Asian American Lit Festival 2024: First Pass: Editing from Beyond the Margins: A Conversation with Yuka Igarashi via Kaya Press – Online Event
Kaya Press in a Los Angeles based Asian American press.
What does it mean to work as an editor today? Join Kaya Press and Yuka Igarashi, executive editor at Graywolf Press, for a conversation on the political and aesthetic roles of an editor and a close look at the editorial process behind one of Graywolf’s forthcoming titles. The first interview in Kaya Press’s series First Pass: Editing from Beyond the Margins, made possible by support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Kaya Press
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 10 am – 12:30 pm PT
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://www.asianamericanliteraturefestival.org/2024-events
Writers Group at Robertson Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Calling all writers! Get those creative juices flowing and join our writers group as everyone shares their work and gives feedback.
This group mostly meets in person, but email rbrtsn@lapl.org if you’d prefer to join via Zoom.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Roberton Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 11 am – 12:30 pm
Address: 1719 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/writers-group-1
Book Club: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women at Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for a conversation about Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See. An immersive historical novel inspired by the true story of a woman physician in 15th-century China.
Where: Fairfax Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 11 am – 12:30 pm
Address: 161 S. Gardner St., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-lady-tans-circle-women-0
Guided Autobiography (GAB) for Older Adults at La Crescenta Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Explore the fabric of your life in this 5-week series focused on writing and sharing your stories. For adults.
Meet on Monday afternoons to participate in the method developed by Dr. James Birren, which aids in reflection and sharing experiences from our journey. This process is facilitated by certified GAB instructors as a service of the USC VHH Community Resource Center for Aging.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party, including kids. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 1:30 om – 3:30 pm
Address: 2809 Foothill Blvd., La Crescenta-Montrose, CA 91214
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11533799
Teen Book Discussion: Cosechando Sueños/Harvesting Dreams by Erica Alfaro at Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us as we discuss award-winning author Erica Alfaro’s book Harvesting Dreams, where she shares how she overcame adversity, including domestic violence, and achieved her goals through education. In 2019, Erica’s graduation picture went viral and made headlines around the world. She was dressed in a graduation cap and gown, standing in a field with her mother and father, both farm workers. To honor her parents’ sacrifices, she took her master’s degree pictures in the field where they had worked long hours to provide her with an education.
This program will be in English and Spanish.
Where: Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 9621 s. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90003
Mystery Book Club: More Than You’ll Ever Know at Lake Los Angeles Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join our book club as we discuss a different mystery book each month. This month’s selection is More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez, in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. For Adults.
Copies of the book are available at the customer service desk for checkout.
Where: Lake Los Angeles Library, LACL
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 16921 East Avenue O, #A, Palmdale, CA 93591
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11558922
Philosophical Horror Book Club: A Dowry of Blood at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Book Club participants will discuss the book A Dowry of Blood by author S. T. Gibson.
In this dark, fantasy sensation, the author spins the gothic, seductive tale of Dracula’s first bride, Constanta.
This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things.
Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
S. T. Gibson is an author and village wise woman in training. A graduate of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville and the theological studies program at Princeton Seminary, she currently lives in New England with her partner, spoiled cat, and perfume collection.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event
Writing for Children Workshop with José Chávez via Inlandia Institute – Online Event
(All Levels)
Alternating Mondays, 9/16, 9/30, 10/14, 10/28, and 11/11/24, 6:00-8:00 PM PT, on Zoom.
$50. Registration required. To register: https://tinyurl.com/Fall2024CWW
This workshop is designed to meet the needs of those who wish to write or are writing for children. We’ll explore the writing voice for children, define a “picture book,” story arc, story introductions, appropriate vocabulary, children’s poetry, and more. There will be time to flex our writing muscles and develop the beauty and strength of our “voice” for children.
José Chávez is a retired bilingual teacher who dedicates his life to writing. His poetry has been published in the Multilingual Educator Journal, Acentos Review, and the Inlandia anthology, and he is the author of two award-winning bilingual poetry books for children. José lives in Riverside, California, is married, and has three grown children.
Where: Inlandia Institute
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/events/ or https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2351
Bookbinding Class with Madeline Helland at Vroman’s Meeting Room – In-Person Event
Madeline Helland will lead a bookbinding class for Vroman’s ED.
During this hands-on workshop, participants will create a series of 3 different soft-cover book structures that can be easily recreated at home. This class will show how to properly cut, fold, and sew a book as well as what tools and materials to use. All supplies will be provided, and beginners are welcome.
Madeline Helland is a Los Angeles based bookbinder and letterpress printer. She received her BA in art conservation and studio art, with a concentration in book arts and digital design, from Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Since 2018, she has been self-publishing artist books and zines featuring found ephemera and her illustrations. She has previously led bookbinding workshops at the International Printing Museum, Hiromi Paper Inc., and Otis College of Art & Design, among others. When she’s not making books, she works as a studio technician at Laboratory Press.
NOTE: See site for registration, costs and details.
Where: Vroman’s Meeting Room (in the Atrium)
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 709 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 120, Pasadena, CA 91001
Tue Nguyen & Di An: The Salty, Sour, Sweet, and Spicy Flavors of Vietnamese Cooking with TwayDaBae (A Cookbook) at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Tue Nguyen will present Di An: The Salty, Sour, Sweet, and Spicy Flavors of Vietnamese Cooking with TwayDaBae (A Cookbook).
In addition to delicious recipes, you’ll find tips and tricks on entertaining, making the perfect essential sauces and condiments, and so much more to elevate even the most beginner home chef’s cooking.
Tue Nguyen, a.k.a. @TwayDaBae, is a Vietnamese chef and one of the fastest rising stars in the culinary space. Since graduating from culinary school and beginning her content creation journey, she has showcased her skills through sold-out pop-ups in Los Angeles and New York City, which led to her partnering with Hwood Group to open her first restaurant, DiDi, in Los Angeles. She can be seen as the current host of Making it Big on BuzzFeed’s food network Tasty and as the host of People’s first digital food show, Celeb Eats. Tue has been featured in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Thrillist, The Hollywood Reporter, Good Morning America, ELLE, People, VICE, ABC News, and more. She lives in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Discussion and Book Signing with WALL0267 at Malik Books, Culver City – In-Person Event
Join us at our bookstore for an exciting evening of discussion and book signing with the one and only WALL0267! Get ready to dive deep into his latest work, Armed with Good Intentions as he shares insights, stories, and behind-the-scenes secrets. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to meet the man behind the words. Secure your ticket and be prepared for an unforgettable experience!
Wallo267 leveraged the power of the internet to spread his message of hope, gaining over 60,000 loyal followers by his release date. At this time, he returned to the streets of North Philadelphia to sell t-shirts, telling stories of hardships and triumphs to inspire and motivate others facing difficulties around him. Over the past five years, Wallo267 has skyrocketed his modest social media presence, backed by a “who’s who” network of pro athletes, music industry giants, actors, entertainers, and business leaders. Today, he has over 21 million social media impressions weekly. As a mega influencer, market disruptor, and global inspiration, he has partnered with household names.
This memoir traces the journey from Wallo’s youth and incarceration to his incredible success. In his time spent in prison, Wallo came to understand that he was armed with the wrong intentions despite great potential via a lack of guidance and proper mindset. With this understanding, he reckoned with the choices that put him there, accepted responsibility for his own actions, and vowed to arm himself with only good intentions upon his release.
Wallo’s reflection and new-found philosophy—which he now shares with you—informed the new trajectory of his life. On the day of his release, Wallo moved back to Philly and started on a new frontier of entrepreneurialism. Armed with vigor and intention, his viral motivational content gained Wallo over sixty-thousand Instagram followers on his first day of freedom. This would prove to only be the start of his continuously growing career utilizing his social influence as a motivational speaker, entrepreneur, and cultural changemaker.
In Armed with Good Intentions, Wallo shares his hardships and triumphs and personal philosophy with his widest audience yet. Wallo spins his story of despair and tragedy into sage wisdom, inspiring anyone who is looking for the motivation to revise how they see the obstacles in their own lives.
NOTE: See site for tickets and details.
Where: Malik Books (Westfield Culver City Mall)
Date: Monday, the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address 6000 Sepulveda Blvd., Ste. 2470, Culver City, CA 90230
Website: https://malikbooks.com/events-1/ola/services/discussion-and-booksigning-with-wall0267
R.U.P.O. Open Mic at Back to the Grind in Riverside – In-Person Event (Check to Verify)
RUPO Open Mic is every Monday Night at Back to the Grind in Riverside.
Every Monday at: 7pm to 9pm. Sign-ups are at 6:30pm and in person only, $4 cash admission. See you then!
NOTE: See site for link and details.
Where: Back to the Grind, Riverside
Date: Monday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501
Website: https://www.facebook.com/backtothegrind
Monday Night Fiction Workshop at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – Online Zoom Event
This free Monday Night Community Writing Workshop led by Raquel Baker is a 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 16th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/monday-night-fiction-workshop-tickets-1013622822147?aff=erelexpmlt
Under Mic Influence: Featured Readings & Open Mic at LB Unified – In-Person Event
If you need an open mic, beautiful people, tasty eats, dope inspiration, good libations, and good vibrations, we have you covered!
Join host Kuahmel Alyeeus KuahAllah and @djkevjam for poetry, Open Mic, rare grooves, cocktails, tasty bites.
Every 1st & 3rd Monday of the month.
Featured guest TBA.
NOTE: See site for tickets and details.
Where: LB Unified
Date: Monday the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm (Doors at 7:30 pm)
Address: 2222 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach, CA 90804
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/under-mic-influence-tickets-595248092067
Virtual Book Club: Table for Two at La Crescenta Library, LACL – Online Event
Participants will discuss Table for Two by Amor Towles. An immersive collection of short works of fiction set in turn-of-the-millennium New York and Golden Age Hollywood. The book features 6 short stories and a novella that centers on Evelyn Ross, a character from Towles’ debut novel The Rules of Civility.
NOTE: Please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for your Zoom invite to attend the book club.
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 17th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11334230
Tuesday Afternoon Book Club at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join for an engaging book discussion. Copies are available at the reference desk.
This group mostly meets in person, but email rbrtsn@lapl.org if you’d prefer to join via Zoom.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 1 pm
Address: 2411 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/tuesday-afternoon-book-club-6
Mysterious Book Club: Murder Your Employer at Palisades Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for the next meeting of the Mysterious Book Club a group of readers who love mystery and suspense. We are reading Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes. We welcome new members. Come even if you haven’t read the book. You can meet everyone and you’ll know the title for next month.
The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts. To gain admission, a student must have an ethical reason for erasing someone who deeply deserves a fate no worse (nor better) than death. To graduate the student must get away with the perfect murder of someone whose death will make the world a much better place. Between those two times, fun, intrigue and much practicing ensue.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Palisades Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 17th
Time: 1:30 pm
Address: 861 Alma Real Dr., Pacific Palisades, CA 90272
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/mysterious-book-club-1
Classic Detectives Book Club: Golden Age Whodunits at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Book Club participants will discuss the book Golden Age Whodunits by author Otto Penzle
Fifteen puzzling tales from the masters of the mystery genre.
Depending on who you ask, the term “whodunit” was first coined sometime around 1930, but the literary form predates that name by several decades. Still, it was in the years between the two World Wars—the so-called “Golden Age” of mystery fiction—that the style flourished. Short mysteries were published far and wide by a variety of authors, not just those primarily associated with the genre. They appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and other high-end periodicals that still exist today. These tales were, in short, among the most popular diversions in literature and were of the highest caliber.
Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/classic-detectives-book-club-golden-age-whodunits
Book Talk: John McMurtrie, with Sarh Mesie, & Literary Journeys at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
John McMurtrie, in conversation with Sarah Mesie, will discuss and sign his book Literary Journeys.
