Community Writing Group at Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us at Saved By A Story to ignite your creativity, share your stories, and find connection in a non-judgmental, supportive environment. Participants aged 14 and over are encouraged to express their diverse experiences, providing members of other generations the opportunity to witness and understand our unique perspectives. In later sessions, we will draft and workshop our stories together.

Where: Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm

Address: 12006 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/community-writing-group

One Book, One Coast: They Called Us Enemy at Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

It’s a One Book, One Coast Affair! Join us as we discuss George Takei’s They Called Us Enemy. It will be a no-stress chat-and-craft atmosphere. We will create a timeline collage representing our own life stories as we discuss his.

Where: Mark Twain Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 4 pm – 5 pm

Address: 9621 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90003

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/one-book-one-coast-book-talk-craft

Julia Quinn Book Club: Queen Charlotte at Manhattan Beach Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for a facilitated discussion of Queen Charlotte in preparation for Julia Quinn’s speaking engagement at Mira Costa High School! A limited number of copies will be available in early April for checkout. For adults.

Attendance is limited and advance registration is required. To sign up, see library staff, or register online at Visit.LACountyLibrary.org/Events and filter by location or event date.

This event is generously sponsored by Manhattan Beach Friends of the Library.

In 1761, on a sunny day in September, a King and Queen met for the very first time. They were married within hours.

Born a German Princess, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was beautiful, headstrong, and fiercely intelligent… not precisely the attributes the British Court had been seeking in a spouse for the young King George III. But her fire and independence were exactly what she, and her King, needed.

Because George has secrets… secrets with the potential to shake the very foundations of the monarchy.

Thrust into her new role, Charlotte must navigate the intricate politics of the court―with the newly-titled Lady Danbury at her side―all the while guarding her heart, because she is falling in love with the King…even as he pushes her away. Now, Charlotte must learn to rule, and to understand that she has been given the power to remake society, fulfilling her destiny as Queen. But she also must fight for the love growing between her and George as people first, royals second. As she says to him: “Fight with me! Fight for me!”

Where: Manhattan Beach Library, LACL

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 5 pm – 6 pm

Address: 1201 W. 48^th Street, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16129096

Read, Relax & Repeat: A Book Club for Adults: The Guest List at Sunkist Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us as we dive into the popular novel, The Guest List by Lucy Foley. We will have a meaningful and lively conversation as we discuss this fun, suspenseful novel! For Adults.

Where: Sunkist Library, LACL

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 840 Puente Ave., La Puente, CA 91746

A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world and redefine what it means to be afraid.

Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

Jordan Peele is an Oscar and Emmy Award–winning writer, producer, and director. His debut feature, Get Out, was released in 2017 to widespread acclaim, earning four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Original Screenplay for Peele. In 2019, Peele wrote, produced, and directed his second feature, Us, which instantly became a smash hit with audiences and critics alike, posting the largest box-office opening for an original horror movie ever. In the summer of 2022, Peele released his third feature, the sci-fi horror epic Nope, which also opened to number one at the box office. Also in 2022, Peele and Monkeypaw released the Henry Selick–directed stop-motion film Wendell & Wild for Netflix, which Peele co-wrote, produced, and provided a voice. Prior to Get Out, Peele was the co-creator of Comedy Central’s Key & Peele. Across five seasons, the show’s unique take on sketch comedy became a viral sensation online. In 2012, Peele formed his film and television company, Monkeypaw Productions, to champion unconventional storytelling through genre.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Monday the18^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: Online Zoom Event 

The workshop is designed to ignite imagination, encourage free associative writing, and foster introspection through handpicked poetry and curated prompts. There will usually be three poems and three prompts to write per workshop.

Hosted by Angela Wurtzel

angelawurtzelmft.com

Buy A Ticket at website,

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 1200 N. Alvarado St Unit D, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://heavymannerslibrary.com/events/writing-from-the-inside-out-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-5-18

Mar Vista Book Club: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow at Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 12006 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mar-vista-book-club

Rupo Open Mic at Back to the Grind in Riverside – In-Person Event

RUPO Open Mic is every Monday Night at Back to the Grind in Riverside.

Every Monday from 7 pm to 9 pm. Sign-ups are at 6:30 pm 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 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501

Website: Facebook Page

Ticketed: Steven Rowley, with Annabelle Gurwitch, & Take Me with You at Book Soup Off-site at Beverly Hills Public Library – In-Person Event

Steven Rowley, in conversation with Annabelle Gurwitch, will discuss and sign Take Me With You.

We are all alien, even to the people who know us best.

College professor Jesse del Ruth has been abandoned. Thirty years into their relationship, Jesse witnesses his husband, Norman, get out of bed late one night, walk into their Joshua Tree backyard, step into a strange beam of light and…disappear. How could Norman desert him after a lifetime together? Where did he go? And, most confoundingly…will he ever return? Jesse knew they were both feeling stuck, longing for something they couldn’t quite name. But was their rut so deep that Norman’s only option was to leave Jesse behind?

As Jesse struggles to understand Norman’s disappearance, he tries to piece together his new reality. Is he expected to wait patiently for a partner who may never come back? Or is this an opportunity for reinvention? He is, after all, alone for the first time in his adult life. Should he return to the classroom? Put in a pool? Get a dog? Call his estranged mother? What does it mean to be alone when you’ve always been one half of a whole?

When Norman’s sister, Lally, lands on Jesse’s doorstep with an urgent request, Norman’s absence becomes even more profound. Add to Jesse’s grief and confusion a conspiracy-theorist neighbor, a strange man following him, and suspicions that he may have had a hand in Norman’s disappearance, and Jesse starts to crack under the pressure. With his husband missing and the world closing in, all eyes are on Jesse. Before he can understand how Norman could leave it all behind, Jesse must confront what it means to stay.

In Take Me With You, Steven Rowley brings his resonant wit and emotional insight to an epic love story—an exploration of the forces that draw two people into the same orbit and the gravity that threatens to pull them apart.

Steven Rowley is the New York Times bestselling author of six novels, including Lily and the Octopus, a Washington Post Notable Book; The Editor, an NPR Best Book of the Year; The Guncle, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor; and The Celebrants, a Today Show Read with Jenna book club pick. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages. He resides in Palm Springs, California.

NOTE: See site for tickets and details.

Where: Book Soup Off-site at Beverly Hills Public Library

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 444 N Rexford Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-05-18/ticketed-event-steven-rowley

Virtual Book Group: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Virtual Program, SMPL – Online Event

This community-led, book discussion group meets virtually at 7 p.m. on the third Monday of the month. This book discusses a wide range of books, chosen by the members. To register, email library@santamonica.gov.

The titles include:

May 2026: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

Where: Virtual Event, SMPL

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: Event Page

Tiffany Ezuma, with Allison Raskin, & Major Gift: An 831 Stories Romance at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Tiffany Ezuma, in conversation with Allison Raskin, will discuss 831 Stories Romance.

The widow of a tech mogul is determined to give her wealth away—and keep one secret from the journalist tasked with telling her story. A hot new take on the billionaire romance.

When Ndidi Davis’s husband unexpectedly dies, she’s left bereft—and with $2.1 billion in the bank. She channels her grief into launching a charitable foundation, but the endeavor is made more complicated by Geoffrey Campbell, an ambitious, perceptive journalist assigned to profile her philanthropic pursuit. Geoffrey’s reporting slowly uncovers Ndidi’s whole heart—and some parts of her past she’s worked hard to keep out of the public eye.

Tiffany Ezuma is a screenwriter and novelist who lives and writes in Los Angeles. She has a BA in political science and English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California. She does not have a cat, but if she did, this is where she would mention it.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-05-18/tiffany-ezuma

Monday Night Fiction Workshop with Raquel Baker 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 is passionate about discussing everything related to the craft and social significance of literature!

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)

What happens when intelligent machines aren’t just in our pockets but are also driving our cars, making our decisions, folding our laundry, and educating our kids?

