museums, schools, libraries, and colleges. Her belief is that “writing and journaling is healing.” Her book Southern Spiced: A Brown Girl’s Tale, is a Reader’s Choice Book Award Finalist.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, link, and details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 12 am – 1:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/felicias-free-form-drop-in-writing-session-tickets-664902771087
Open Mic Poetry Event: Lynne Bronstein at Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Share your original poems, lyrics, spoken word, or just enjoy listening. Each poet will have five minutes to read an original work.
If you wish to read, sign up when you arrive.
Featured speaker will be Lynne Bronstein, who has been a journalist for five decades. She is the author of five poetry collections, and her poetry and short fiction have been published in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 1 pm
Address: 5027 Caspar Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90041
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/open-mic-poetry-0
Fourth Saturdays Poetry: Jerry Garcia & Lucia Galloway at Claremont Helen Renwick Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join Fourth Saturdays Poetry at the Claremont library on the 4th Saturday of every month, featuring:
Jerry Garcia is a poet, photographer, and filmmaker from Southern California. His poetry has been seen in Pratik–A Magazine of Contemporary Writing (Nepal), Oikos Poeti per il future (Italy), Spillway 28, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond, and The Chiron Review among journals and anthologies domestic and international. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has published three books of poetry: Trumpets in the Sky, On Summer Solstice Road, and the chapbook Hitchhiking With the Guilty. He is retired from producing and editing television commercials, documentaries, and motion picture previews. He has most recently moved to the Coachella Valley with his marvelous wife Becky.
Lucia Galloway’s poetry collections include Some Words for Meanwhile (Future Cycle) and the award-winning chapbook The Garlic Peelers (QuillsEdge). Earlier books are Venus and Other Losses (Plain View) and the chapbook Playing Outside (Finishing Line). Her work appears in The London Reader, Mid-American Review, Nimrod, The Sow’s Ear, and Tar River, among other journals. Her interest in writing poetry began to ripen as she taught American and British literature in Pasadena’s Westridge School and at the Webb Schools in Claremont. She is proud to be among the founders of Fourth Saturdays, one of only two continuous reading series of Los Angeles/ San Bernardino Counties. month.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Claremont Helen Renwick Library
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: 208 Harvard Ave., Claremont, CA 91711
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/580282427419795/?ref=newsfeed
Spoken Word Live & Open Mic at Northridge Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join a multinational Spoken Word Live & Open Mic event on the 4th Saturday of each month at the Northridge Branch Library and online at Zoom.
RSVP:
Please email Emily at eaaronson@lapl.org for the Zoom link.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Northridge Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 9051 Darby Ave., Northridge, CA 91325
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/arroyo-book-club-1
Creative Writing Groupat Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Calling all writers of fiction, screenplays, poetry, etc. Get feedback on your writing in a fun, supportive environment. Meetings include a writing prompt/exercise, snacks, and a rollicking good time! Whether you are just starting out or well on your way to glory, join us every other Saturday afternoon from 3:00-5:00 p.m. and banish (at least temporarily) those Lonely Writer Blues!
RSVP:
RSVP to fiction@lapl.org today!
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 3 pm
Address:630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/writers-group-0
Poetry Readings & Open Mic: Print & Internet Publishing Workshop via Saturday Afternoon Poetry – Online Zoom Event
A Poetry Reading & Publishing Workshop will be held on Zoom only.
Print & Internet Publishing Workshop led by MARVINLOUIS DORSEY + Poets published in Four Feathers Press 4 IN 1: BOOK FOUR (Don Kingfisher Campbell, Yuan Changming, Robert Fleming, R A Ruadh) and VEHICLES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA: POETRY OF MOVEMENT anthologies.
Meeting ID: 759 9367 3202 (no spaces required) Password: poetry.
Don Kingfisher Campbell hosts and curates these events.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Summer Party & Stone Soup Potluck & Open Mic at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
Beyond Baroque & Safe Place for Youth invites you to a Venice community celebration, Stone Soup Potluck & Summer Party! Join us in the S.P.Y. community garden outside of the Beyond Baroque building, 4 pm – 8 pm, for a summertime celebration. Bring a friend and share a dish with the community for a relaxing sunny Saturday afternoon with delicious food, art workshops, and live music performances!