Literary aficionados, history buffs, map lovers will equally delight in this new illustrated guide to world literature spanning 2500 years.
A beautifully illustrated guide to over seventy-five important journeys in world literature, spanning more than thirty countries and twenty-five hundred years.
From Homer’s Odyssey, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote to Melville’s Moby-Dick, Kerouac’s On the Road, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah, some of the most powerful works of fiction center on a journey. Extending to the ends of the earth and spanning from ancient Greece to today, Literary Journeys is an enthralling book that takes you on a voyage of discovery through some of the most important journeys in literature. In original essays, an international team of literary critics, scholars, and other writers explore exciting, dangerous, tragic, and uplifting journeys in more than seventy-five classic and popular works of fiction from around the world. Chronologically arranged and gorgeously illustrated throughout with paintings, engravings, photographs, and maps in full color, this captivating book will appeal to readers who have travelled widely, who are planning a trip, or who love armchair travel.
John McMurtrie is an independent book editor. He is senior editor of the literary journal Zyzzyva, a contributing editor of the quarterly literary travel magazine Stranger’s Guide, and an editor for McSweeney’s Publishing. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Literary Hub. He served as the books editor of the San Francisco Chronicle for a decade. A native of Boston, he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Sarah Mesle is a founding editor of the digital magazine Avidly and the NYU Press book series Avidly Reads. Her criticism and profiles have appeared in venues ranging from The New York Times Magazine to InStyle to The Los Angeles Review of Books, where she has also served as Senior Humanities Editor. She has two books forthcoming: (Chicago UP) and a collection of essays called Tangled: American Racism and White Women’s Reasons and Feelings: Humanities Writing Now Hair (Beacon Press). She teaches writing and editing at the University of Southern California.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Tuesday, the 10th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com
The Art and Craft of Writing Poetry with Romaine Washington via Inlandia Institute – Online Event
(All Levels)
Alternating Tuesdays, 9/17, 10/1, 10/15, 10/29, and 11/12/24, 6:00-8:00 PM PT, on Zoom.
$50. Registration required.
To register: https://tinyurl.com/Fall2024CWW
Discover the art and craft of writing poetry with generative prompts and other forms of poetic inspiration. Brief group feedback will help you uncover images and language that resonate for you and for your audience.
Romaine Washington, M. Ed., is the editor of These Black Bodies Are…A Blacklandia Anthology and the author of Purgatory Has an Address and Sirens in Her Belly. She has been published in various anthologies and periodicals. Ms. Washington is a graduate fellow of The Watering Hole, South Carolina, and the Inland Area Writing Project at the University of California, Riverside. She was a public school educator for over twenty years. The proud mother of two sons, Romaine Washington is a native Californian from San Bernardino who resides in the Inland Empire.
Where: Inlandia Institute
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2371
3rd Tuesday Book Club: The Great Circle at Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of The Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 6400 Playa Vista Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90094
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/3rd-tuesday-book-club-13
Book Club: The Guest at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel The Guest by author Emma Cline.
“Alex drained her wineglass, then her water glass. The ocean looked calm, a black darker than the sky. A ripple of anxiety made her palms go damp. It seemed suddenly very tenuous to believe that anything would stay hidden, that she could successfully pass from one world to another.”
Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.
A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she’s been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.
With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.
Taut, propulsive, and impossible to look away from, Emma Cline’s The Guest is a spellbinding literary achievement.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/42227
Malibu Library Speaker Series: Dr. Safiya Noble & Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism at Malibu Library, LCPL – In-Person Event
Join author Safiya Noble at Malibu Library on Tuesday, September 17 to hear her discuss Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism.
Dr. Noble is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, a recipient of the NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award, and author of the highly acclaimed Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. She is an internet studies scholar and professor of Gender Studies and African American Studies at UCLA, where she serves as the faculty director for the Center on Race & Digital Justice and the co-director for the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power, and where she co-founded the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.
Dr. Noble and her work have been featured in Time, The Guardian, the BBC, CNN International, Wired, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone, among many others. Her talks and research focus on the ways that digital media impacts our lives and intersects with issues of race, gender, culture, and technology.
NOTE: See site for guidelines, and details.
Where: Malibu Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 23519 West Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11558988
Jacquie Walters, with Rachel Koller Croft, & Dearest: A Novel at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Jacquie Walters, in conversation with Rachel Koller Croft, will discuss her book Dearest: A Novel.
A new mom in need of help opens her door to her long-estranged mother—only to invite something much darker inside—in this “fast-paced and frightening debut” (Rachel Harrison) about the long shadows cast by family secrets, perfect for readers of Grady Hendrix or Ashley Audrain.
Just as Flora becomes convinced that she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up to help: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more that Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement?
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://www.booksoup.com/event/jacquie-waltrs
Romance Book Club: Name Your Price at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Name Your Price: A Novel by author Holly James.
In Holly James’s newest rom-com, sparks ignite as a pair of broke exes get locked in a house together on a reality show for a chance to win a million dollars, a second-chance romance that perfectly captures the absurd sincerity of made-for-TV love.
Holly James is the author of adult romance and commercial fiction. She holds a PhD in psychology and has worked in both academia and the tech industry. When she’s not reading or writing a book, she can be found on the beach or hiking in the woods. Born and raised in Northern California, she currently lives at the southern end of the state with her husband and their dog. Find her at hollyjamesbooks.com and on Instagram at @hellohollyjames.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/romance-book-club
North Fig Book Club: Blackouts at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Blackouts by author Justin Torres.
A book about storytelling—its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change—and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Justin Torres’s Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative. A marvel of creative imagination, it draws on testimony, photographs, illustrations, and a range of influences as it insists that we look long and steadily at what we have inherited and what we have made—a world full of ghostly shadows and flashing moments of truth. A reclamation of ransacked history, a celebration of defiance, and a transformative encounter, Blackouts mines the stories that have been kept from us and brings them into the light.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-lzn994ua
At Skylight: Nora Lange, with Katya Apekna, & Us Fools at Skylight – In-Person Event
Nora Lange, in conversation with Katya Apekina, will discuss her novel Us Fools.
A tragicomic, intimate American story of two precocious sisters coming of age during the Midwestern farm crisis of the 1980s.
Joanne and Bernadette Fareown are raised on their family farm in rural Illinois, keenly affected by their parents’ volatile relationship and mounting financial debt, haunted by the cursed history of the women in their family. Largely left to their own devices, the sisters educate themselves on Greek mythology, feminism, and Virginia Woolf, realizing they must find unique ways to cope in these antagonistic conditions, questioning the American Dream as the rest of the country abandons their community in crisis.
With her debut novel, Nora Lange has crafted a rambunctious, ambitious, and heart-rending portrait of two idiosyncratic sisters, determined to persevere despite the worst that capitalism and their circumstances has to throw at them.
Nora Lange’s writing has appeared in BOMB, Hazlitt, Joyland, American Short Fiction, Denver Quarterly, HTMLGiant, LIT, The Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. Her project Dailyness was longlisted for the 2014 Leslie Scalapino Award for Innovative Women Performance Writers. She received her MFA from Brown University’s Literary Arts Program where she was a Kaplan Fellow, and she is a fellow at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. An earlier iteration of her novel Us Fools was shortlisted for The Novel Prize in 2020, a prize to recognize and publish novels that explore and expand the possibilities of the form. She comes from a long line of Midwestern farmers and lives in Los Angeles with her family.
Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her new novel, Mother Doll, is out now. Her debut, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 by Kirkus, Buzzfeed and others and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Katya translated poetry and prose from Russian for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. She lives in Los Angeles.
Where: Skylight
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-nora-lange-presents-us-fools-w-katya-apekina
Attica Locke, with Tembi Locke, & Guide Me Home at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Attica Locke, in conversation with Tembi Locke, will discuss her novel Guide Me Home.
In the final novel in the Highway 59 trilogy, from Edgar Award-winning and New York Times-bestselling author Attica Locke, Darren Matthews is pulled out of an early retirement to investigate the disappearance of a Black college student from an all-white sorority and soon finds nothing is as it seems.
Texas Ranger Darren Mathews isn’t sure he’s been a good cop, but believes he’s got a shot at being a good man—if he manages to dodge the potential indictment hanging over his head and if he, from here on out, pledges allegiance to the truth. It’s a virtue the country appears to have wholly lost its grip on, but one Darren sees as his salvation. He is in the midst of remaking his life with the woman he loves, hoping for the peace of country living at his beloved farmhouse, when he is visited by someone who couldn’t hold the truth on her tongue if it was dipped in sugar, a woman who’s always been bent of tearing his life apart. His mother. Armed with a tall tale about a missing Black college student, Sera (whose white sorority sisters insist she isn’t missing at all). Darren must decide if his can trust his mother is telling the truth—and what her ulterior motive may be, and what if that motive has to do with a grand jury deciding his fate.
Darren gets his hooks into the investigation, along the way discovering things about Sera’s family and her hometown that are odd at best, vaguely sinister at worst. Hamstrung by local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers who likewise doubt the account of a missing girl, if Darren wants answers, he’ll need help from the person whom he swore to never trust again—his mother.
In this emotionally stirring conclusion to the singular Highway 59 series, set three years after the events of Heaven, My Home, Darren reckons with his life’s purpose as he’s forced to choose between his own peace and the higher call to do good.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/attica-locke-discusses-guide-me-home
Tuesday Night Project Presents Literaoki Event at Tuesday Night Café Open Mic – In-Person Event
Save the date for Tuesday Night Cafe on September 17th @ 7:30pm – join them for another evening of art, community, friends, and vibes!
2024 Asia American Lit Festival event presented by TNP with Palms Up Academy, Kaya Press, and Sunday Jump, with House band Shin Kawasaki.
Where: Tuesday Night Café
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 120 Judge John Aiso Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90012
Website: https://www.tuesdaynightproject.org/tnc-schedule
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert & Guest – Online Zoom Event (NO READINGTHIS WEEK)
The Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic with host Rick Lupert presents guest reader and an open mic.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/calendar.html
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 5th Tuesday of the month we celebrate Women and Femme voices only on the mic. This open mic is hosted by Yesika Salgado and Jasmine Williams, with music and vibes by DJ Faucet.
NOTE: See sign-ups, details, and guidelines at website link.
$10 donation. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 p.m. Free parking adjacent to the theater.
Masks are encouraged. All ages are welcome.
Where: Greenway Court Theatre
Date: Tuesday, the 17th
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
Author Event: Nate Klemp & Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World at L.A. County Library, LACL – Online Event
Author and philosopher Nate Klemp will discuss his book Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World.
The author explores pathways back to open minded living in a climate of distraction and division. Drawing on personal stories, scientific findings, and traditional wisdom, Klemp explores why we close down when faced with stressors or threats―then reveals why training ourselves to fully engage even with discomfort, pain, and sadness leads to greater well-being in the long run.
Nate Klemp, PhD, is a philosopher, writer, and mindfulness entrepreneur. He is the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Start Here, the New York Times critics’ pick The 80/80 Marriage, and his newest book, Open: Living with an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. His work has been featured in the LA Times, Psychology Today, the Times of London, and more, and his appearances include Good Morning America and Talks at Google. He’s a cofounder of LifeXT and founding partner at Mindful. For more, visit nateklemp.com or @Nate_Klemp on Instagram.
Where: L.A. County Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11509758
Book Club: Lady Tan’s Circle of Women at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Participants will discuss the novel Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by author Lisa See.
Where: Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm
Address: 10640 Petit Ave., Granada Hills, CA 91344
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-lady-tans-circle-women
Poets Café: Celebrating Poetry via KPFK 90.7 FM – Live On-Air Event
Poets Café celebrates Poetry. This program is a weekly half-hour literary arts discussion and reading program featuring guest authors and their works.