You’ve heard the hype: AI will make us healthier, give every child a personalized tutor, run our businesses more efficiently, return hours of free time to our overworked brains, and make discoveries previously unimagined by humankind. The AI future is going to be unlike any other technological revolu­tion. But what does that really mean? And will AI truly make life better?

To find out, award-winning journalist Joanna Stern surrendered her life to artificial intelligence for one year. The results are both hilarious and unsettling.

I Am Not a Robot is like a time machine trip to the very near future, where AI promises to be your doctor, chauffeur, teacher, masseuse, coworker, thera­pist, financial planner, chef, housekeeper, and even…romantic partner. Your colleague might be using ChatGPT to write emails at work, but Joanna used AI tools and robots to do household chores, to manage her health, and to transport her family on vacation. If there was a decision to make or a task to do, she let AI go first. Along the way, she conducted exclusive interviews with the tech leaders building this future, then reported back from the front lines as your funny, no-nonsense tour guide.

Of course, tech’s sunny promises never tell the whole story, and that’s what Joanna is here to share. Filled with illustrations and photographs, this book offers less hype, more clarity, and as little jargon as humanly (or robotically) possible. It’s an AI guide for ordinary people—not the tech bros who tried to sell you a cruise to the metaverse or an NFT of a cartoon monkey.

This book is not the definitive story, because we’re only a few years into the AI revolution. But after a year of living as a human lab rat, Joanna delivers one of the clearest—and funniest—pictures yet of what’s really happening and what it means for you.

Joanna Stern is an Emmy Award-winning technology journalist. She spent twelve years at The Wall Street Journal, where her personal technology columns and video series made her one of the most-watched voices in consumer tech. She now runs her own media company, producing videos and newsletters that help people navigate the tech reshaping daily life, and serves as NBC News chief technology analyst. Her 2021 documentary E-Ternal won an Emmy for Outstanding Science, Technology or Environmental Coverage. A two-time Gerald Loeb Award winner and Pulitzer finalist, she often appears on national television, radio, and podcasts like The Vergecast. She was previously a technology editor at ABC News and The Verge.

Where: Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre at New Roads School

Date: Monday the 18^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block for a brief intro and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgement. Afterwards, you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories, and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

NEW! Toddler Tuesdays: A Travelin’ Storytime – Session 1 at Ocean Park Branch Library, SMPL – In-Person Kids Event

This fun and engaging weekly series of stories, songs, and rhymes travels to different library locations. Limited space; first come, first served. For ages walking – 3 years.

Where: Ocean Park Branch Library, SMPL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 10:30 am – 11 am

Address: 2601 Main St., Santa Monica, CA 90405

Website: Event Page

Virtual Book Club: This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman via La Crescenta Library, LACL – Online Event

Join us for the weekly Virtual Book Club. In May we will be discussing This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman. For adults.

Please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for your link to join.

Each week we will read and discuss 1/4 of the book. Please see the weekly discussion breakdown below.

Week 3: May 19: Chapters 9, Tanglewood – 13, The Last Grown-Up — Pages 147 – 230

Week 4: May 26: Chapters 14, $ – 17, Poppy — Pages 231 – to the end of the book.

Was this just a brief skirmish, or the beginning of a thirty-year feud? In the Rubenstein family, it could go either way. When their beloved older sister passes away, Sylvia and Helen Rubinstein are unmoored. A misunderstanding about apple cake turns into decades of stubborn silence. Busy with their own lives-divorces, dating, career setbacks, college applications, bat mitzvahs, and ballet recitals-their children do not want to get involved. As for their grandchildren? Impossible. With This is Not About Us, master storyteller Allegra Goodman, whose prior collection was heralded as “one of the most astute and engaging books about American family life” (The Boston Globe), returns to the form and subject that endeared her to legions of readers. Sharply observed and laced with humor, This is Not About Us is a story of growing up and growing old, the weight of parental expectations, and the complex connection between sisters. A big-hearted book about the love that binds a family across generations.

Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: Online Zoom Event (see site)

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/

Author Talk: Nir Eyal & Beyond Belief via Virtual Program, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to hear Nir Eyal present and discuss Beyond Belief.

Most of your limits aren’t physical. They’re psychological. In Beyond Belief, Nir Eyal reveals how the hidden assumptions you carry shape what you see, how you feel, and what you do—and how to replace them with beliefs that unlock your true potential.

Grounded in neuroscience, psychology, and unforgettable case studies, Eyal introduces the Three Powers of Belief: Attention, Anticipation, and Agency. Mastering these powers transforms how you see challenges, feel about the future, and act when it matters most.

You’ll learn how to:

Spot hidden opportunities and solutions others overlook.

Reclaim your mood, energy, and confidence by reshaping your beliefs.

Stay calm, decisive, and in control when life feels uncertain.

Break free from beliefs that sabotage your health, relationships, and career.

Push further, last longer, and achieve beyond your limits.

If you’ve ever quit too soon, stalled in your career, or sabotaged your own goals, this book gives you the science and the system to go further than you thought possible.

Surgeries without anesthesia. Placebos that heal. Resilience multiplied 240 times longer. Beyond Belief reveals the science behind these breakthroughs and shows why your limits aren’t fixed—they’re learned. And with the right beliefs, you can achieve breakthrough results.

Register now to learn more about how we can unlock our true potential.

Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and human potential. He previously taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. He is the author of the international bestsellers Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, which have sold over 1 million copies in more than 30 languages. As an active angel investor, Nir has backed multi-billion-dollar companies that implement his methodologies, including Canva, Kahoot!, and others. In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com, his writing has been featured in The New York Times and Harvard Business Review, and he is a regular contributor to Psychology Today.

Where: Virtual Program, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16208783

NEW! Toddler Tuesdays: A Travelin’ Storytime – Session 2 at Ocean Park Branch Library, SMPL – In-Person Kids Event

This fun and engaging weekly series of stories, songs, and rhymes travels to different library locations. Limited space; first come, first served. For ages walking – 3 years.

Where: Ocean Park Branch Library SMPL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 11:30 am – 12 pm

Address: 2601 Main St., Santa Monica, CA 90405

Website: Event Page

Bestsellers Book Club: They Called Us Enemy at Stevenson Ranch Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for the One Book One Coast Book Discussion of They Called Us Enemy by George Takai. For adults.

New York Times Bestseller and this year’s selection for One Book, One Coast! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?

Where: Stevenson Ranch Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 12 pm – 1 pm

Address: 25950 The Old Rd., Stevenson Ranch, CA 91381

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16416196

Book Club: Mother Mary Comes to Me at Montebello Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Mother Mary Comes to Me, by Arundhati Roy. There are copies available at the Circulation Desk upon request. For Adults For adults.

Where: Montebello Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 3 pm – 4 pm

Address: 1550 W. Beverly Blvd, Montebello, CA 90640

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16110987

Book Club: Crying in H Mart at Pico Rivera Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. For adults.

For Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander Month, the Pico Rivera Library Book Club will be discussing Michelle Zauner’s memoir, Crying in H Mart. For adults.

Indie rockstar Michelle Zauner from the pop band Japanese Breakfast shares an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

Where: Pico Rivera Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 9001 Mines Ave, Pico Rivera, CA 90660 

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/15765241

Naughty Novel Society Romance eBook Club: Fall of Ruin and Wrath at Lawndale Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer L. Armentrout. For adults.

Explore the Romance genre and learn about all the digital resources the library has to offer with this unique book club. We will be primarily utilizing the free digital resources Libby and Hoopla with limited hard copies available. For adults.

May’s Pick: Fall of Wrath and Ruin by Jennifer L. Armentrout.