We’ve added the name “Stone Soup” (Community Poetry Soup) for our celebration from a classic folk tale shared by many cultures, in which the people of a small town all contribute what they can to create a nourishing meal for all. With this event, our aim is to foster the same sense of care and community between family, friends, and strangers.
In the spirit of community, we invite all guests to bring a dish to share with our summertime potluck! Warm or cold, all dishes are welcome! If you’d like to bring a dish. You can bring it with you on the day of the event and we’ll add it to our collective potluck table! If you have any questions, please send us a message at maryf@safeplaceforyouth.
The afternoon will conclude with energetic performances by a local L.A. Jazz ensemble with musicians Grump, Leo Bleu, & Qur’an Shaheed.
This event is Free & In-Person at Beyond Baroque. Masks are encouraged while inside our center.
NOTE: See site for further details, RSVP free tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 4 pm – 8 pm (open mic sign-ups at 4:30 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summer-party-stone-soup-potluck-tickets-665483016617
NoHo In-Person Book Club: Interior Chinatown at North Hollywood Regional Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
NoHo In-Person Book Club participants will discuss Interior Chinatown, by author Charles Yu.
This book club meets in-person the fourth Saturday of each month to discuss a selected title, and this one is the Big Read slection. Copies of the book are available for checkout. New members are always welcome.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: North Hollywood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 5211 Tujunga Ave., North Hollywood, CA 91601
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/noho-person-book-club-0
Book Launch: Ava Wilder, with Christina Lauren, & Will They or Won’t They at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents Ava Wilder, in conversation with Christina Lauren, to discuss her new book, Will They or Won’t They.
There will be a book signing to follow. This event is free to attend and tickets are not required; RSVPs honored first until capacity. Any additional customers will be accommodated for the signing line following the conversation.
Can’t attend the event? Signed books are available for in-store pick-up and shipping.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 5 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Poetry & Music Jam: To Be Free at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
Bring your poems, jam out with the Meganut and the Front Porch Band
RSVP
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.simslibraryofpoetry.org/event-details/poetry-music-jam-10
Summer Hours: An Evening of Spoken Word Poetry at El Camino College Art Gallery – In-Person Event
Dulce Stein presents Summer Hours: An Evening of Spoken Word Poetry, featuring four poets reading their work and hosted by Mauro W. Monterio.
Pam Ward is a poet and designer and the author most recently of between good men & no man at all. She is the author of two novels, Want Some Get Some, Kensington, chronicling a heist after the ’92 riots and bad girls burn slow. She edited the first anthology of Los Angeles black women poets entitled, The Supergirls Handbook. Pam recently completed her third novel Bury My Dress on Central Ave., about her aunt’s connection to the Black Dahlia murder, a crime so horrific it shocked the whole world happening inside Pam’s very own hometown.
Mike Mollett N/A
Bibiana Padilla Maltos is a writer and conceptual artist closely tied to the Fluxus lifestyle. She has published “Equilibrios”, 1992, “Instrucciones para cocinar”,2001, “Los Demonios de la Casa Mayor”, 2002, “Los Impersonales”, 2002, “25 ScoreS 25”, 2009, “Mini Poemas”, 2009, “MCA-Chicago Scores”,2011; “The Windy Scores: 2012”; has curated, exhibited, performed, done residencies, as well as interventions and collaborated in several anthologies, magazines and newspapers across the world. She as coordinated creative writing and experimental literature workshops.
Keith Martin N/A
Where: El Camino College Art Gallery
Date: Saturday the 22nd
Time: 8 pm – 11 pm
Address: 16007 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance, CA 90506
Website: N/A
Griot Café Open Mic with Sistah Shy & Samuel Rain & Featured Guest 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 22nd
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1001 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://shadesofafrika.com/griot-cafe-open-mic-poetry/
Boozy Book Fair: Bel Canto Books at Ambitious Ales – In-Person Event
Celebrate the Boozy Book Fair with Bel Canto Books and friends at Ambitious Ales on IG.
Save the date.
