It’s no surprise that since the last Community News article at the begining of April a lot has happened in the literary community.
A new Queer press/literary orgaization Dopamine, founded last year by local writer Michelle Tea, which released its first book in May, Sluts Anthology, publishes its books “through Semiotext(e), but it will be as independent as a small arm of a small press can be,” said an L.A. Times article from last December. According to its website, they “look to promote and nurture queer work that falls outside the mainstream of even LGBTQI+ storytelling: work that is experimental, by writers resisting assimilation; work that stretches the boundaries of what defines ‘queer,’ by writers with intersecting identities; work that is raw, by writers who are self-taught.”
When Tea was working with City Lights and Amethyst, she did not have control over the queer writing she could publish. “Work I adored was slipping through my fingers, which was frustrating enough to inspire me to walk away,” she said in the same article.
The contributors to Sluts Anthology include: Miguel Gutierrez, Anna Joy Springer, Cheryl Klein and Gary Indiana.
Owner Sean Moor opened Gatsby Books near the corner of Spring and Belflower in 2010, at a time when Long Beach was losing many of its iconic bookstores. One such bookstore was Acres of Books, which shut its doors in 2008. Moor’s store, in East Long Beach, sat across the street from the famous Worthington Ford car dealership.
Moor opened Gatsby because he wanted to keep bookstores relevant. As he said in a 2011 Long Beach Press-Telegram article, “I thought part of what would make a bookstore relevant in the community would be to offer more than items to purchase.” That’s why he made sure to host writer’s groups, book club meetings, short film festivals, and art showings several nights a week.
As the years wore on, many local writers featured at Gatsby, from poets Hiram Sims and Long Beach State Professor Emeritus Gerald Locklin to Tommy Domino and Lisbeth Coiman, as part of a Community Literature Initiative poetry reading.
These were some of the most important writers in the Greater Los Ángeles literary community, most of whom also taught and mentored young and emerging writers.
Yet, at the outset of May, Moor announced on Facebook that Gatsby Books is closing after 14 years. “When one door closes, another opens…” he wrote. He’s moving on to new ventures.
Even though Gatsby Books is closing and they will cease hosting their CSULB MFA Creative Writing Reading Series, highlighting some of the up and coming writers in Long Beach, their closing does not indicate the continued declining health of local independent bookstores in Greater Los Ángeles. There are over 50 new, used and specialty bookstores, from Sylmar to Santa Ana to Riverside and everywhere in-between.
And unlike when Gatsby opened in 2010, Long Beach has gained three independent bookstores—Page Against the Machine, Casita Bookstore and Bel Canto Books with two locations, one on East 4th Street and the second in Bixby Knolls, North Long Beach.
Still, Gatsby’s closing means that now the residents of East Long Beach only have the used bookstore, Once Read Books, to congregate at.
A few weeks ago, The Libros, an independent bookstore that opened in Lincoln Heights last November, was profiled in The Los Angeles Times.
The article, written by Claire O’Callahan, not only chronicles the bookstore as a whole—the reason Jesse Marez opened the store, the kind of books they sell, the events they host—but also the store’s in-house, independent press, Legacy Publications.
“Legacy Publications is deeply rooted in Marez’s pride for the Eastside neighborhoods he grew up in,” the article says.
Its goal is to publish the stories of these Eastside communities and the legacies its residents have left behind. To do so, Legacy “aims to highlight local voices, help authors make a profit and ensure the books themselves are made with high-quality materials.” Why? Because stories by authors of color are still largely left out of mainstream publishing and thus, left out of mainstream bookstores like Barnes & Noble. That’s why, as Poet and Santa Ana College Professor Donato Martinez is quoted saying, “…we need these independent bookstores to house our books.”
Over the course of April and May, it was literary festival season in Greater Los Ángeles. It seemed like there was another celebration of local writers each weekend—Asian Americans (Festival of AAPI Books), poets from Northeast Los Ángeles (NELA Poetry Festival), spoken word (L.A. Get Down)—and the fifth of May, five unique literary festivals.
However, one of the bigger festivals—The Pomona Valley Poetry and Book Fest—took place for the 3rd year on the first and third weekends in May at the L.Á. County Fair. Conceived of and run by the inaugural Poet Laureate of Pomona David ‘Judah 1’ Oliver and his arts organization, LionLike MindState, he started the festival to expand the community’s mind through the diverse perspectives of writers and poets speaking their truths and by supporting these writers by providing them a platform to speak their truth and get their writing out into the world.
The third Sunday in May, I featured along with Anastasia Helena Fenald, Diosa Xochiquetzalcóatl, VOTH, Molimau Andrew Fatu, and Yawo Watts, among others. The sky was clear, the temperature mild and tables were arranged on the grass in the Silent Disco area of The Hill, next to the stage, for poets to display and sell their books. Nearby were restrooms that helped direct traffic towards the readers. One section over was the Fun Zone, where all the rides and games were located.
Oliver said in a poetry fest la fair email in all caps, “NEW LOCATION!” Unlike the first two years, the poets were reading in a more centralized area to “get substantially more walking traffic, more observers of our crafts, appreciators of our offerings and more visitors to our Books…hopefully more sales.” That was true for poets like Karo Ska, Chai Tea, James Coats and Jesenia Chavez, among others, who read the first week. But by the third week, the Girl Scouts had set up shop at the main entrance to Silent Disco, siphoning off fairgoers.
With plenty of shade, local poet Queen Exodus the Poet, or Queen X for short, was tabling her small boutique indie book press, Queen X Literature. As I spoke with her, she explained the press “plans to release poetry, journals, self-help books, anthologies, and memoirs in the coming years.” under-told, healing, stories The press had their first published book for sale, Bastard Child: A Foster Child’s Guide to Success by Kawaya Haynes, released last August. X’s passion for publishing Black writers, especially Black women, was clear.
The reading kicked off at 1 p.m. During the four hours of readings, one poet, Usolosopher Molimau Andrew Fatu, brought all three of his self-published books to sell: Diary of A Mad Uso: Usolosopher, Usolosophy: Poetic Soulpieces and USOPoetic: The Usolosopher Poet. A Samoan-American born in Long Beach, at one point during his reading, Fatu made the point to highlight that, contrary to public perception, not all Samoan men are ultra masculine and play football. They do have a soft side. He illustrated this by reading “The Love of My Life” written about his wife, Joli.
As you hold my hand, I will hold yours
As we look into each other’s eyes…
Close nit, united and embraced
In-between sets, a DJ played tunes and LionLike MindState had their own booth selling their own merchandise.
Los Angeles Literature 