Long ago, the world was destroyed by gods. Only nine cities were spared. Separated by vast wilderness teeming with monsters and unimaginable dangers, each city is now ruled by a guardian—royalty who feed on mortal pleasure. Born with an intuition that never fails, Calista knows her talents are of great value to the power-hungry of the world, so she lives hidden as a courtesan of the Baron of Archwood. In exchange for his protection, she grants him information. Calista must choose: follow her intuition to safety or follow her heart to her downfall. Publisher description.

Where: Lawndale Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 14615 Burin Ave., Lawndale, CA 90260

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16215841

Join the Largest Book Club on the West Coast: They Called Us Enemy at Charter Oak Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for the One Book One Coast Book Discussion of They Called Us Enemy by George Takai. For adults.

New York Times Bestseller and this year’s selection for One Book, One Coast! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?

Where: Charter Oak Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 20540 E. Arrow Hwy., Covina, CA 91724

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16391303

The Largest Book Club on the West Coast: They Called Us Enemy at Baldwin Park Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for the One Book One Coast Book Discussion of They Called Us Enemy by George Takai. For adults.

New York Times Bestseller and this year’s selection for One Book, One Coast! A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei’s childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon—and America itself—in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s—and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. What does it mean to be American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?

Where: Baldwin Park Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 4181 Baldwin Park Blvd., Baldwin Park, CA 91706

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16085069

Book Club Tuesdays: Count My Lies at Hollydale Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us this month for a facilitated discussion of Count My Lies by Sophie Stava. For adults.

Copies of the current title are available to check-out at the customer service desk while supplies last. New members are always welcome!

Where: Hollydale Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 12000 Garfield Ave., South Gate, CA 90280

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16353105

Melissa Clark & Force of Nature at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Melissa Clark to discuss and sign Force of Nature.

This fresh, smart, and funny young adult debut with a speculative twist asks the question: What if Mother Nature was a teenage girl?

Who is Chloe Lovejoy, really? A straight-C student, a girl with a crush on the cutie from chorus, an all-powerful being responsible for taking care of the planet…or perhaps all three. That’s what Chloe finds out on her sixteenth birthday, when she unexpectedly inherits the role of Mother Nature from her grandmother. Chloe is overwhelmed, to say the least. Then, when the unthinkable happens, and Grandma is no longer around to guide her, Chloe is left to oversee the natural laws of the world all by herself.

Between managing earthquakes and hurricanes, rivals at school, and her not-very-helpful mother, Chloe, tries to maintain balance and harmony on Earth and in her everyday life. But someone in the community has an eye toward harnessing her powers for nefarious purposes, which means Chloe needs to dig deep and get her act together before her secret is found out. After all, the universe is depending on her.

Force of Nature is an utterly unique coming of age story about a teen girl rising to the occasion, even when she feels completely in over her head.

Melissa Clark is an author, television writer, podcast creator, and college instructor. Her novels include, Swimming Upstream, Slowly; Imperfect; and Bear Witness. Melissa created, executive produced, and wrote multiple episodes of the award-winning animated television series, Braceface, which starred the voice of Alicia Silverstone and Michael Cera, and has written scripts for Rolie Polie Olie, Sweet Valley High, and Totally Spies, among others. Her episodic podcasts include, Becoming Mother Nature, as well as Grandma For President, available wherever you get your podcasts. Melissa is currently co-producing a true-crime podcast forthcoming from Audible. She teaches writing courses at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 225 26^th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402 

Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-05-19/melissa-clark-force-nature

Original Book Club: Brawler at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Our longest running book club! We read mostly contemporary fiction with the occasional non-fic thrown in. To join our mailing list, please email events@villagewell.com.

This May’s pick is Brawler by Lauren Groff.

A stunning, fierce collection from a master of the short story and one of the most important writers of our time.

Read alone, each story in Lauren Groff’s electric collection is an individual triumph, bold, agile, and packed with power. Read together, they hum in exhilarating resonance. Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region—from New England to Florida to California—these nine stories reflect and expand upon a shared theme: the ceaseless battle between humans’ dark and light angels.

“In every human there is both an animal and a god wrestling unto death,” one character tells us. Among those we see caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling, a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult, a mother blinded by the loss of her family, and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by the double edges of other peoples’ good intentions, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.

Precise, surprising, and provocative, anchored by profound insight into human nature, Brawler reveals the repeated, sometimes heartbreaking turning points between love and fear, compassion and violence, reason and instinct, altruism and what it takes to survive.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Open Mic Readings Every Tuesday at the Aftermath Bar, Sherman Oaks – In-Person Event

CALLING ALL WRITERS! Every Tuesday we’ll be having Open Mic Readings open to the public! Read your poems, fiction, and spoken word at our open mic reading EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT from 7 pm – 10 pm!

Read your poetry, fiction, spoken word, or lyrics.

Free event. 21+

Note: Please RSVP at site.

Where: The Aftermath Bar

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 10 pm

Address: 14537 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

Website: Instagram Page

Robert Margouleff, with Jim Reilly, Shaping Sounds at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Author Robert Margouleff, in conversation with Jim Reilly, to discuss Shaping Sounds: Stevie Wonder, Devo, the Synth Revolution, and My Life Behind the Music.

In Shaping Sounds, visionary music producer Robert Margouleff shares his stories of pushing the boundaries of musical innovation, art, and technology while helping create some of the most significant and influential music of our time.

Beginning on the set of his first film, Ciao! Manhattan, with Andy Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick, Margouleff captures the tragic beauty of New York’s East Village and Warhol’s Factory as he discovers a powerful new way to score his movie: the Moog synthesizer. This discovery leads him to meet a studio engineer who would become his long-time partner, Malcolm Cecil, with whom he would collaborate to invent the world’s largest analog synthesizer, ‘TONTO’ (The Original New Timbral Orchestra). Together, Margouleff and Cecil used TONTO to help unleash Stevie Wonder’s genius on his era-defining classic albums Music Of My Mind, Talking Book, Innervisions, and Fulfillingness’ First Finale.

Shaping Sounds is so much more than a chronicle of music history. It’s a story about creativity, collaboration, and artistic courage. Margouleff interweaves his personal experiences with the teachers, friends, mentors, and influences that shaped him, revealing how empathy and curiosity fueled his life’s work. This memoir is a rich and entertaining narrative of a key period in music history that brings readers deep into the world of record and film production and will inspire new generations of music-makers and dreamers.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 8818 W. Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-05-19/robert-margouleff

Cassandra Neyenesch & A Little Bit Bad at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Author Cassandra Neyenesch will discuss A Little Bit Bad: A Novel

Perdita Jungfrau thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, so falling in love with Nando, her neighbor’s anarcho-Marxist roofer, is a crisis. Life seems to put every possible obstacle in their way: she’s pregnant, he has a girlfriend, he’s fifteen years younger, she’s terrified of messing up her children and equally drawn towards this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret.

Now it’s three years later and Nando has been murdered.

As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day? How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like hers ever be the mother her children deserve?

And most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair which turned her life upside down?

Cassandra Neyenesch is a Brooklyn-based writer, activist, and curator. Neyenesch’s reviews and cultural pieces have appeared in The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, HuffPost, Public Books, The International Herald Tribune, and Art in America.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 8818. Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-05-20/cassandra-neyenesch

Romance Book Club at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

Our Romance Book Club meets monthly, generally on the third Tuesday of the month at 7:00 pm.

Facilitated by Lisa Becker.

RSVP for further information.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-05-19/romance-book-club

North Fig Book Club: The Joy Luck Club at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event

Join participants in the North Fig Book Club to discuss The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

Where: North Figueroa Bookshop

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

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-f553165a-d3b5-4eb8-90da-309e06b64e66

Book Event: Sarah Raasch, with Vikas Adam, & The Fake Divination Offense at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event

Sarah Raasch, in conversation with Vikas Adam, will present and discuss The Fake Divination Offense.

A book signing will follow the event, which is ticketed and includes the book.

Can’t attend the event? Signed copies are available for pick-up in-store and for shipping.