NOTE: RSVP at event link.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 12 pm – 5 pm
Address: 4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: https://belcantobooks.net/events
Book Bash Discussion: Deaf Republic via The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Book Bash participants will discuss the July selection, Deaf Republic, by Danez Smith.
This event is a monthly discussion group and Brain Trust generative writing workshop.
NOTE: RSVP at event link and for details.
Where: The Poetry Lab
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/membership or https://bookshop.org/p/books/deaf-republic-poems-ilya-kaminsky/8237292?ean=9781555978310
L.A. Made Presents: An Afternoon of Asada with Bricia Lopez & Javier Cabral at Mark Twain Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join authors Bricia Lopez (Guelaguetza restaurant) and Javier Cabral (L.A. TACO) for an engaging afternoon discussion about all things carne asada culture, from choosing the right marinade to the art of using an onion to clean your grill!
Their new cookbook celebrating the art of hosting and cooking a backyard asada cookout is the first cookbook in the country to be written about the subject. Moderating this panel will be Patty Rodriguez, co-founder of the bilingual Lil’ Libros children’s books.
There will be special surprises for those that attend in person!
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Mark Taper Auditorium
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 2 pm
Where: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/la-made-presents-bricia-lopez-and-javier-cabral-asada-book
Aftershock Dream: Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Hannah Pachman at Cosmic Vinyl Café * – In-Person Event
Join host Hannah Pachman at Aftershock Dream: Poetry Reading & Open Mic, featuring Lois P. Jones and Elena Katina Byrne.
Lois P. Jones was the shortlist prize winner for two poems in the 9th annual Terrain Poetry Contest judged by Jane Hirshfield (2018). Other awards include the Lascaux Poetry Prize in 2018, the Bristol Poetry Prize in 2017 and the Tiferet Poetry Prize in 2012, with work shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in poetry in 2016 and 2017 and The London Magazine in 2018. Jones has work published or forthcoming in anthologies including New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell of London); The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear Publishing), and Wide Awake: Poetry of Los Angeles and Beyond (The Pacific Coast Poetry Series). Some publications include Plume, Narrative, American Poetry Journal, One, Tupelo Quarterly, The Warwick Review, Cider Press Review, Lunch Ticket and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Jones’ first collection of poems, Night Ladder, was a finalist for the Lascaux Poetry Prize and semi-finalist for the Julie Suk Award. She hosts KPFK’s Poets Café in Los Angeles, is the Poetry Editor of Kyoto Journal and co-hosts the long running Moonday Poetry Series at Flintridge Bookstore.
Elena Katina Byrne’s five poetry collections include If This Makes You Nervous (20210) and No, Don’t (2020). She is a screenwriter, essayist, reviewer, multi-media artist, and editor. Elena works as a freelance lecturer and national arts programs curator, is The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books Programming Consultant & Poetry Stage Manager, and Literary Programs Director for the historic The Ruskin Art Club.
NOTE: See site for RSVP and details.
Where: Cosmic Vinyl Café * Formerly known as Beatnik Café.
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Where: 2149 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.hannapatricepachman.com/aftershock-dream.html
Slanguage Poetry & Open Mic with AKoldPiece OfWork at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
Slanguage Poetry Show is a live recording of Spoken Word for Urban Soul Television. We have a live studio audience to react and enjoy a night of poetry. This show Executive produced by Slanguage Press and hosted by AKoldPiece OfWork. This show is our Open Mic Edition. We will have a sign-up list at the door with only 10 slots for our audience to participate. $10 Prepaid $15 at the Door.
NOTE: RSVP. See site for details.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 4 pm – 7 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/slanguage-poetry-show-open-mic-edition-tickets-668079763557
July Historical Romance Book Club: Hamilton’s Battalion at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
The Ripped Bodice presents the July Historical Romance Book Club every 4th Sunday of the month, and today’s selection is Hamilton’s Battalion: A Trio of Romances by Rose Lerner, Alyssa Cole, and Courtney Milan.
The Historical Romance book club is led by orders manager Katie S, and it focuses on examining all historical romance novels. Everyone is welcome!
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 23rd
Time: 7:15 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 