NOTE: Poetry From Around the World is a segment of this series offered monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month on KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: KPFK 90.7 FM
Date: Wednesday, the 17th
Time: 2 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: On-air Event (live)
Website: https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/poets-cafe/
Book Club for Adults: Next Year in Havana at San Gabriel Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel Next Year in Havana by author Chanel Cleeton. Copies of this title are available at the Information Desk. For ages 18 and up.
Arriving in Havana, Marisol comes face-to-face with the contrast of Cuba’s tropical, timeless beauty and its perilous political climate. When family history comes to light and Marisol finds herself attracted to a man with secrets of his own, she’ll need the lessons of her grandmother’s past to help her understand the true meaning of courage.
Where: San Gabriel Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 500 S. Del Mar Ave., San Gabriel, CA 91776
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11096695
Stonewall Honor Book Club Discussion Series: The Spirit Raises Its Teeth at Robertson Branch Library, LAPL – Online Hybrid Teen Event
Participants will discuss the novel The Spirit Raises Its Teeth by author Andrew Joseph White.
Join the Palisades and Robertson Branch Libraries on Zoom for a monthly teen book discussion series as we feature five Stonewall honor books in Young Adult Literature. The first and most enduring award for LGBTQIA+ books, sponsored by the American Library Association’s Rainbow Round Table.
Where: Robertson Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1719 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035
Graphic Novel Club: Unico: Awakening at Once Upon a Time, Montrose – In-Person Kids Event
Graphic novels are the coolest kind of book there is—do you think so too? If so, then our fabulous Graphic Novel Club is for you! Join us to celebrate our shared love of graphic novels and visual creativity! Iz and Apollo will host our ever-popular book club.
Participants will discuss Unico: Awakening by Osamu Tezuka, Samuel Sattin, and Gurihiru.
Best for ages 9-12.
This is a discussion-based club. Participants should come prepared to share their thoughts about that meeting’s book choice.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 4 pm – 4:45 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Middle Grade Book Club: The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Participants will discuss The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by author Gennifer Cheldenka.
Readers will be rooting for a happy ending for Hank in Newbery-Honor-winner Gennifer Choldenko’s gripping story of a boy struggling to hold his family together when his mom doesn’t come home.
Where: pages: a bookstore (in the Courtyard)
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 4:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://www.pagesabookstore.com/event/tenth-mistake-hank-hooperman
Rainbow Reads Book Club: The Sunbearer Trials at Once Upon a Time, Montrose – In-Person Teen LGBTQIA+ Event
Our Rainbow Reads Book Club celebrates diversity in Young Adult books as we read books featuring various identities and stories. This is a safe space welcome to teens of all identities and allies! Join Iz and Apollo for our proud book club.
Participants will discuss The Sunbearer Trilals by Aiden Thomas.
Best for ages 13 and up.
This is a discussion-based club. Participants should come prepared to share their thoughts about that meeting’s book choice.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event
Book Club for Adults: Next Year in Havana at San Gabriel Library, LACL – In-Person Event
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month participants will discuss the novel The Death and Life of Aida Hernandez: A Border Story by Aaron Bobrow-Strain. New members are always welcome! For adults.
A professor combines his academic research with his decades long U.S.–Mexico border activism to brightly illuminate immigration realities by focusing on the struggles of one young woman, Aida Hernandez. Although Aida dedicated herself to performing well in school and learning fluent English, her undocumented status meant constant uncertainty. It also meant that she was vulnerable to violent male figures, ranging from her mother’s paramour to Aida’s boyfriends to abusive Border Patrol agents. This potent, important work, which “occupies a space between journalism and ethnography, with a dash of oral history and biography,” adds much to the continuing immigration debate.
Where: San Fernando Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 217 N Maclay Ave., San Fernando, CA 91240
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11375988
Reading in Bed with Jessica: L.A. Poet Society via 101.5 FM – Live On-Air Event
Reading in Bed with Jessica hosts poets and writers in conversation and is aired weekly on 101.5 FM.
Jessica Wilson Cardenas is the founder of the Los Angeles Poet Society.
Guests TBA
This program is offered weekly on radioollin Los Angeles 101.5 FM.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: 101.5 FM
Date: Wednesday the 11th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: On-air Event (live at 101.5 FM)
Website: https://www.lapoetsociety.org/events
Book Club for Adults: After Annie at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel After Annie by author Anna Quindlen.
RSVP:
Please email studio@lapl.org for participation details.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-adults-0
Writing and Presenting Poetry in American Sign Language with Ryan Fingerle via Inlandia Institute – Online Event
(All Levels)
Alternating Wednesdays, 9/18, 10/2, 10/16, 10/30, and 11/13/24, 6:30-8:30 PM PT, on Zoom.
ASL Poetry is a FREE community enrichment workshop open to all.
Registration required. To register: https://tinyurl.com/Fall2024CWW
This introductory course is especially created for poetry lovers who want to learn how to write and present poetry in American Sign Language. It will also enhance your appreciation of poetry in both English and ASL! All are welcome – d/Deaf, HOH, and hearing – and an interpreter and closed captioning will be available. Gain confidence as a poet – and get the support and resources you need to write and present poetry in ASL.
Ryan Fingerle is a Deaf writer, poet, and educator whose love of words has no boundaries. One of her works, “Stuck in the Middle,” was published in the 2021 MUSE Literary Magazine. She presented her English poem “Connected” in ASL in front of a live audience for a National Deaf History and Poetry Month event. Ryan teaches English at Riverside City College, and her passion is helping adult students and their families enjoy the merits of both ASL and the English language.
Where: Inlandia Institute
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://inlandiainstitute.org/my-calendar/?mc_id=2376
RECESS Open Mic is at SIPA HQ, Palms Up Academy – In-Person Event
RECESS Open Mic is at SIPA HQ on Wednesdays.
This dynamic open mic is the most accessible public program in the Palms Up Academy curriculum and manifests their mission statement in a physical (and digital) space.
Join them at the intersection of Historic Filipinotown & The World: Search to Involve Pilipino Americans.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, guidelines, and details.
Where: SIPA HQ
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 6:30; Open Mic at 8 pm)
Address: 3200 W. Temple St., Ste. 100, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.palmsupacademy.com
Cebo Campbell, with Jehan Giles, & Sky Full of Elephants at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Join us for an event with award-winning multi-hyphenate Cebo Campbell, in conversation with teacher, librarian and community archivist Jehan Giles, to discuss his debut novel, Sky Full of Elephants.
Cebo Campbell is an award-winning, multi-hyphenate creative based in New York and London. He is the winner of the Stories Award for Poetry and his writings are featured in numerous publications. As co-founder and CCO of the renown NYC creative agency, Spherical, Cebo leads teams of creatives in shaping the best hotel brands in the world. His range of talents as a Creative Director have sent him all over the globe infusing creative into everything from working with The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in the UK, to concepting the Million Miracles humanitarian campaign throughout Africa and India, even writing and directing the VR short film Refuge: Triumph in Tulsa, based on the famed Black Wall Street in Oklahoma. Cebo’s expansive work as a writer, designer, and director are powered by a singular mindset: contribute meaningfully to the culture. And he does. With everything he touches. At present, Cebo is likely somewhere in Europe enjoying whiskey and conversation. Sky Full of Elephants is his debut novel.
Jehan Giles is a Teacher-Librarian, community archivist, and 2 time NEH Fellow. Jehan is a cultural worker who focuses on improving the lives of children and Black & Brown women through pedagogy, programming, and restorative practice. Jehan’s author interviews include President Barack Obama, 2022 Guggenheim Fellow Dr. Keisha N. Blain, and MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award Winner Dr. Tiya Miles.
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: https://rep.club/products/cebo-campbell-event
At Skylight: Regina Porter, with David Ulin, & The Rich People Have Gone Away at Skylight – In-Person Event
Regina Porter, in conversation with David Ulin, will discuss her novel The Rich People Have Gone Away.
A diverse group of New Yorkers are brought together by the search for a missing woman—in this electric novel of secrets, connection, and community.
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale Park Slope building has this privilege: not Xavier, the teenager in the Cardi B T-shirt, nor Darla’s best friend, Ruby, and her partner, Katsumi, who stay behind to save their Michelin-starred restaurant.
Regina Porter is an award-winning playwright and author of The Travelers, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and longlisted for the Orwell Prize for political fiction. A graduate of the MFA fiction program at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, her writing has been published in the Harvard Review, Tin House, and the Oxford American.
David L. Ulin is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, shortlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, and the novel Ear to the Ground. His fiction has appeared in Black Clock, The Santa Monica Review, Scoundrel Time, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and Ucross Foundation, he is a Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he edits the journal Air/Light.
Where: Skylight
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Global Citizen Workshop (ft. a Third Culture Kid) at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join sustainable travel author and global nomad Priyanka Surio and LA-based nonprofit Intersectional Environmentalist for a Global Citizen Workshop where you’ll explore your connection to people, places, and planet.
This event will include a fireside chat with Priyanka to include her remarkable journey to over 65 countries and all 50 states while adopting sustainable practices for future travels.
Get your tickets on EVENTBRITE!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/42285
Kwei Quartey & The Whitewashed Tombs at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Kwei Quartey will present and discuss his book The Whitewashed Tombs (An Emma Djan Investigation #4).
Vicious hate crimes are rocking the LGBTQ+ community in Accra, and prejudice and politics threaten to stymie PI Emma Djan’s investigation.
Author Kwei Quartey tackles a real-life—and deeply personal—issue as an anti-gay bill threatens to tear Ghana apart.
Marcelo Tetteh, a twenty-seven-year-old LGBTQ activist, is butchered one night after being lured on Grindr to a deserted building site. With rampant homophobia in Ghana, Marcelo’s wealthy father doesn’t trust the Ghana Police Service to find the killer, so he goes to the Sowah Private Investigators Agency for help, partly because he still feels guilty for disowning his son when he came out.
Emma is assigned the case, but quickly learns of a complication that prevents her from teaming up as usual with Jojo, her trusted colleague. Emma is the only one at work who knows Jojo is gay, and now he reveals something else: for some time, Jojo was dating Marcelo, the victim.
Kwei Quartey was born in Ghana and raised by a Black American mother and a Ghanaian father. A retired physician, he lives in Pasadena. He is the author of five critically acclaimed novels in the Darko Dawson series, as well as three other books in the Emma Djan series, including The Missing American, which was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Novel. Find him on Twitter@doublekwei, on Instagram @kweiquarteyauthor, and on his website, kweiquartey.com.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/kwei-quartey-discusses-whitewashed-tombs
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 — TBA;
- 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — Open mic.
Suggested: $5.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.
NOTE: See site for further details and any change in the schedule. Contact kaliflowers@gmail.com or call (323) 293-2451.
Where: The World Stage
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.instagram.com/anansiwritersworkshop/ or https://www.facebook.com/anansiwritersworkshop/
Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop at Beyond Baroque – Online Event
Beyond Baroque’s longest-running free poetry workshop is offered on Zoom and welcomes 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 this quarter is Rooja Mohassessy, an Iranian-born poet and educator. She is a MacDowell Fellow and an MFA graduate of Pacific University, Oregon. Her ekphrastic debut collection, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine (Feb 2023) was the winner of the 22nd Annual Elir Poetry Award. Rooja has been featured on NPR, The Hive Poetry Collective, and other poetry podcasts and radio stations. Her poems and reviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Nimrod, Poet Lore, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, CALYX Journal, Ninth Letter, Cream City Review, The Adroit Journal, New Letters, The Rumpus, The Journal, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. Her work is also anthologized in California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, and Colossus: Body, a compilation of writings by Californians writing on the themes of bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. Rooja is an editorial assistant at the journal Prairie Schooner.