Where: The Ripped Bodice

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA 90232

Website: https://www.therippedbodice.com/events-and-tickets

At Skylight: Ashton Politanoff, with J. Ryan Sraydal, & Dad Had a Bad Day at Skylight – In-Person Event

Ashton Politanoff, in conversation with J. Ryan Straydal, will discuss Dad Had a Bad Day.

When Ned finds his old Slazenger tennis racquet buried in the garage, he unearths a part of his former self. Having recently lost his job, his sole duty is to watch over their six-year-old son while his wife works. On a whim—and without his wife’s knowledge—Ned joins his childhood tennis club with a secret credit card, where he finds life outside the realm of “sad dad” domesticity. He becomes the captain of a local men’s rec league team, reconnects with his old hitting partner and former tennis prodigy, Roland, and commits his whole sad self to building a winning team. But when Roland disappears, Ned’s search for his friend threatens to consume the path to glory, the relationship with his son, his marriage, and his mind.

A meditation on fathers and sons, male friendship, and the psychic pressures of an individual sport, Politanoff’s novel sits beautifully alongside the dark comedy of Iris Murdoch and the masculine angst of John Cheever, with a style all its own. Funny, poignant, and deeply relatable, Dad Had a Bad Day explores our desire for structure, the emotional limits of domestic life, and the unbelievably potent, powerful, intoxicating feeling of winning.

Ashton Politanoff is a frequent contributor to Noon. His writing has also appeared in Southwest Review, Conjunctions, NY Tyrant, Egress, and elsewhere. He is a former Division I tennis player and his childhood coach was Robert Lansdorp, who is credited with coaching Pete Sampras, Tracy Austin, and Maria Sharapova. Politanoff’s first novel, You’ll Like It Here, was published by Dalkey Archive. He is an English professor at Cypress College.

J. Ryan Stradal is the author of New York Times bestseller Kitchens of the Great Midwest, which won the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for fiction, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Award for fiction, and the American Booksellers Association Indie’s Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year. His second novel, the national bestseller The Lager Queen of Minnesota, won the WILLA Literary Award and was a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award, as was his third novel, the instant national bestseller Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club. His next book, Next Week When Things Calm Down, about the adventures of an extremely generous elementary school lunch lady, is coming from Atria Books in 2027. His shorter writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Rumpus, and The Guardian, among other places.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Skylight

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-ashton-politanoff-presents-dad-had-bad-day-w-j-ryan-stradal

Destiny Express & The Great Eastern with Howard Rodman at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event

Howard Rodman, in conversation with Steve Erickson, will discuss Destiny Express and The Great Eastern.

Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as “daringly imagined and darkly romantic—a moral thriller,” Destiny Express captures both the glamour and the terror of an era, dramatizing the perilous moment when art, politics, and destiny converged on the tracks out of Berlin.

From the shipyards of London to the ports of New York, from the undersea abyss to the halls of empire, The Great Eastern is a sweeping tale of invention, rebellion, and the war between creation and destruction.

Howard A. Rodman’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Black Clock, and elsewhere. As a screenwriter, his films include Joe Gould’s Secret; August with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn, and David Bowie; and Savage Grace with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne. On television, he’s written for Fallen Angels and staffed on HBOMax’s The Idol.

Where: Stories Books & Café

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://storiesla.com/events

Mike Huguenor, with Jeff Rosenstock, & Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Mike Huguenor, in conversation with Jeff Rosenstock, will discuss Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records.

The page-turning, definitive guide to beloved ska musician Mike Park and his iconic indie label Asian Man Records.

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive tells the singular story of Asian Man Records. In its first thirty years, Asian Man Records released over 400 albums, all from the garage at Mike Park’s parents’ house. Founded when Park was in his early twenties, the label has started and supported the careers of musicians across many generations, all free from the pressures of the larger music industry. It seemed things could even stay that way forever, until an unexpected email arrived…

Spanning early releases by breakout artists like Less Than Jake and Alkaline Trio, to albums that went viral on TikTok, every record has its own story. All of them connect back to Mike Park, the record label founder, who went from struggling with racism as a Korean American in an overwhelmingly white town, to his current status as international underground inspiration.

Written by Mike Huguenor, a musician who has seen the label from inside and out, this music biography documents thirty years in the life of a record label unlike any other—the one and only Asian Man Records.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Tuesday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event

Date: Tuesday, the 19^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Address: Online event (see site)

Website: Cobalt Event Page

Poetry Event: A.E. Stallings & This Afterlife at Hammer Museum – In-Person Event

A.E. Stallings, forty-seventh Oxford Professor of Poetry and winner of the MacArthur Fellowship, has published five volumes of poems (most recently This Afterlife), as well as distinguished translations of Lucretius, Hesiod, and the pseudo-Homeric Battle between the Frogs and the Mice. Her new book Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate Around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon, is as edifying and entertaining as a son et lumière of its venerable subject. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker.

Organized and hosted by poet, literary critic, and UCLA Distinguished Research Professor Stephen Yenser. Cosponsored by the UCLA Department of English and UCLA Recreation.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: The Hammer Museum

Date: Tuesday, the 19^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 7 pm)

Address: 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Website: https://hammer.ucla.edu/programs-events/2026/poetry-ae-stallings

Tuesday Night Café & Open Mic at Union Center for the Arts – In-Person Event

Tuesday Night Café is offered on the 1^st and 3^rd Tuesdays in the spring and summer months in Little Tokyo. It’s also the longest running Asian American public art series in the country! Its mission is to provide Asian American, Native Hawaiian & Pacific Islander (AANHPI), Little Tokyo, and greater Los Angeles communities with a number of diverse and dynamic public art and culture programs in safe community spaces where people can connect through creative expression and social engagement.

Jett Kwong is a vocalist, guzheng player, composer, and producer. Her combination of the Chinese guzheng, expressive vocal melodies, strings, and poetic songwriting transports the listener into dreamy soundscapes deemed “a balm to the spirit” (NPR).

Mojdeh Rezaeipour is an Iranian-born artist based in Washington, DC. She works primarily in mixed media, installation, and film, drawing upon her experience as an architect, storyteller, and community organizer. Her recent research and creative projects are excavations of material memory, both personal and collective. She is a graduate of University of California Berkeley, where she studied architecture, and Alt*Div, an alternative divinity school focusing on healing justice and art as spiritual practice. Rezaeipour has exhibited nationally and internationally in a wide range of venues, from DIY project spaces in Berlin to museums such as The Phillips Collection. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. Her work was featured in The Washington Post, Image Journal, and The Moth Radio Hour, among many outlets.

API-RISE is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit founded in 2014 to support, empower, and advocate for formerly incarcerated or detained Asian immigrants, refugees, and Pacific Islanders. It focuses on restorative justice, community care, and overcoming barriers to reentry. It is led by individuals with lived experience, including Co-director Billy Taing, who advocate for dismantling punitive, dehumanizing policies against immigrants. Impact: Based in Koreatown, Los Angeles, they focus on transforming lives through community, mentorship, and creative expression, such as poetry. The organization celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2024.

Dane Nakama is 2.5/4th generation Japanese-Uchinanchu ceramicist, painter, and educator from the island of Oʻahu, currently based on Tongva land, whose work bridges local aesthetics, folklore, and decolonial critique.

Edib Farhan is a Sydney-based theatre artist, actor, and workshop facilitator specializing in community engagement, refugee support, and Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.

As a reminder, masking is required in our space, and we will have masks available on site. If you can’t join us in-person, we will continue to stream our shows on YouTube in our link in bio.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: Union Center for the Arts

Date: Tuesday, the 19^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 7 pm)

Address: 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Website: Instagram Page

Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic at COC – COMMUNITY OWNED CENTER in Leimert Park – In-Person Event

The nation’s largest weekly spoken word Open Mic event is 26 years strong. DPL is a community space for every poet to be heard. They provide a platform to celebrate poetry while using it as the foundation for creativity, innovation, and expression across an array of media outlets.

$10 suggested donation. Pay what you can. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 pm Free parking adjacent to the theater.

Masks are encouraged.

Where: COC – COMMUNITY OWNED CENTER, New Leimert Park Location

Date: Tuesday, the 19^th

Time: 9 pm – 11 pm (Doors at 8:15 pm)

Address: 4276 Crenshaw Blvd., Leimert Park, CA 90008

PARKING:

Street parking: Crenshaw and Degnan

Parking Lot: 3416 W 43rd St Leimert Park, Los Angeles, CA 90008

Website: Instagram Page

Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block MWF 9-10 am and TuTh 10 am for a brief intro, discussion of her highly-effective 12 Question method, and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgment. Afterwards you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca brief questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 9 am – 10 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Coffee Time Book Club at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

COFFEE TIME BOOK CLUB: Meets monthly, generally on third Wednesday of each month at 10:00am

We tend to read new release literary fiction. At each meeting we discuss and vote on what we will read and discuss for the following month.

 Facilitated by Linda McLoughlin Figel.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-05-20/coffee-time-book-club

Book Club: Good Dirt at Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us in reading Good Dirt by Charmine Wilkerson. Copies are available for check out in the branch or on your mobile device as an e-book/e-audiobook.

Where: Washington Irving Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 12 pm

Address: 4117 W. Washington Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90018

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-10

Tuesday Afternoon Book Club: The Book of Lost Names at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join the Tuesday Afternoon Book Club on a Wednesday to discuss The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel. This club is held both in person in the Community Meeting Room and on Zoom.

For a Zoom link, please email silver@lapl.org. Copies of the book are available at the Reference Desk.

New members are always welcome!

Where: Silver Lake Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 1 pm

Address: 2411 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/tuesday-afternoon-book-club-4

Book Club: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join us as we discuss What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir by Haruki Murakami.

RSVP:

If you are unable to attend in person, please email grnhls@lapl.org for a Zoom invite.

Where: Granada Hills Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 1:30 pm

Address: 10640 Petit Avenue, Granada Hills, CA 91344

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-club-what-i-talk-about-when-i-talk-about-running

Poets Café 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.

Poetry From Around the World is a segment of this series offered monthly on the 2^nd Monday of the month on KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where: KPFK 90.7 FM

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 2 pm – 2:30 pm

Address: On-air Event

Website: https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/poets-cafe/

Book Club for Adults: One Book, One Coast: They Called Us Enemy at San Gabriel Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for a community reading program of exceptional scope – one book for all of the west coast. This special book club will feature discussion about They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. For Adults.

Where: San Gabriel Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 3 pm – 4 pm

Address: 500 S. Del Mar Ave., San Gabriel, CA 91776

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16120787

Middle Grade Book Club at pages: a bookstore – In-Person MG Event

Middle Grade Book Club: Meets monthly, generally on third Wednesday of each month at 4:30 pm

We tend to read new releases of middle grade fiction. Book selection is done by voting at each meeting for the following month’s meeting.

 Facilitated by Nedda Lewers. Please RSVP to amy@pagesabookstore.com

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm

Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-05-20/middle-grade-book-club

Book Club for Adults: Daughters of Shandong at San Fernando Library, LACL – In-Person Event

In honor of Asian America, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we’re reading Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung. Copies of the current title are available at the Information Desk. New members are always welcome! For adults.

A propulsive, extraordinary novel about a mother and her daughters’ harrowing escape to Taiwan as the Communist revolution sweeps through China. In 1948, civil war ravages the Chinese countryside, but in rural Shandong, the wealthy, landowning Ang’s are more concerned with their lack of an heir. Hai is the eldest of four girls and spends her days looking after her sisters. Headstrong Di, who is just a year younger, learns to hide in plain sight, and their mother—abused by the family for failing to birth a boy—finds her own small acts of rebellion in the kitchen. As the Communist army closes in on their town, the rest of the prosperous household flees, leaving behind the girls and their mother. But with the loss of their home and the life they’ve known also comes new freedom—to take hold of their fate, to shake free of the bonds of their gender, and to claim their own story.

Where: San Fernando Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Address: 217 N. Maclay Ave., San Fernando, CA 91340

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16192589

The Real World Nonfiction Book Club: Pandora’s Jar at Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for a book discussion about Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes. For adults.

Join us in the meeting room for an in-person book discussion.

“The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters. When they do take a larger role, women are often portrayed as monstrous, vengeful, or just plain evil—like Pandora, the woman of eternal scorn and damnation whose curiosity is tasked with causing all the world’s suffering and wickedness when she opened that forbidden box. But, as Natalie Haynes reveals, in ancient Greek myths there was no box. It was a jar…which is far more likely to tip over.”

Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required.

Where: Culver City Julian Dixon Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 4975 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16189011

Let’s Read Los Angeles: On Gold Mountain at North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family’s antiques store in Los Angeles Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her colorful stories about their family’s past- stories of missionaries, concubines, tong wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination.

See chronicles 100 years of her family in the bestseller On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred Year Odyssey (1995).

Where: North Hollywood Amelia Earhart Regional Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6 pm

Address: 5211 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/lets-read-los-angeles-gold-mountain

One Book, One Coast: They Called Us Enemy by George Takei at Norwalk Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for a community reading program of exceptional scope – one book for all of the west coast. This special book club will feature discussion about They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. For adults

One Book, One Coast brings together library systems across California, Washington State, and Oregon for a shared community reading program that celebrates literacy, learning, community, and civil discourse.

Where: Norwalk Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 12350 Imperial Hwy., Norwalk, CA 90650

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16334256

Fiction Book Club: A Prayer for Owen Meany at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us on the third Wednesday of every month for our long-running book club for adults!

Upcoming meeting:

May (5/20): A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

RSVP:

Please email studio@lapl.org for participation details.

Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6:30 pm

Address: 12511 Moorpark Street, Studio City, CA 91604

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/fiction-book-club-0

AI Ethics Book Club with Bel Canto Books: Careless People at Ambitious Ales– In-Person Event

AI Ethics Book Club with Bel Canto Books, led by Agatha Isabel, invites readers into a welcoming, judgment-free space to explore the human impact of emerging technologies through story. Our first pick, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power and Greed, uses an insider memoir of Big Tech to spark conversations about power, responsibility, and what “care” should look like in the age of AI.

Future selections, including Empire of AI, Culpability, and Exit Interview, will continue examining how technology, institutions, and individuals shape one another.

Meeting quarterly at Ambitious Ales, this book club blends accessible reading, guided discussion, and community-building for anyone curious about AI ethics: no technical background required!

If you live in the Long Beach/LA area, you may purchase books directly from Bel Canto Books by visiting our Retro Row location (2106 E 4th Street) or our KUBO LB location (3976 Atlantic Avenue). A link is included below to purchase the book online via open_in_newBookshop.org.

Where: Ambitious Ales

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address: 4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807 

Website: Withfriends Event Page

Cynthia Lee, with Dhru Purohit, & The Medicine of Flow: Harmonizing Your Inner State for Effortless Healing at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Cynthia Lee, in conversation with Dhru Purohit, to discuss The Medicine of Flow: Harmonizing Your Inner State for Effortless Healing.

Most of us have been taught that better health requires more effort — more discipline, optimization, and willpower. In The Medicine of Flow, Dr. Li offers a different path. Drawing from her own healing journey, modern science, and ancient wisdom, she reveals how embodied flow — a state of deep internal coherence — allows the body to restore itself, as if effortlessly. The result: lasting health and vitality that emerge not from pushing harder, but from finally getting out of your own way.

Cynthia Li, MD, is a doctor of integrative and functional medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also a certified teacher and workshop facilitator in qigong, an ancient mind-body practice for personal and community healing. Her earlier work centered on public health, with a focus on HIV/AIDS and underserved communities. She served on the faculty of Rachel Naomi Remen’s Healer’s Art program at UCSF Medical School, which enables medical students to discover their sense of calling and service. She is author of a healing memoir, Brave New Medicine.