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. There’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 18th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/free_workshops or https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wednesday-night-poetry-workshop-tickets-1015402344747?aff=erelexpmlt
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg and Guests Ally McGregor and Sammi Walker at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Host Ben Trigg and Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug on Wednesday Nights will feature Ally McGregor and Sammi Walker
Ally McGregor is a contemporary Surrealist poet from Southern California. She earned both her BA in English Literature and MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from California State University, Long Beach. She is the author of Dissection Day (Moon Tide Press) and This is Just a Pipe (Alien Buddha Press), and her work focuses on womanhood, death, and de-stigmatizing mental illness. You can find her on Instagram @metaphormannequin
Sammi Walker is an internationally ranked and 9-time published poet from Salt Lake City Utah. She spends her time organizing and running events as the producer of Salt City Slam, Page to Stage Writing workshops and coaching the youth slam scene in various high schools around Salt Lake Valley. When Sammi Isn’t running an event she is competing. She has set foot on many stages around the US like; Bigfoot Regional slam(2023) , WOWPS (Woman of the world international slam) (2023/2024) CHILL LIST (2024), Charm City (2024) and many other stages on her 2024 tour. You can support Sammi by; Following her on social media @Sammiisopoetry , Buying her books and other merchandise.
$4 cover fee, cash only
NOTE: See site for further details.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday, the 18th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events
Book Club for Adults: Hang the Moon at Chet Holfield Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel Hang the Moon by author Jeannette Walls.
Where: Chet Holifield Library, LACL
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 11:30 pm
Address: 1060 S. Greenwood Ave., Montebello, CA 90640
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11336602
Mystery Book Discussion: Cutting Season at Palms Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel Cutting Season by author Attica Locke.
Refreshments provided by the Friends of the Palms Rancho Park Library.
Where: Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 12:30 pm
Address: 2920 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-discussion-person
Open Mic Night at Euclid Branch Library, Anaheim Public Library – In-Person Event
Bring your talents such as singing, acting, dancing, recite poetry, deliver a speech or play an instrument on stage. A Show open to ALL AGES.
Where: Euclid Branch Library, Anaheim PL
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 5:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1340 S Euclid St., Anaheim, CA 92802
Website: https://www.anaheim.net/calendar
Between the Lines Book Club for Adults: Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? at Castaic Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel Did You Hear About Kitty Karr? by author Crystal Smith Paul.
When Kitty Karr Tate, a White icon of the silver screen, dies and bequeaths her multimillion-dollar estate to the St. John sisters, three young, wealthy Black women, it prompts questions. Lots of questions.
A celebrity in her own right, Elise St. John would rather focus on sorting out Kitty’s affairs than deal with the press. But what she discovers in one of Kitty’s journals rocks her world harder than any other brewing scandal could—and between a cheating fiancé and the fallout from a controversial social media post, there are plenty.
Where: Castaic Library, LACL
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 7971 Sloan Canyon Rd., Castaic, CA 91384
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11585892
Mystery Book Club: My Murder at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Book Club participants will discuss the book My Murder: A Novel by author Katie Williams.
What if the murder you had to solve was your own?
Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for this second chance. But as the new Lou re-adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realizes that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she can really trust those around her.
Now it’s not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she’s always enjoyed—she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and full of surprises, My Murder is a devour-in-one-sitting, clever twist on the classic thriller.
Katie Williams is the author of the novel Tell the Machine Goodnight, which was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, and young adult novels, The Space Between Trees and Absent. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner and elsewhere. Williams earned her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an assistant professor at Emerson College in Boston.
Where: Cellar Door B6okstore
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/mystery-book-club-my-murder
Book Talk: Ron Dowell, with Lou Matthews, & Crooked Out of Compton at Chevalier’s Books – In-Person Event
Ron Dowell, in conversation with Lou Matthews, will discuss his novel, Crooked Out of Compton.
Mention “California,” and most people think of sun-kissed beaches, star-studded glamour, Hollywood success, or Silicon Valley. However, the stories in Crooked Out of Compton expand the narrative to include stories about othered Californians—each story reveals a different facet of the South [Central] Los Angeles community and its inhabitants. “Professor Roach” follows the story of a disaffected young boy who’d rather be an insect.
Sheriff’s deputy Daniel Brown finds institutional change difficult when he questions the status quo in “Job Collateral Lies Dead on Compton Creek.” Leland Otis Dunwitty meets Mysteree, his first love, and finds how complicated relationships can be when lovers come from different track sides. At the Watts Towers, Tamara Thomas shares wisdom and teaches her children the facts of life in “The Niggalators.” In “Bruised,” Trina Thomas uses her mother’s teaching when she confronts several obstacles while rescuing her younger brother from his heinous foster mom, Starkaña Wilkerson. The speculative ending story, “Baba Nam Kevelam (My Most Beloved is the Only One),” occurs in 2037. Ulan Mohammed, an unemployed school food service worker, experiences the still unsolved unhoused issue. These gritty stories show how people find hope and joy in lives where basic needs are demanding to be met.
Ron Dowell lives in the hills above the Port of Los Angeles but was born and raised in Watts, Los Angeles, before he moved to Compton, where he attended secondary schools and community college. Crooked Out of Compton is a semi-finalist for the Chestnut Review Stubborn Artists Contest and a Black Lawrence Press 2020 Big Moose Prize finalist.
Lou Mathews lives in Los Angeles just below the Hollywood sign and is a fourth generation Angeleno. His first novel, L.A. Breakdown, about illegal street racing, was picked by the Los Angeles Times as a Best Book of 1999. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, a California Arts Council Fiction Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and a Katherine Anne Porter Prize. His short stories have been published in more than 40 literary magazines including Short Story, ZYZZYVA, New England Review, Witness, Catamaran and Black Clock. His last novel, Shaky Town, was published in September 2021 and was long-listed for the 2022 Tournament of Books. Bat Fat is from Mathews new novel, Hollywoodski to be published in January 2025.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com
Trenches Full of Prose Reading Seriesat Page Against the Machine, Long Beach – In-Person Event
Trenches Full of Prose, a spin-off series inspired by Trenches Full of Poets, features prose writers Pete Hsu, Ariana Ross, Ryka Aoki, and Jonathan Santa Maria reading form their work.
Pete Hsu is the author of the short story collection If I were The Ocean, I’d Carry You Home (Red Hen Press, 2022) and the experimental chapbook There Is A Man (Tolsun Books). His writing has also been featured in The Los Angeles Review, The Bare Life Review, F(r)riction Magazne, Faultine Journal of Arts and Letters, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. He was a 2017 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and the 2017 PEN in the Community Writer in Residence. He teaches at the UCLA Extension Writers Program. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan and currently resides in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley.
Ariana Ross is a writer, poet and sommelier. While celebrating the release of her first book, 𝘞𝘪𝘯𝘦’𝘴 𝘞𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘈𝘳𝘵, she ghostwrites long-form content and books for clients. A non-denominational beauty seeker, you can find her immersed in thought on long quiet walks through her Highland Park neighborhood.
Ryka Aoki is a poet, composer, teacher, and novelist. Her latest novel, 𝘓𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘍𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘜𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘴 (Tor Books 2021) was an Alex, SCKA, and Otherwise Award winner, and was also a finalist for the Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte Awards.
Jonathan Santa Maria is a Whittier-born professional cage fighter turned “new Gothic poet of the 21st century.” He is the author of the poetry collections Walking in the Dark, Shade of Fear, and Eternity as well as the ghost fiction novel, When The Light Does Not Shine.
Tonight’s event is hosted by Jesse Tovar and co-hosted by Brian Dunlap and is free and open to the public.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Page Against the Machine
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 2714 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=901701648661072&set=gm.1692855904884011
At Skylight: Keiko Lane, with Eric C. Wat, & Blood Loss at Skylight – In-Person Event
Keiko Lane, in conversation with Eric C. Wat, will discuss her book, Blood Loss: A Love Story of Aids, Activism, and Art.
I n 1991, 16-year-old activist Keiko Lane joined the Los Angeles chapters of Queer Nation and ACT UP. They protested against legislation aimed at dismantling rights for LGBTQ people, people living with HIV, and immigrants, while fighting for needle exchange programs, reproductive justice, safer sex education, hospice funding, and the right to die with dignity. At the same time, they were a queer chosen family of friends and lovers who took care of one another in sickness and in health. Sometimes they helped each other die. By the time Lane turned 22, most of them had died of AIDS. In her evocative memoir, Lane weaves together the love stories and afterlives of queer resistance and survival, against the landscape of the Rodney King Rebellion, the movement for queer rights, and the censorship of queer artists and sexualities. Lane interrogates the social construction of power against and in queer communities of color, and the recovery of sexual agency in the midst and aftermath of violence. Luminous and powerfully moving, Blood Loss explores survival after those we love have died.
Keiko Lane (she/her) is an Okinawan American poet, essayist, memoirist, and psychotherapist writing about the intersections of queer culture, oppression resistance, liberation psychology, racial and gender justice, HIV criminalization, and reproductive justice. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Feminist Porn Book, and Between Certain Death and a Possible Future. Blood Loss: A Love Story of AIDS, Activism, and Art is her first book.
Eric C. Wat is the author of The Making of a Gay Asian Community: An Oral History of Pre-AIDS Los Angeles (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), the Los Angeles Times bestselling novel SWIM (The Permanent Press, 2019), and Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (University of Washington Press, 2022), which won the Outstanding Book Award in History at the Association of Asian American Studies last year. His short story collection, Daddy Issues, will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in Fall 2025. In 2022, his novel manuscript Drive was a finalist for the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series.
Where: Skylight
Date: Wednesday, the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-keiko-lane-presents-blood-loss
Lit Angels – Horror Story: Writing Horror with Melissa Pleckham at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
This one-hour class will teach you how to write a perfect scary story for the spooky season by looking at setting, characters, tension, and how to stick the landing!
Melissa Pleckham lives in Los Angeles with her lovely husband and their two beautiful cats, who have helped show her the true meaning of body horror with their various homicidal and scatalogical exploits. Her work has appeared in Lit Angels, Pyre Magazine, Tales from the Moonlit Path, and a forthcoming issue of Coffin Bell, and her music has been featured on FX’s American Horror Story. She is currently writing her first novel.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Get your tickets on EVENTBRITE!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/41776
All Women’s Open Mic Nightat Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Village Well is partnering with local trauma-healing poet Kate Burns to provide a platform for female poets, musicians, storytellers, and comedians. While all are welcome to attend, this is an event that aims to amplify women’s voices only.
Acts are limited to 3-5 minutes in length. Sign-ups begin at 6:30 pm and conclude at 7:00 pm!
Also, please note that not all material may be considered “family-friendly” so please use discretion when deciding whether or not to bring children.
Get your tickets on EVENTBRITE!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/40559
Jessica Hoppe, with Karla Vasquez, & First in the Family at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Jessica Hoppe, in conversation with Karla Vasquez, will present and discuss her book First in the Family.
This is an unflinching and intimate memoir of recovery by Jessica Hoppe, Latinx writer, advocate, and creator of NuevaYorka.
In this deeply moving and lyrical memoir, Hoppe shares an intimate, courageous account of what it means to truly interrupt cycles of harm. For readers of The Recovering by Leslie Jamison, Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford, and Heavy by Kiese Laymon.
During the first year of quarantine, drug overdoses spiked, the highest ever recorded. And Hoppe’s cousin was one of them. “I never learned the true history of substance use disorder in my family,” Hoppe writes. “People just disappeared.” At the time of her cousin’s death, she’d been in recovery for nearly four years, but she hadn’t told anyone.
In First in the Family the author shares her journey, the first in her family to do so, and takes the reader on a remarkable investigation of her family’s history, the American Dream, and the erasure of BIPOC from recovery institutions and narratives, leaving the reader with an urgent message of hope.