Dhru Purohit is a podcast host, serial entrepreneur, and investor in the health and wellness industry. His podcast, Dhru Purohit Show, is a top 50 global health podcast with over 30+ million unique downloads. His interviews focus on the inner workings of the brain and the body and feature the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 225 26^th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402 

Every Wednesday we have our weekly @shutupwrite at @bigbaralcove

Time to focus on your dreams!

Hosted by @literarypixie! We’re looking for a co-host. DM if interested!

Where: Big Bar, The Alcove

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 6:45 pm – 8:15 pm

Address: 1929 Hillhurst Ave., Los Feliz, CA 90027

Website: Instagram Page

Cassandra Neyenesch & A Little Bit Bad at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Author Cassandra Neyenesch will discuss A Little Bit Bad: A Novel

Perdita Jungfrau thought she was going to be married to her husband forever, so falling in love with Nando, her neighbor’s anarcho-Marxist roofer, is a crisis. Life seems to put every possible obstacle in their way: she’s pregnant, he has a girlfriend, he’s fifteen years younger, she’s terrified of messing up her children and equally drawn towards this magnetic man who entrusts her with his deepest secret.

Now it’s three years later and Nando has been murdered.

As her bewildered husband tries to make sense of the wildly unpredictable person his wife has become, Perdita has other things on her mind. For starters, who is the mysterious woman sitting outside her house in a parked car all day? How can she stop her adored baby brother from being pulled under by his opioid addiction? Can someone with a childhood like hers ever be the mother her children deserve?

And most of all, what should she do with the searing memories of the affair which turned her life upside down?

Cassandra Neyenesch is a Brooklyn-based writer, activist, and curator. Neyenesch’s reviews and cultural pieces have appeared in The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, HuffPost, Public Books, The International Herald Tribune, and Art in America.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 8818. Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-05-20/cassandra-neyenesch

Erin Van Der Meer, with Ruth Medievsky, & The Scoop at Chevalier’s Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join author Erin Van Der Meer, in conversation with Ruth Medievsky, to discuss The Scoop.

Washed-up New York journalist Frankie Miller is getting desperate. Since the twenty-nine-year-old lost her dream job at a glossy magazine three months ago, her days have been filled with overdue bills, cereal for dinner, and a flood of rejection emails (not to mention her ex has a new girlfriend). So, when she’s offered a job at The Scoop, a tabloid website run by tyrannical editor-in-chief David Brown, she can’t exactly afford to say no—even if it means swallowing her pride for clicks. Besides, for Frankie, it’s just a paycheck, a temporary detour. It’s not forever.

But the deeper she’s pulled into the breakneck world of tabloid journalism, the blurrier the line between ambition and morality becomes—until she crosses it. When her reporting humiliates a beloved pop star and dredges up grief over her late mother, Frankie sets off a chain reaction that spirals beyond her control. In an industry where reputation is currency and outrage sells, how far is Frankie willing to go—and how much is she willing to lose—to win at this ruthless game?

Sharp, witty, and unflinchingly bold, The Scoop is a searing exploration of ambition, exploitation, and the human toll of the 24/7 news cycle.

Erin Van Der Meer is a writer and former journalist whose work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Elle. She was a Spruceton Inn Artist Resident in 2024. Born in Sydney, Australia, she now lives in Brooklyn. The Scoop is her debut.

Ruth Madievsky is the author of the national bestselling novel, All-Night Pharmacy, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. Her writing appears in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, The Cut, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles, where she works as a clinical pharmacist.

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-05-20/scoop-author-erin-van-der-meer

Author Event: Dr. Karin L. Stanford and Mark Speltz, with Karen Grigsby Bates & Marching West: The Los Angeles Civil Rights Movement in Photographs at The Getty Center – In-Person & Online Zoom Hybrid Event

Join us in-person or online via zoom for a presentation and discussion of the new Getty publication: Marching West: The Los Angeles Civil Rights Movement in Photographs, with authors Dr. Karin L. Stanford and Mark Speltz, moderated by Karen Grigsby Bates.

In May 1963, Los Angeles was the site of the Freedom Rally, the largest civil rights demonstration in the city to date. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a crowd of nearly 40,000, telling them: “The most important thing that you can do is set Los Angeles free, because you have segregation and discrimination here, and police brutality.” The new Getty publication Marching West: The Los Angeles Civil Rights Movement in Photographs features dynamic stories from the civil rights era in Los Angeles and explores how photography played an integral role in advancing the fight for Black equality.

Moderated by NPR correspondent Karen Grigsby Bates, join authors Dr. Karin L. Stanford and Mark Speltz as they share images and stories from the book that reveal ties between local and national civil rights efforts.

For in-person attendees, a book signing with the authors follows the program. Limited quantities of the book Marching West will be available for purchase before and after the program.

The exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 will be open until 6:45 pm. Parking is $10 after 6 pm.

Free tickets and/or online registration available at website.

Where: The Getty, Harold M. Williams Auditorium & Online

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 1200 Getty Center Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90049

Website: https://www.getty.edu/calendar/marching-west/

RECESS Open Mic: PUA Turns 8 at SIPA HQ, Palms Up Academy – In-Person Event

RECESS Open Mic is at SIPA HQ on Wednesdays.

Come celebrate 8 years of RECESS Mic! There wit be a roster of special performances this year in #HistoricFilipinotown.

Standard mic RSVP; rules and entry apply.

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.

Host: Lady Basco

NOTE: Only self-sign-ups are allowed.

20 slots available; 15 slots for dinner served; remaining slots for faculty.

See site for further details,

NOTE: See site for RSVP, cost, guidelines, and details.

Where: SIPA HQ

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm; Open Mic at 8 pm)

Address: 3200 W. Temple St., Ste. 100, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: Instagram Page

At Skylight: Ryan O’Connell, with Special Guests Melissa Broder, Jason Stewart & Diablo Cody, & Inspiration Porn at Skylight – In-Person Event

 Ryan O’Connell will present and discussInspiration Porn, a work of hilarious and bawdy musings on disability, sex, family, and Hollywood.

Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, and the forthcoming Empty and Marvelous from Scribner, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five poetry collections, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in over twelve languages.

Jason Stewart is the cohost of How Long Gone, a podcast with his friend Chris Black. He is also a dj under the name “Them Jeans.” He lives in Glendale with his wife, stylist, Karolyn Pho.

Diablo Cody is an award-winning screenwriter. Her debut film, JUNO, won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, and the Writers Guild Award for Best Original Screenplay. She has since written a number of critically acclaimed films including YOUNG ADULT, TULLY, and the now cult-classic, JENNIFER’S BODY.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Skylight

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 1818 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-ryan-oconnell-presents-inspiration-porn-w-special-guests

Banned Books Club: A Light From Uncommon Stars at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Banned Books Club meets every third Wednesday at Underdog Bookstore to discuss a new banned or challenged book each month.

For those wishing to join virtually, a Zoom link will be shared with all attendees prior to the event.

Our next pick:

A Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki: May 20th

You can pick up a copy in store or keep supporting Underdog by listening to the audiobook from our libro.fm or downloading the ebook from our bookshop.org.

​RSVP at website.

Where: Underdog Bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 312 S. Myrtle Ave., Monrovia, CA 91016

Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/banned-books-club-may

Mike Huguenor, with Jeff Rosenstock, & Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Mike Huguenor, in conversation with Jeff Rosenstock, will present and discuss Elvis Is Dead, I’m Still Alive: The Story of Asian Man Records.

The page-turning, definitive guide to beloved ska musician Mike Park and his iconic indie label Asian Man Records.

Sourced from over a hundred hours of interviews with musicians, producers, booking agents, label owners, writers, fans, employees, volunteers, friends and family, Elvis is Dead, I’m Still Alive tells the singular story of Asian Man Records.

In its first thirty years, Asian Man Records released over 400 albums, all from the garage at Mike Park’s parents’ house. Founded when Park was in his early twenties, the label has started and supported the careers of musicians across many generations, all free from the pressures of the larger music industry. It seemed things could even stay that way forever, until an unexpected email arrived.

Spanning early releases by breakout artists like Less Than Jake and Alkaline Trio, to albums that went viral on TikTok, every record has its own story. All of them connect back to Mike Park, the record label founder, who went from struggling with racism as a Korean American in an overwhelmingly white town, to his current status as international underground inspiration.

Written by Mike Huguenor, a musician who has seen the label from inside and out, this music biography documents thirty years in the life of a record label unlike any other—the one and only Asian Man Records.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 695 E, Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-05-20/mike-huguenor

Anansi Writers Workshop & Book Launch 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. Hosted by Jessica Gallion aka “Yellawoman.”

• 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm — Formal workshop;
• 8:30 pm – 9:00 pm — Subject Matter & May Frances’ Son;
• 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — Open mic.

Suggested: $10.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.

NOTE: See site for further details and any change in the schedule. Contact on Instagram @ _yellawoman.

Where: The World Stage (use left rear entrance)

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm

Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008

Website: Instagram Page

Story Salon LA at Art Parlor, Valley Village – In-Person & Virtual Hybrid Event

Los Angeles’s longest running storytelling venue is now a hybrid event!

An alternative to stand-up clubs + self-conscious performance spaces

Story Salon challenges you all to tell stories in 90 seconds! Can you do it? If you can, join us!

Tickets can be purchased early with the link in bio or at storysalon.com.

Theme: It’s Not the Way It Looked

Where: Art Parlor

Date: Wednesday the 20^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 7 pm)

Address: 5302 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Valley Village, CA 91607 

Website: Instagram Page

Wednesday Night Poetry Workshop with Martin Jago via Beyond Baroque – Online Event

The West Coast’s longest-running free poetry workshop is offered by Beyond Baroque 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 be prepared to share one poem.

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. An instructive video is available on the site.

The workshop can sometimes reach high levels of attendance, which means not everyone will get a chance to read every session.

Martin Jago is a British American poet based in Los Angeles. Author of Photofit (Pindrop Press, 2023) and a forthcoming chapbook, Black Plastic Blues (Finishing Line, 2026), his writing has appeared widely in literary magazines like Agenda, Acumen, The Moth, LIT Magazine, Presence, The Penn Review, The High Window, The Indianapolis Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Sierra Nevada Review, among others. He holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford where he was an F.H. Pasby Prize finalist.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Address: Online event (see site)

Website: Free Workshop Page

LiveTalks LA Presents: Lena Dunham, with Rita Wilson, & The Famesick Tour: A Memoir – An Evening of Stories and Togetherness at The Robert Frost Auditorium – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Celebrating her first book in over a decade, Lena Dunham returns to the stage for a night of fearless storytelling and no holds barred conversation. A candid, funny, and bracingly honest reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, Famesick marks a bold return from the award-winning creator of Girls and Too Much. So, pull on your pajamas and join us for a night that brings together all the best parts of a slumber party; just not the thing where you call your parents crying because you want to go home. We’ll get nostalgic for the 2010s and frank about anxiety and ambition, and go deep about what it actually means to author your own story. We can’t wait to see you there to celebrate Famesick.

Lena Dunham is an award-winning actor, writer, director, producer, and philanthropist. Her 2014 memoir, Not That Kind of Girl, was a #1 New York Times best seller. She recently returned to television with the Netflix romcom Too Much, which she wrote, directed, and co-created with her husband Luis Felber. Dunham also wrapped production on the upcoming Netflix feature Good Sex, starring Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo, and will make her Broadway creative debut with 10 Things I Hate About You: The Broadway Musical. She previously starred in and produced Treasure (2024) and wrote and directed Catherine Called Birdy and Sharp Stick (2022). Dunham created and starred in HBO’s Girls, earning eight Emmy nominations and two Golden Globes, and making history as the first woman to win a DGA Award for Best TV Comedy Director. An accomplished writer, Dunham contributes to The New Yorker, Vogue, and The New York Times.

Rita Wilson is a multi-talented singer/songwriter, actress and producer. Her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman is part unfiltered memoir, part nuanced observation of the world around her. The album explores the arc of a woman’s life that unfolds as a moving narrative and was co-produced by Rita and GRAMMY Award-winner Dave Cobb (Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton). Wilson is touring throughout 2026 performing the new material live in the U.S. and abroad. Wilson is beloved for a multitude of roles in iconic films such as Sleepless in Seattle and TV shows including Too Much and Girls. Catch her in the second season of The Last Thing He Told Me, starring and executive produced by Jennifer Garner on Apple TV. Rita was also the film producer behind the blockbuster franchises Mamma Mia! and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. She received a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame and was also honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 2021. Her Broadway roles include star turns in Larry David’s Fish in the Dark and Chicago.

Where: Robert Frost Auditorium

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Address: 4401 Elenda St., Culver City, CA 90230

Donato Martinez was born in in small pueblo, Garcia de la Cadena, Zacatecas, Mexico and immigrated into the USA at six years old. He teaches English Composition, Literature, and Creative Writing at Santa Ana College. He has also taught classes in Chicano Studies. He has been a co-coordinator of the Puente Program for 25 years. In 2022, he was awarded the Creative Expression Faculty Award and the Transfer Advocate of the Year. In 2024-2025, he was recognized as the Distinguished Faculty of the Year, the highest honor bestowed on a faculty member. He is nominated for the Orange County Teacher of the Year, for the year 2026.

He hosts and curates many artistic events that ensure poetry and music at his campus or in the community. He writes about his family, his barrio experience, his community, his Chicano culture, his love of language and hip hop, and the complexity of relationships. He is influenced by the sounds and pulse of the streets, people, music, and the magic of language.

He is the author of a new collection, Ten Toes in the Earth.

$5 cover fee, cash only

Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange

Date: Wednesday, the 20^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block MWF 9-10 am and TuTh 10 am for a brief intro, discussion of her highly-effective 12 Question method, and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgment. Afterwards you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca brief questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 9 am – 10 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Mystery Book Discussion: In Farleigh Field at Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event

Join us for an engaging conversation about whodunnits, thrillers, and cri-fi. We meet on the 3rd Thursday of the month, except in June this year. Copies available at reference and as e-books. Light refreshments provided by Friends of the Palms Rancho Park Library.

May 21: In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

Where: Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 1:30 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-discussion-2

Book Club for Adults: They Called Us Enemy at Chet Holifield Library, LACL – In-Person Event

This month, join us for a discussion of They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. Pick up a copy at the information desk today! Join us for a community reading program of exceptional scope – one book for all of the west coast. For adults.

Where: Chet Holifield Library, LACL

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 4 pm – 5 pm

Address: 1060 S. Greenwood Ave., Montebello, CA 90640

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16337551

Join us to watch Film: Rebecca (1940), dir. Alfred Hitchcock. Have Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca read before this film screening. The discussion on the book and the film will be the week after on May 28th at 6:00 pm!

In Monte Carlo, our unnamed heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck.

It is only when they arrive at Manderley, her husband’s cavernous estate on the Cornish coast, that she realizes how vast a shadow his late wife, Rebecca, will cast over their lives—introducing a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their love from beyond the grave.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508 

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-05-21/adaptation-book-club-rebecca-film-screening

Benoit Denizet-Lewis, with Dave Holmes, & You’ve Changed at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Author Benoit Denizer-Lewis, in conversation with Dave Holmes, will discuss You’ve Changed: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation.

You’ve Changed investigates how we remake ourselves—and how identity, belief, and belonging shift in a world that won’t stop doing the same.