Jessica Hoppe is a Honduran Ecuadorian writer based in New York City. She has been featured on ABC News and HBOMax Pa’lante! and her work has appeared in the Latino Book Review, The New York Times, Vogue, Paper Magazine, and elsewhere. Jessica is a board member of Time of Butterflies, a non-profit supporting families through domestic abuse recovery, and an organizer with the Central American Writer’s group. Her debut memoir First in the Family is available for preorder.
NOTE: See site for guidelines and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/jessica-hoppe-discusses-first-family
L.A. Launch: Jason Magabo Perez & I ask about what falls away at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
The 2024 Asian American Literature Festival with Kaya Press, The Digital Sala, & Sampaguita present the Los Angeles book launch of I ask about what falls away, the second poetry collection by San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24, Jason Magabo Perez.
Joining In Person are MT Vallarta, David Maduli, Angela Peñaredondo, & Maria Bolaños. While Hari Alluri, Rachelle Cruz & Joseph “Butch” Schwarzkopf will appear virtually.
I ask about what falls away is an extended elegy set in the alleyways and Pacific-bound boulevards of San Diego, California during the current global health crisis. Called “an antidote to despair” (Muriel Leung, Imagine Us, The Swarm) and poetry that “complicates notions of solidarity, community, and justice, distilling the quotidian into something sacred” (Rachelle Cruz, God’s Will For Monsters), Jason Magabo Perez’s second full-length book of poetry serves as an intimate grief manifesto against the daily violations of racial capitalism. Perez, 2023-2024 San Diego Poet Laureate, employs a critical and improvisatory assemblage of lyric and litany, narrative and distillation, fragment and refrain to map city, solidarity, and history.
Jason Magabo Perez serves as San Diego Poet Laureate 2023-24. Perez is the author of Phenomenology of Superhero (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2016), This is for the mostless (WordTech Editions, 2017), and I ask about what falls away (Kaya Press, 2024). Perez’s work has appeared in Interim, Witness, The Feminist Wire, Marías at Sampaguitas, TLDTD, San Diego Union-Tribune, NPR’s Here & Now, among others. Recipient of a Challenge America Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, previous Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Art and Thought, and current Poet Laureate Fellow with Academy of American Poets, Perez has performed at notable venues such as the National Asian American Theater Festival, International Conference of the Philippines, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, La Jolla Playhouse, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Perez serves as a core organizer of The Digital Sala and as an Associate Editor at Ethnic Studies Review. Perez is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at California State University San Marcos.
Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is author of The Flayed City (Kaya Press), chapbook Our Echo of Sudden Mercy (Next Page Press) and, forthcoming, Tabako on the Windowsill (Brick Books). His award-winning work appears widely in print and online. Say here, say beyond. Word to Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and to the T’uubaa-asatx Nation, on whose unceded lands siya tries to practice kapwa-care at the threshold of grief & joy.
Maria Bolaños (she/siya/they) is the author of the poetry collection Sana; co-founder of Sampaguita Press; member of The Digital Sala; & co-organizer of the Filipino Canadian Book Festival. Maria’s work migrates them between Tongva, Ohlone, Musqueam, Squamish & Tsleil-Waututh lands, where she tries to be a good future ancestor by committing to radical spaces for the People’s art & healing, and building in community for a Free Palestine, land back, homecoming, and a liberated world.
Rachelle Cruz is the author of God’s Will for Monsters, which won an American Book Award and the 2016 Hillary Gravendyk Regional Poetry Prize. She co-edited Kuwento: Lost Things, an anthology of Philippine Myths with Lis P. Sipin-Gabon. The second edition of her comics text resource, Experiencing Comics: An Introduction to Reading, Discussing and Creating Comics, was published in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Strange Horizons, Poets & Writers Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Yellow Medicine Review, among other publications.
David Maduli is a father, educator and writer. His work, often inflected by decades as a public school teacher and DJ, has received the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize. Born in San Francisco, he is a longtime resident of East Oakland where he completed his MFA at Mills College with a fellowship in Community Poetics. His double-sided collection Alemany Bay Window/Redwood Coast Record Crate will be published next month by Sampaguita Press.
Angela Peñaredondo is a queer Filipinx interdisciplinary writer and educator. Peñaredondo is the author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, Winner of Hillary Gravendyk Prize) and Maroon (Jamii Publications). Their work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Pleiades Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. They have received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Macondo, Tin House, Monson Arts, and Fine Arts Center in Provincetown. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at California State University San Bernardino. They live in the San Gabriel Valley with their partner and many cramped but delighted plants.
Joseph “Butch” Schwarzkopf Jr. (he/him) is an Illawarra (Dharawal Country) based Filipinx poet and filmmaker, and author of Pagong Cannot Climb Trees (Sampaguita Press). He has performed at Outspoken Poetics, Unspoken Words festival, and The Digital Sala’s Tula for Typhoon Relief, and competed in the Bankstown Poetry Slam Grand Slam, and APS Multilingual Poetry Slam. His works have been published in the UTS Writers’ Anthology, UNSWeetened Literary Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, Mascara literary journal, and Marías at Sampaguitas magazine. He can often be found wandering the aisles of his local Kmart, driving to Cabramatta for late night bánh mì, or practicing Filipino Martial Arts in his backyard. His favorite word is pie.
MT Vallarta (pronouns: they/them) is a poet and Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. They are the author of the poetry collection, What You Refuse to Remember, winner of the 2022 Small Harbor Publishing Laureate Prize. Currently, they are hard at work on a research monograph titled Dismantle Me: Queer, Mad, and Anti-Imperialist Filipinx Poetry, that investigates the radical tradition of anti-imperialist aesthetics stewarded by queer, trans, mad, and disabled artists. They were raised on the unceded lands of the Tongva people, in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd Venice Beach Los Angeles, CA 90291
Open Mic Night with Chris Wood & Sean Hill at Rita House – In-Person Event
Sean Hill and Chris Wood host an Open Mic Night event at Rita House, a filming, and co-working space with an in-house podcasting and self-tape studio.
Note: See site link to purchase tickets.
Where: Rita House on 3rd
Date: Thursday, the 19th
Time: 8 pm (Doors at 7 pm)
Address: 5911 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, CA 90036
Website: https://www.tickettailor.com/events or https://www.instagram.com/ritahouseon3rd
Spectacular Storytime at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Spectacular Storytime is our most popular story time and is ready to delight and dazzle! This is also the prime time to see Pippi Longstocking, our bookstore cat in action.
Open to all ages. Free to attend.
NOTE: See site for RSVP, guidelines, and details.
Where: Once Upon a Time Bookstore
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/spectacular-story-time-94
Stranger Than Fiction Book Club: Mexikid at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Kids Event
Join us to discuss the book Mexikid by author Pedro Martin. For ages 9 – 12.
Pedro Martín has grown up hearing stories about his abuelio, his legendary crimefighting, grandfather who was once a part of the Mexican Revolution! But that doesn’t mean Pedro is excited at the news that Abuelito is coming to live with their family. After all, Pedro has 8 brothers and sisters and the house is crowded enough! Still, Pedro piles into the Winnebago with his family for a road trip to Mexico to bring Abuelito home, and what follows is the trip of a lifetime, one filled with laughs and heartache. Along the way, Pedro finally connects with his abuelito and learns what it means to grow up and find his grito.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct, Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11393996
Eli Greenbaum & Hell, No, We Didn’t Go: Firsthand Accounts of Vietnam War Protest and Resistance at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Eli Greenbaum will discuss Hell, No, We Didn’t Go: Firsthand Accounts of Vietnam War Protest and Resistance.
Eli Greenbaum presents firsthand accounts of men who were driven to resist or dodge the Vietnam draft at all costs. He introduces readers to a cross section of individuals who found ways to defy the draft by leaving the country, going to prison, becoming conscientious objectors, gaming the system, conspiring to fail physicals, and even enlisting—anything to avoid being drafted. These vivid essays and candid oral histories detail events that were often controversial, sometimes volatile, and almost always emotionally charged. Greenbaum brings together a chorus of first-person accounts of draft resistance and protest held together by an overarching personal narrative while providing context, commentary, and an unusual fifty-year perspective on the men’s decisions to avoid the Vietnam War, no matter what.
While some men passively accepted conscription as their fate, others actively resisted it, sometimes going to extremes. Each account reveals individual motivations, fears, and hopes—everything from disagreement with American foreign policy to questions of cowardice and the meaning of patriotism, all underlined by courage and determination.
Manuel Galvan is separated from his parents and sister during the mass expatriation of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the 1930s. He grows from a small, lost and confused boy into a wandering and angry teenager pushed out of high school and into the dockyards. Later as a loyal, passionate husband he is a man searching for a life of value and dignity despite his losses. Set against the backdrop of (Mexican) American history in Los Angeles, forced deportations, the demolition of Chavez Ravine, sterilization of Latinas, student protests and rising political consciousness, this story spans his life, from 6 to 60, and his search for his missing family, the missing pieces of his life.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
L. A. Book Launch: Jose Oseguera & And This House Is Only a Nest at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Live on YouTube Hybrid Event
Join us for the L.A. book launch of And This House is Only a Nest, the second full-length poetry collection by author, Jose Oseguera. The author is celebrating with a set of performances in the Wanda Coleman Theater, featuring: Elizabeth Metzger, Charles Jensen, Tamara Miller, and jimmy vega.
Jose Oseguera is the author of the poetry collection The Milk of Your Blood. His poems have appeared in Chautauqua, Sonora Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and Catamaran. He was the recipient of the Nancy Dew Taylor Award and has been nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart and Forward Prizes.
Elizabeth Metzger is the author of Lying In, as well as The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. Her third collection, The Going Is Forever, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2025. Elizabeth is a poetry editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Charles Jensen (he/him) is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Instructions Between Takeoff and Landing. His hybrid book blending memoir and film analysis, Splice of Life, will be published in May 2024. The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs designated him a 2019-2020 Cultural Trailblazer, and he is the recipient of the Outwrite Nonfiction Chapbook Award, Zócalo Poetry Prize, and an Artist’s Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. His poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Journal, New England Review, and Prairie Schooner, and essays have appeared in Exposition Review, Passages North, and The Florida Review. He hosts The Write Process, a podcast in which one writer tells the story of crafting one work from concept to completion. He lives in Long Beach and directs the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.
Tamara Miller is a writer, performer, parent, and political organizer. Recent work has appeared in New Ohio Review, McSweeney’s, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. In addition to an MFA in poetry from St. Mary’s College of California, she holds degrees in music and war strategy. Alum and scholarship recipient at Bread Loaf, Community of Writers, and Juniper. Find her on Instagram @tamaramillerwriter
jimmy vega is the child of Mexican immigrants, a Chicanx Los Angeles born and raised poet, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. their debut poetry collection will be published by What Books Press in 2025. Formally trained at California Institute of the Arts and at University of California, Los Angeles, they are a former 2023 ELL Faculty Fellow at CalArts. vega’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Broken Lens Journal, Maintenant, Furious Pure Magazine, and elsewhere. they are the Associate Director of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center.
Book Signings and reception to follow after the readings.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd Venice Beach Los Angeles, CA 90291
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music Event at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music is offered every 1st & 3rd Friday of the month and hosted by Loranzo Frank.
Featured guest: Samuel Rain Benjamin aka Complicated Passions
Author/Poet Samuel Rain Benjamin” 2024 Kern County Poet Laureate, aka “Complicated Passions,” creator of The Passions Private Collection and Dark Man Blues the series, will be in the building! He has published 23 books! For the past twenty years he has been writing and working with poets of all ages, his latest project Remembering LeLe A Poetic Tribute to the People of Lahaina, is an anthology written by young poets from around the country. He has performed across the country from Los Angeles to New York, he is also the co-founder of Innate Divinity Books a consulting and publishing company His latest release is “Love Is” coauthored with Jah Smalls.
Tickets at Eventbrite.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 8 pm – 12 am
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.depoet.info/swaam
Third Fridays Rapp Saloon Reading Series & Open Mic with host Elena Secota at Rapp Saloon, Santa Monica – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Third Fridays at Rapp Saloon: Open Mic & Featured Readers, will be this week, and is offered every 1st Friday of the month by host Elena Secota.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
The Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading Series will return to its original format with each Friday hosted and curated as follows:
First Friday: Cynthia Alessandra Briano
Second Friday: Russell Greene
Third Friday: Elena Secota
Fourth Friday: Jim Bolt
Fifth Friday: James Evert Jones
This is a hybrid event, live in-person while offering a Zoom option for our performers and guests.
Our featured guest poets and artists this month TBA.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Rapp Saloon at HISUA – In-Person & Online Event
Date: Friday, the 20th
Time: 8 pm – 11 pm
Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://www.facebook.com/RappSaloonReading or https://www.instagram.com/rappsaloon/?hl=en
Graphic Novel Book Club: The Marriage Portrait via Bal Canto Books – Online Event
Graphic novel fan or graphic novel curious? Join the Graphic Novel Book Club hosted by Bel Canto Books as we read and discuss a new graphic novel or memoir on the 3rd Saturday of each month at 10am PT | 1pm ET.
Participants will discuss Mexikid by author Pedro Martin.
Where: Bel Canto Books, Long Beach
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 10 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Rosh Hashanah Celebration: Charlotte Offsay & Challah Day at Children’s Book World – In-Person Kids Event
Charlotte Offsay presents her book Challah Day.
Charlotte Offsay is the author of several children’s books including A Grandma’s Magic, The Quiet Forest, Challah Day!, and The Big Beach Cleanup. When she is having a particularly loud day, she can always count on her two small bear cubs and husband to bring calm and quiet back to their home in Los Angeles, California. Learn more at CharlotteOffsay.com.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 10:30 pm
Address: 10580 ½ W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Generative Workshop: Wait, what? With Brendan Constantine at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event
Do you struggle finding a moment to write? Have trouble concentrating when you finally get the time? Brendan Constantine presents ‘Wait, what?’, a generative workshop for poets who are easily distracted. If you’ve ever struggled with writer’s block, this is the workshop for you. In addition to writing new work, participants will examine what it means to be distracted and to be at the mercy of ‘avid attention.’ You may discover that it is your greatest asset as a poet and an artist. No experience necessary.
Brendan Constantine is a poet based in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in many standards, including Poetry, The Nation, Best American Poetry, and Poem a Day. He currently teaches at The Windward School and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Since 2017, he has also been developing workshops for writers living with Aphasia and Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI). His fifth collection, The Opposites Game, is due out from Red Hen Press in 2026.
NOTE: See site for cost, details and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque
Date: Saturday, the 20th
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice Beach Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wait-what-workshop-tickets-993904243347
Storytime: Barney Saltzberg & The Smell of Wet Dog at Chevalier’s – In-Person Kids Event
Barney Saltzberg will read from his new heartwarming illustrated poetry book about a man’s best friend!
Equal parts heart-melting and stinky, The Smell of Wet Dog is a must-have illustrated poetry book for every young canine fan.
The smell of wet dog is not a good smell.
When a dog is wet it’s easy to tell.
Imagine moose and skunk perfume.
An odiferous stench, a paint-peeling plume.
Beloved author and illustrator Barney Saltzberg offers up twenty-seven poems on the evergreen topic of human’s best friend. Many have all the humor of a Shel Silverstein classic. Others are unexpectedly poignant, about separation anxiety or older dogs growing less spry. All are accompanied by Saltzberg’s lively and loveable artwork.
Whether you are a dog lover, love a dog lover, or are simply dog-curious, The Smell of Wet Dog is for someone in your life. One thing’s for sure: You’ll leave this book inspired to write an ode to a furry friend of your own.
Barney Saltzberg is the author of more than 30 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, My Book of Beautiful Oops!, Good Egg, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series. Additionally, he’s recorded four albums of songs for children. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two dogs, and a pond full of fish.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com
Feng Shui Poetry: Writing from the Lens of the Five Elements with Jen Cheng at Chinatown Studious Coworking Space – In-Person Event
Celebrate Harvest Moon Festival with a writing workshop that draws on Chinese wisdom. This workshop offers introductory knowledge of the Five Elements (Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood), group discussions, and writing exercises that participants can use to produce new work or engage with existing works in progress.
Through examination of nature and its interdependence of the elements, we learn to expand our perspectives and tap into emotional agility. The elements also invoke mythologies and other cultural tropes to engage in a grounded exploration. We will study sample poems that represent the Five Elements as prompts for our own writing.
No experience with Feng Shui or writing is needed. The workshop is open to all levels of poets and writers. Students are invited to bring curiosity. Proceeds from this workshop are donated to grassroots community group Chinatown Community for Equitable Development (CCED).
Jen Cheng is the current West Hollywood Poet Laureate, a 2023 California Arts Council Fellow, and a multidisciplinary storyteller who amplifies under-represented voices. Jen is the founder of Palabras Literary Salon, celebrating BIPOC poets and writers. Jen blends East-West cultural influences in a new form, Feng Shui Poetry. With stories for tween audiences, mystery detective fans, and queer love, Jen is a cross-pollinator and community curator. Find her on Twitter/IG @JenCvoice or her website: http://www.JenCvoice.com.
Where: Chinatown Studious Coworking Space
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am – 12:30 pm
Address: 418 Bamboo Lane A, Los Angeles, CA
Website: https://www.meetup.com/la-chinatown-coworking-community/events/303221908/
LGBTQIA Book Club via Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us on the third Saturday of the month for an engaging book discussion.
RSVP:
Email silver@lapl.org for the Zoom link.
Where: Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/lgbtq-book-club
Carolina Rivera Escamilla Discusses In a Corner of Your Country/En Una Esquina de tu Pais at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Author and educator Carolina Rivera Escamilla reads and discusses her new collection of poems, In a Corner of Your Country, along with the Spanish edition, En Una Esquina de tu Pais. The result of almost twenty years of work, much of this poetry is intentionally written for theatrical performance. As Escamilla says, “In these poems, I explore the feeling of space and time, the burden of memory in the neither here nor there, as linked to displacement, exile, and emigration, with women and children as protagonists.”
Carolina Rivera Escamilla is a writer, actor, and documentarian based in Los Angeles, California. Born in El Salvador, she studied theater arts and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied Spanish Literature. She went into exile in Canada in the 1980s. She is a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. Her first book of short stories, titled …after…, was published in 2015 (Worlds Stage Press). She is also the director, screenwriter, and producer of the documentary Manlio Argueta, Poets, and Volcanoes. Her publications include Collateral Damage, Women Who Write About War Anthology, (University of Virginia Press), Migrant Anthology, Somewhere We Are Humans, (Harper Collins Press), The Bomb Literary Magazine, and Altadena Poetry Review Anthology, Golden Foothills Press.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 2011 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Caffeinated Verse: Poetry Open Mic with Nathan Hassail at Malibu Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join Malibu Poet Laureate Nathan Hassall to hear readings of original pieces written by local poets and bring a poem of your own to read during the open mic. For adults.
Where: Malibu Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 23519 West Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11396665
Book Club: Go As a River at Gardena Mayme Dear Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss September’s selection, Go As A River by author Shelley Read. For Adults.
A 1940’s teenager running her family’s peach farm in Colorado meets a young man with a mysterious past. When tragedy strikes, Victoria is forced to leave her home and face a decision that will change her life forever.
Where: Gardena Mayme Dear Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 1731 W. Gardena Blvd., Gardena, CA 90247
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11695999
Freedom to Read Student Summit with PEN America at A C Bilbrew Library, LACL – In-Person Teen Event
High school students can engage with each other and youth advocacy leaders from PEN America in this workshop designed to discuss and counter growing threats to the freedom to read in California and nationwide. Featuring author Sherri L. Smith.
Join us in person at A C Bilbrew Library on Saturday, September 21 from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm for our youth activism workshops and catered lunch. At our Summit, student attendees will be able to learn the latest nationwide book ban data collected by PEN America, assess emerging censorship trends, and discuss ways to effectively advocate for free expression and access to diverse literature in our communities.
Our special guests include Sherri L. Smith, award-winning author of Flygirl and The Blossom and the Firefly, and the Golden State Readers, a youth-led group of freedom to read advocates from across California who will discuss their #BreakTheTape caution tape awareness campaign and ways that students can become campaign ambassadors during Banned Books Week.
This event is open to all high school students and is free to attend. Lunch will be provided. Capacity is limited so please register as soon as possible. If you have any questions, please email institute@pen.org.
Where: A C Bilbrew Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am – 3 pm
Address: 150 E. El Segundo Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90061
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11754846
Special Storytime: Will Power & Hana’s New Soul Food at Vroman’s – In-Person Kids Event
Will Power presents his children’s book Hana’s New Soul Food, which is about healthy eating choices, vegan soul food, and community in a heartwarming story of a boy’s love for his grandmother—and good food! Includes a vegan recipe!
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11 am
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/event
Storytime + Signing: Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young and Marie Chan at Bel Canto Books – In-Person Kids & MG Event
Children’s authors Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young and Marie Chan will present and sign their books:
Marie Chan will present Mamie Takes a Stand storytime and calligraphy activity.
In Mamie Takes a Stand MG readers will learn the little-known story of Mamie Tape, an eight-year-old Chinese American girl whose desire for knowledge and belonging led her family to fight for her right to attend public school in San Francisco.
Marie Chan shares stories that inspire love for all. Being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants fueled her passion to write children’s books that amplify underrepresented voices, highlight hidden figures in Asian American history, and build cross-cultural awareness. Marie received a BIPOC scholarship from SCBWI for her biography of Mamie Tape. Marie is a former public school teacher and lives in California with her husband, two children with a third in heaven, and her giant rabbit, Sunshine.
Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young will present her book Kalani’s Gift storytime and activity.
Kailani’s Gift is a picture book celebration of family, Filipino heritage, and dance that showcases the value of patience, perseverance, and blessing others with your gifts and talents.
Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young is a writer, speaker, former news reporter, and foodie. Her children’s book Cora Cooks Pancit received the Picture Book of the Year Award from the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association. Dorina is a self-proclaimed “glory chaser” who meets God as she runs trails through mountains or near the ocean. Dorina and her husband, Shawn, are raising three daughters in central California.
Where: Bel Canto Books, KUBO LB
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Address: 3976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Community Reads: Acorn Was A Little Wild at Octavia’s Bookshelf – In-Person Event
The Community Reads Series is an initiative aimed at connecting folks in the community, sharing stories between people of different generations, and creating opportunities for deeper connection and understanding.
It is a children’s reading time, not simply where stories are read from pages, but where the reader gets to share their own story as well- what roles they may serve, what community means to them, and what they’ve learned about what supports a vibrant, loving community of people.
Acorn is a little wild, and from his oak tree perch, he longs for adventure. When he’s the first of his friends to jump off the oak tree, he’s on his way into the wide world, full of new experiences that fill his little heart with excitement!
But when a squirrel buries Acorn deep underground, the thrill-seeking Acorn finds himself forced to stay still, in the darkness, for a long time. To turn this biggest setback into a wild adventure, Acorn may have to change from the inside out.
Where: Octavia’s Bookshelf
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
Address: 1353 North Hill Ave., Pasadena, CA 91104
Website: https://www.octaviasbookshelf.com/events/community-reads
AIRC Book Club: Postcolonial Love Poem at Huntington Park Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss September’s selection, Postcolonial Love Poem by author Natalie Diaz. For Adults.
This Pulitzer Prize winning book of poems explore complex topics such as Native perspectives, relationships with water and land, sexuality, and colonialism.
Where: Hunting Park Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 1:30 pm
Address: 6518 Miles Ave, Huntington Park, CA 90255
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org
Young Readers Book Club: Saving Chupie at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Kids Event
Participants will discuss September’s selection, Saving Chupie by author Amparo Ortiz. For ages 8 – 12.
Violeta Rubio only has one goal in mind for her first-ever trip to Puerto Rico: help Abuelita reopen her beloved restaurant, La Casita. After the destruction wrought by Huracán Maria, La Casita needs all the help it can get. The only problem is that Violeta’s whole family thinks they can do it without her. Now Violeta doesn’t have anyone to hang out with or anything to do. But when best friend duo Diego and Lorena need help capturing the rumored chupacabra, Violeta sees her chance to change all that. What she isn’t expecting is to run straight into the beast!
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 2 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11396688
An Afternoon of Fiction: Terry Wolverton and Jaime Balboa Present: Season of Eclipse and Missing Possibilities at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Online Livestream Hybrid Event
Join us for an exciting talk on writing between authors Terry Wolverton and Jaime Balboa, as they present their new books: Season of Eclipse and Missing Possibilities, respectively.
Terry Wolverton’s novel, Season of Eclipse, marks her twelfth book. In this thriller, a highly popular literary novelist is caught in the middle of an attack at JFK airport. Instead of running, she snaps photos, bringing her to the attention of Homeland Security. As she is placed in a Witness Protection Program, she begins a fight to reclaim her identity. Unsure of the forces after her, whether it’s a terrorist organization or the government, she runs for her life and must turn to unlikely sources for help.
Jaime Balboa’s new short story collection, Missing Possibilities, depicts several sides of the human experience in a blend of dream and reality: A doctor befriends a terminal cancer patient. A magical elf king befriends a child in need. Gods of old visit a contemporary church service. A customer in a neighborhood café is transported to an alternate reality. A teenager develops a quirky, wonderful superpower. The 16 stories in Missing Possibilities each grapple with key themes about what it means to be human. Alienation. Isolation. Transformation. Violence and hope, silence and voice, desperation and patience each is framed with compassion and shines light into the dark edges of society. In some cases, playfulness, humor, and light drive the stories while in others strong, gravitational forces bring us, with the characters themselves, to the breaking point.
Book Singing & reception to follow, after the readings.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 2 pm – 5 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd Venice Beach Los Angeles, CA 90291
Author Storytime: Celebrate & Meet Laura Numeroff at Billie Jean King Main Branch Library, LBPL – In-Person Kids Event
Mija Books invites you to join us in-person to meet children’s author Laura Numeroff, author of If You Give a Mouse A Cookie and others, to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Billie Jean King Main Library.
RSVP at site.
Where: Long Beach Billie Jean King Main Library, LBPL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm (pre-reading activity at 2 pm)
Address: 200 W. Broadway, Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: https://www.longbeach.gov/library/events
Expressions Poetry Readings & Open Mic at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join us in-person or via Zoom for Expressions L.A. Poetry Reading Series, featuring poetry readings and open poetry mic.
RSVP:
Please email studio@lapl.org for participation details.
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://lapl.org/whats-on/events/expressions-la-poetry-reading-series-and-open-mic-3
Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Deep Critique Writing Workshop – Online Event
Hosted by DKC, featured: Carl Stilwell, Jeanne Marei Spicuzza & Toti O’Brien + Poets published in Four Feathers Press online edition: Bitter Sweet.
Don Kingfisher Campbell hosts and curates these events.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event (See site)
Website: https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
Author Talk: Liane Moriarty & Here One Moment via L. A. County Library, LACL – Online Event
Join author Liane Moriarty as she chats about her newest novel, Here One Moment, a tale that explores free will and destiny, grief and love, and the endless struggle to maintain certainty and control in an uncertain world. For adults.
In Here One Moment, aside from a flight delay, there will be no problems. The flight will be smooth, it will land safely. Everyone who gets on the plane will get off. But almost all of them will be forever changed. Because on this ordinary, short, domestic flight, something extraordinary happens. People learn how and when they are going to die. For some, their death is far in the future—age 103!—and they laugh. But for six passengers, their predicted deaths are not far away at all.
How do they know this? There were ostensibly more interesting people on the flight but none would become as famous as “The Death Lady.” Not a single passenger or crew member will later recall noticing her board the plane. She wasn’t exceptionally old or young, rude or polite. She wasn’t drunk or nervous or pregnant. Her appearance and demeanor were unremarkable. But what she did on that flight was truly remarkable.
A few months later, one passenger dies exactly as she predicted. Then two more passengers die, again, as she said they would. Soon no one believes this is simply an entertaining story at a cocktail party.
A modern-day Jane Austen who humorously skewers social mores while spinning a web of mystery, the author asks profound questions in her newest I-can’t-wait-to-find-out-what-happens novel. Be sure to register now!
Liane Moriarty is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Truly Madly Guilty, Big Little Lies, The Husband’s Secret, The Hypnotist’s Love Story, What Alice Forgot, Apples Never Fall, and Here One Moment. She lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband and two children.
Where: L. A, County Library, LACL
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/11510309
Celebrating Latinx Middle Grade Stories at Bel Canto Books – In-Person Kids Event
Join Bel Canto Books for Celebrating Latinx Middle Grade Stories with Tamika Burgess, Ernesto Cisneros, Monica Magaña and Rex Ogle at KUBO LB.
Bel Canto Books is delighted to celebrate Latinx middle grade stories in honor of Latinx Heritage Month. Our authors include: Tamika Burgess (Sincerely Sicily), Ernesto Cisneros (Efrén Divided and Falling Short), Monica Magaña and Rex Ogle (Doña Quixote: Flight of the Witch).
Tamika Burgess (Ta-mee-Ka Bur-jess) is the acclaimed Middle Grade fiction author of Sincerely Sicily. Born to parents who migrated from Panamá, Tamika Burgess has always taken a particular interest in writing themes that explore her Black Latina identity. Because of her passion for spreading knowledge about her culture, Tamika writes fiction novels that feature Black Panamanian main characters. Tamika currently resides in Southern California. When she is not writing, Tamika is somewhere cozy, shopping online or listening to a podcast. Learn more about her at Tamikaburgess.com and follow her on social media @tameeksb on Instagram and Twitter.
Ernesto Cisneros is the nationally acclaimed author of Efrén Divided. He was born and raised in Santa Ana, California, where he still teaches. As an author, he believes in providing today’s youth with an honest depiction of characters with whom they can identify. Additionally, he strives to build empathy and belonging in our community. Eferén Divided is the winner of the 2020 Poppy Award in MG, 2 International Latino Book Awards, as well as the prestigious 2021 Pura Belpré Medal and an SCBWI Crystal Kite Award in 2021. FALLING SHORT is his sophomore book. It has garnered three starred reviews and the recipient of two International Latino Book Awards, and numerous Best of Lists.
Monica Magaña is an Illustrator from Los Angeles, California who has worked in advertisement, film, animation and TTRPGS. She enjoys drawing fantastical characters, whimsical stories and pushing for bold colors. With Doña Quixote being her first foray into publishing, she has found a new love in drawing comics. Monica now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with her husband, Jon, drawing, drinking as much tea as possible, checking her Animal Crossing island, and playing D&D with friends.
Rex Ogle is the author of Free Lunch, winner of the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award; Punching Bag, a NYPL Best Book; Abuela Don’t Forget Me, finalist for the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award; and Road Home. He lives in Los Angeles.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 3976 Atlantic Ave, Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrating-latinx-middle-grade-stories-tickets-1003274429827
Frogtown Art Walk Returns at Elysian Valley Arts Collective – In-Person Event
The Frogtown Artwalk is back for 2024.
September 21, 2024 (4 – 10pm):
Mike Sonksen hosts and curates Stories, Poms & Songs, including:
Music: DJ Hymnal
Poets: Constantine, Garcia, Hohman, Martin, Mitchell, Procopio, Ravenswood, Siders, Vincent, and FREE S’MORES.
Where: Frogtown Art Walk
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 4 pm – 10 pm
Address: 2041 Blake Ave., Los Angeles, CA
Website: https://www.facebook.com/frogtownarts/posts
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club: White Cat, Black Dog at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss a new collection of today’s finest story writers finding seeds in the Brothers Grimm: White Cat, Black Dog, by Kelly Link and illustrator Shaun Tan.
Kelly Link is the author of Get in Trouble, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Magic for Beginners, Stranger Things Happen, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have been published in The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” fellow and has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the co-founder of Small Beer Press and co-edits the occasional zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. She is also the co-owner of Book Moon, an independent bookstore in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 5 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/sci-fi-fantasy-book-club-white-cat-black-dog
Ticketed In-store Event: Edward Burns & A Kid from Marlboro Road at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Edward Burns presents and discusses his memoir A Kid from Marlboro Road.
This book opens at a wake where “Kneeney,” as his mother calls him, takes in the death of his beloved grandfather, Pop, a larger-than-life figure to him. The overflowing crowd includes sandhogs in their muddy work boots, old Irish biddies in black dresses and cops in uniform, along with the family in mourning. There’s an open casket, the first time he’s seen a dead person.
He watches it all, writing his observations for school projects, not yet realizing how this world defines and explains who he is and will be. His older brother Tommy has no patience for rules and domesticities, his father is emotionally elsewhere. Kneeney knows he’s the best thing his mother’s got, though her sadness envelops them both.
Stories cascade between the prior generation’s colorful origins in the Bronx and Hell’s Kitchen, and the softer world of Gibson, the town on Long Island where the family lives now. There are scenes in the Rockaways, at Belmont Race Track, and in Montauk. Out of individual struggles a collective warmth emerges, a certain kind of American story, raucous and joyous.
Includes black and white photographs from the author’s Irish-American New York family history.
NOTE: See site for tickets and details.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 5 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91001
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/Ed-Burns-discusses-A-Kid-from-Marlboro-Road
Beyond ‘Hispanic’ Heritage Month Event at LibroMobile, Santa Ana – In-Person Event
We’re so excited to bring back BEYOND “Hispanic” Heritage Month Sept. 15 – Oct. 15!
A series of weekly events at Bristol Court.
A Country Called Syria: Food X Heritage Open Mic & Conversation with Dania Ayah Alkhouli.
Dania Ayah Alkhouli is a distinguished Syrian writer, poet, editor, and public speaker with 15 years of experience in the literary arts. She has authored three poetry and prose collections, with a fourth forthcoming, exploring themes such as feminism, sexism, religion and culture, death and grief, domestic violence/sexual assault, survivorship, and her homeland, Syria.
RSVP
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: LibroMobile, Santa Ana (inside the bookstore)
Date: Saturday, the 21st
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St., #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Melrose Trading Post Event by Greenway Arts Alliance at Melrose Trading Post at Fairfax H.S. – In-Person Event
The Melrose Trading Post is a pioneering arts-based marketplace held every Sunday at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles, CA with 275 local creative small business vendors, delicious food booths and local live music.
MTP was founded in 1997 with a mission to champion small businesses, art and community. The market funds Greenway Arts Alliance’s arts education programming and provides employment and leadership development opportunities for students at Fairfax High School.
NOTE: Check every Sunday for story time and reading events
Where: Melrose Trading Post, Greenway Main Stage at Fairfax HS
Date: Sunday, the 22nd (Every Sunday)
Time: 10 am – 5 pm
Address: 7850 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046
Website: https://melrosetradingpost.org/tickets/
Orange County Children’s Book Festival at Orange Coast College – In-Person Kids & Family Event
Held on the campus of Orange Coast College and set under the bright blue skies of Orange County is the best children’s book festival in the country!
Meet and get autographs from some of your favorite superstar authors and illustrators. Enjoy professional storytellers, family-friendly entertainment, FREE admission and parking, and so much more. Join the 7,000 families who attend Orange County’s favorite place for booklovers.
Come join the fun at Orange Coast College!
*Buy books from a variety of authors and illustrators and get them autographed.
*Meet popular sci-fi characters and take a photo with them.
*Check out booksellers and literacy-related exhibitors.
*Be entertained by one of our four stages.
*Enjoy tasty options from the food trucks…
Blue Stage Moderator: Erika J. Kendrick
Malik Books Authors:
10:00 AM Erika J. Kendrick – Instafamous
10:00 AM Cynthia Hammer – Iceberg & Seven Rivers
10:00 AM Zohreh Ghahremani – Memory Garden
12:05 PM Craig Smith – Coloring with Craig
12:45 PM Rachel Montez Minor – See You on the Other Side
1:05 PM Linda Liu – Sour Apple
1:25 PM April Showers – Afro Unicorn
1:45 PM Will Power – Nana’s New Soul Food
2:05 PM Austin HIghsmith Garces – The Miracle Tree.
Full Schedule go to: http://www.kidsbookfestival.com
Where: Orange Coast College
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 10 am – 4 pm
Address: 2701 Fairview Rd., Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Website: https://malikbooks.com/events-1/ola/services/orange-county-children-s-book-festival
826LA@Hammer: Typewriter Tributes & Tribulations Workshop at Hammer Museum – In-Person Teen/YA Event
Free collaborative workshops, presented with 826LA, combine writing with creative activities for groups of up to 20 students.
Recommended for ages 8–14.
Reservations encouraged. Visit 826la.org or call 310-915-0200.
Work collaboratively to create and perform poetry on typewriters in the RENT Poet tradition, where writing becomes a game and even our mistakes become part of the art we make.
Facilitated by author, Poet Laureate of West Hollywood, and founder of RENT Poet, Brian Sonia-Wallace.
Where: Hammer Museum
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Address: 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2024/826lahammer-typewriter-tributes-tribulations
Latinx Book Club: Vanishing Maps at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the book Vanishing Maps: A Novel by author Cristina Garcia.
From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a follow-up novel 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.
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
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 2 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://www.cellardoorbookstore.com/event/latinx-book-club-vanishing-maps
La Palabra Reading Series & Open Mic with Chloe Diaz, Featuring: Anatalia Valle & Ivan Salinas at Avenue 50 Studios – In-Person Event
La Palabra Reading Series & Open Mic is hosted monthly by Chloe Diaz and today’s featured poets are Anatalia Valle & Ivan Salinas.
Anatalia Vallez is a writer, actor and creative alchemist from Orange County, California with roots in Guerrero Mexico. Her work centers on self-love, ancestral connections and social justice. She is the author of a poetry collection: The Most Spectacular Mistake (FlowerSong Press, 2020) featured in the LA Times, LibroMobile and KPFK Radio’s Nuestra Voz. LA is dear to her heart as she just completed her MFA in Television, Film and Theatre from Cal State LA in 2023.
She is currently working on a new play, La Niña Del Volcán, with support from the Wayward Artist EMBARK program as well as the release of a Homies Who Submit zine featuring twenty poets from across the country.
Iván Salinas was born in Mexico City, raised in the 818. He is the co-editor of Drifter Zine, a theme-based publication showcasing artists & writers of the San Fernando Valley and beyond. His work has been published in The Acentos Review, Mobile Data Mag, La Raíz Magazine, and elsewhere both in print and online. He is working on an extended edition of his zine, Dealer: prosa carcacha. He lives in Panorama City with Madi and their dog, Rocket.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: La Palabra at Avenue 50 Studios
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 131 N. Avenue 50, Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://www.instagram.com/p/C_eNCFmy-4C/
Palabras Literary Salon with Jen Cheng, Featuring Brent Ameneyro at Latinix with Plants – In-Person Event
BIPOC-centered literary community event co-hosted with Latinx with Plants, in the open-air greenhouse in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles.
We are honored to feature the inspiring Brent Ameneyro (A Face Out of Clay). Invited readers include a curated diverse roster of poets and writers.
Invited guest readers list include: Lylliam Posadas, Alexa Vasquez, Pallavi Dhawan, William Ramirez, Ingrid M. Calderon, James Evert Jones, Jose Rios, Frankie Tan, Henry Medina, and host Jen Cheng (list subject to change). This salon encourages new work by poets and writers.
This salon’s theme is “cultivating home,” sharing stories of finding that safe place. From Brent:
Maya Angelou once wrote, “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” The “safe place” Angelou references can be physical, but it can also be a state of being, a person, or a community. We “cultivate home” on the page with our words, in bookstores and libraries, in gardens, and with people who make us feel safe and loved.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Latinx with Plants
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: 2208 Cesar Chavez Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90033
Website: https://www.eventbritelatinx-with-plants-sept-edition-tickets-1010119313057
Storytime and Drawing with LeUen Pham for Kitty-Com Club: Things That Go at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Kids Event
Join New York Times bestselling illustrator LeUyen Pham as she shares her newest board book, Kitty-Corn Club: Things That Go. Uyen will read the book, do an interactive drawing activity, and then sign books. Best for ages 0+.
Author Shannon Hale and illustrator LeUyen Pham, Things That Go is an original concept board book showing young Kitty-Corns things that race, fly, pedal, paddle, and go.
From sports cars to bumper cars, skateboards to hoverboards, submarines to trampolines, and every silly vehicle in between, Kitty and Unicorn demonstrate the many ways to ZOOM! in this original board book.
LeUyen Pham has illustrated more than one hundred books for children, including the Caldecott Honor Book Bear Came Along by Richard T. Morris, and the bestselling Princess in Black series by Shannon and Dean Hale. She is the cocreator, along with Shannon Hale, of the bestselling Friends series. Her own books include Outside, Inside, The Bear Who Wasn’t There, and Big Sister, Little Sister. leuyenpham.com
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 2 pm – 3:30 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: https://www.shoponceuponatime.com/event/kitty-corn-things-that-go
ALOUD Reading Series: ALOUD in Review: Banned Books at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Kick off national Banned Books Week with a very special afternoon featuring actors performing selections from a few of the more than a few of the banned books.
Curated, Produced & Directed by Cedering Fox, WORDTheatre.
Featuring: Amy Brenneman, Gabrielle Carteris, Justin Chien, Jason George, Jason Butler Harner, Amatus-sami Karim, Lou Romano, Stephen Tobolowsky, Bruce Vilanch
*Appearances subject to final availability
Co-presented with WORDTheatre
Kick off national Banned Books Week with a very special afternoon featuring actors performing selections from a few of the more than 4,000 books that have been banned in our country from public and school libraries. Special guests include Amy Brenneman (NYPD Blue), Gabrielle Carteris (Beverly Hills, 90210), Justin Chien (The Brothers Sun), Jason George (Station 19), Jason Butler Harner (Ozark), Amatus-sami Karim (The Last Two Lovers at the End of the World), Lou Romano (Ratatouille), Stephen Tobolowsky (Groundhog Day), Bruce Vilanch (Hollywood Squares).
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 3 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aloud-in-revue-banned-books-registration-97117506977me
Roar Shack Reading Event with David Rocklin at Echo Park Time Travel Mart – In-Person Event
Join Roar Shack host David Rocklin to welcome features Sharon Sekaran, Julie Stark, Erica Blumfield, Hanna Sward, Patrick O’Neil and Toni Ann Johnson.
Sharon Sekaran is an Indian American educator and novelist known for such books as The Prayer Room and Lucky Boy.
Julie Stark is a bestselling American author of romance and fantasy novels. She also writes with the pen names JK Beck and J. Kenner.
Erica Blumfield is a creative nonfiction writer who explores the highs and lows of living with bipolar disorder.
Hanna Sward is the daughter of the late poet, Robert Sward. She is the multi award-winning author of Strip: A Memoir, receiving the attention of authors such as Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, Melissa Broder, and NYT bestselling novelists Jill Schary Robinson and Caroline Leavitt.
Patrick O’Neil is the author of the memoirs Anarchy At The Circle K (Punk Hostage Press, 2022), Gun, Needle, Spoon (Dzanc Books, 2015), and Hold-Up (13e Note Editions, 2013). He is the co-author of two instructional writing manuals, Writing Your Way to Recovery: How Stories Can Save Our Lives (Independent Press, 2021), with the author James Brown.
Toni Ann Johnson is the winner of the 2021 Flannery O’Connor Award for short fiction with her linked collection Light Skin Gone to Waste, released in October 2022.
Don’t miss it!
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Echo Park Time Travel Mart
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 4 pm – 6 pm
Address: 1714 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://allevents.in/los%20angeles/roar-shacks-september-show/200027036611005#google_vignette
Earth Seed Symposium Book Club at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Join North Figueroa Bookshop for a speculative fiction book club in the tradition of Octavia Butler.
This month’s selection is Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor.
An award-winning literary author enters the world of magical realism with her World Fantasy Awad-winning novel of a remarkable woman in post-apocalyptic Africa.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-m0blil40
Author Talk: Jesse Katz, with Eric Nazarian, & The Rent Collectors at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us for a conversation with Jesse Katz, author of the acclaimed new book, The Rent Collectors, in conversation with Eric Nazarian.
This event will be followed by a Q&A and a signing.
Reserve a space on EVENTBRITE!
Baby-faced teen Giovanni Macedo is desperate to find belonging in one of LA’s most predatory gangs, the Columbia Lil Cycos—so desperate that he agrees to kill an undocumented Mexican street vendor. The vendor, Francisco Clemente, had been refusing to give in to the gang’s shakedown demands. But Giovanni botches the hit, accidentally killing a newborn instead. The overlords who rule the Lil Cycos from a Supermax prison 1,000 miles away must be placated and Giovanni is lured across the border where, in turn, the gang botches his killing. And so, incredibly, Giovanni rises from the dead, determined to both seek redemption for his unforgivable crime and take down the gang who drove him to do it.
With The Rent Collectors, Jesse Katz has built a teeth clenching and breathless narrative that explicates the difficult and proud lives of undocumented black-market workers who are being extorted by the gangs and fined by the city of LA—in other words, exploited by two sets of rent collectors.
Jesse Katz is a former Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles magazine writer whose honors include the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, PEN Center USA’s Literary Journalism Award, a National Magazine Award nomination, and two shared Pulitzer Prizes. As a volunteer with InsideOUT Writers, he has mentored incarcerated teenagers at Central Juvenile Hall and the former California Youth Authority. His first book, The Opposite Field, was set in LA’s immigrant suburbs.
Filmmaker and screenwriter Eric Nazarian is an honors graduate of the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts and the recipient of the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for his screenplay Giants. Currently, he is in post-production on Die Like a Man, a rite of passage feature film about the aftereffects of gun violence in a rapidly gentrifying Westside neighborhood in L.A. While making the film, Nazarian created a social impact audiovisual literacy program with the aim of combating gun violence in at-risk communities through grassroots filmmaking.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday, the 22nd
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://shop.villagewell.com/events/42080
Historical Romance Book Club: Bootlegger’s Bounty at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
September’s Historical Romance Book Club is led by orders manager Katie S, and participants will discuss the novel Bootlegger’s Bounty by author Adriana Herrera.
Everyone is welcome!
RSVP required.
NOTE: See site for tickets, guidelines, and details.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 22nd
Time: 7:15 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 3806 Main Street, Culver City, CA 90323
Website: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets
Los Angeles Literature 