We live in an age obsessed with reinvention. On Instagram, in recovery meetings, through name-change petitions, lifestyle pivots, deconversion blogs, and political conversion manifestos, we’re surrounded by stories of radical personal change. But what does it really mean to shed an old skin—and why do some transformations inspire us while others raise our hackles?

Longtime New York Times Magazine writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis, known for his deeply reported and psychologically rich journalism, takes us on a freewheeling, wild-hearted journey into the mystery of human transformation. He introduces us to an unforgettable array of people in flux—including psychedelic reality benders, sexual and gender transitioners, ideological shapeshifters, seemingly reformed murderers, and an octogenarian grandmother trying to change her temperament (“Better late than never!” she says)—as well as those working to engineer change: psychologists, neuroscientists, name-change specialists, even his own father, a breath and meditation teacher who once wrote a newsletter about “the art and science of transformation.” Intertwined with those portraits of change is the author’s own reckoning—by turns painful, poignant, and hilarious—with his misfires and epiphanies.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 8818, Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-05-21/benoit-denizet-lewis

Whitney Marston Pierce, with Reggie Watts, & Pretend to Be Fancy at Chevalier’s Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join author Whitney Marston Pierce, in conversation with Reggie Watts, to discuss Pretend to Be Fancy: A Field Guide to Style and Sophistication.

Pretend to Be Fancy is the modern advice handbook for the current generation. Putting authenticity, kindness, and a sense of humor front and center, author Whitney Marston Pierce offers a refreshingly relatable, entertaining take on the genre, while imparting indispensable information about being a well-rounded human.

The book is loaded with practical advice, perfect for recent grads, young adults ready to impress the world, and anyone who just wants to feel fancy: Pretend to Be Fancy is a truly fun-to-read, irreverent guide to living your best life—on any budget.

Whitney Marston Pierce is an NYC-based interior designer and creative consultant who has cultivated her fancy sensibility and enviable taste through her experiences as a world traveler, DJ, singer, magazine editor, fashion designer, and model. She is the author of Pretend to Be Fancy (Chronicle Books, 2026).

Where: Chevalier’s

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-05-21/pretend-fancy-field-guide-style-and-sophistication-whitney-marston-pierce

Crafting Bite Size Narratives: Writing Workshop with K. Andrew Turner at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person Event

Unlock the art of short-form storytelling and learn how to distill complex ideas, vivid characters, and rich worlds into a few short paragraphs that linger in the reader’s mind long after the last word. This generative workshop will guide you through the techniques and strategies to create powerful, bite-sized stories that pack a punch. Students are encouraged, but not required, to share their work.

K. Andrew Turner writes queer, literary, and speculative fiction, poetry, and nonfiction in stolen weekday moments. In 2013, he founded East Jasmine Review—an electronic literary journal, with a focus on publishing diverse writers. He was a semifinalist for the 2016 Luminaire Award in poetry. His full-length poetry collection Heart, Mind, Blood, Skin is now available from Finishing Line Press. He also has a chapbook, “Gymlationship” from Arroyo Seco Press His work has also appeared in Chiron Review, LUMMOX, Carnival Literary, Sadie Girl Press, MUSE, Redshift, and other publications and anthologies. Find more at http://www.kandrewturner.com or follow him on twitter @kandrewturner.

RSVP at website.

Where: Underdog Bookstore

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 312 S. Myrtle Ave. Monrovia, CA 91016

Website: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/writing-workshops-with-k-andrew-turner

All Women’s Open Mic at 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 at website!

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Natalie Lemle, with Olivia Taylor Smith, & Artifacts at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Natalie Lemle, in conversation with Olivia Taylor Smith, will present and discuss Artifacts, a debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger.

Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later.

Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back.

Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self-pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth.

Natalie Lemle studied classics and art history at Tufts University and earned an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College. She is the founder of art_works, an art advisory connecting contemporary artists with global companies, and previously worked in corporate relations at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She serves on the boards of the ICA/Boston and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and two kids. Artifacts is her first novel.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Thursday the 21^st

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-05-21/natalie-lemle

Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block MWF 9-10 am and TuTh 10 am for a brief intro, discussion of her highly-effective 12 Question method, and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgment. Afterwards you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca brief questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 9 am – 10 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Weekly Pajama Storytime at Once Upon a Time, Montrose – In-Person Kids & Family Event

Our most popular story time is ready to delight and dazzle! This is also the prime time to see Pippi Longstocking, our bookstore cat in action.

There is a large FREE parking lot off Florencita Dr. as well as metered parking along Honolulu Ave. and Montrose Ave.

Free to attend.

NOTE: Free to attend.

Where: Once Upon a Time

Date: Friday, the 22^nd

Time: 9:30 am

Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020

Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page

Book Club: Clara And the Sun at La Mirada Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Clara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. For adults.

Klara, an AI Friend watches carefully human behavior. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her, but is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

Where: La Mirada Library, LACL

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 10:30 am – 11:30 am

Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct, Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16338903

Bilingual Storytime at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Bilingual Storytime! Exposing your children to multiple languages is highly beneficial for their learning and development, and what better way to do it than through this fun activity where we will read a wonderful story in both English and Spanish.

¡Hora de cuentos bilingüe! Exponer a tus hjijos a varios idiomas es de gran beneficio para su aprendizaje y desarrollo, y qué mejor que hacerlo en esta divertida actividad en donde leeremos un maravilloso cuento en inglés y en español.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

One Book, One Coast Book Club: They Called Us Enemy at West Hollywood Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us for a community reading program of exceptional scope – one book for all of the west coast. This special book club will feature discussion about They Called Us Enemy by George Takei. For adults.

Join us as we discuss George Takei’s firsthand account of his years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

Please contact the library to get a print copy of the book or download from Libby. No registration required.

Where: West Hollywood Library, LACL

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

NOTE: Tickets available at website.

Where: Heavy Manners Library

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 3 pm – 6 pm

Address: 1200 N. Alvarado St. Unit D, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://heavymannerslibrary.com/events/permission-poetics-poetry-workshop-instructed-by-erin-taylor-5-22

Special Author Event: Michael Schur and Joe Posnanski, with Justin Helpern, & Big Fan at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us for two of the biggest sports fans the world knows in Joe “Why We Love Baseball” Posnanski and Michael “Too Many Incredible TV Shows to Name” Schur as they kick-off their book tour for their newest book, Big Fan: Two Friends, 82,490 Miles, and the Wild, Wonderful, Sports We Love. Joe and Michael will be in conversation with award winning director, producer, and writer Justin Halpern.

This book is designed for anyone that has anguished over their team with hands folded in a stadium of 50,000 fans or screamed with joy at the elation of an amazing catch to send Game 7 of the World Series to extra innings from the comfort of their own home. The famed hosts of the Poscast have captured that excitement in this globe-trotting tribute to the events that bring people together. Get your tickets now to the Hermosa Community Theater for a night with these two hilarious uber-fans and any of their acclaimed friends who happen to join them for the night.

Tickets are $45 (+ processing fee) and includes a signed copy of the book and a night of amazement.

In this book New York Times bestselling authors Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski travel the world in a hilarious and heartwarming celebration of fans and the things they love: baseball, basketball, chess, darts, football, futbol, Indigenous North American stickball, pickleball, WWE, Taylor Swift, Star Wars, and more.

Two great friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. And a bottomless appetite for experiencing sports. That’s what BIG FAN is all about.

Bestselling authors and podcast hosts Joe Posnanski and Mike Schur love games and they bring readers to the front row (and sometimes even right onto the field). Whether ringside at WrestleMania in Las Vegas, singing along with the maniacs at the World Darts Championships in London, or just watching eight straight hours of football at a Buffalo Wild Wings in Dallas, they bring us to the very heart of what it means to love something so much it hurts.

Through crushing defeats and glorious wins, whether cheering penalty kicks with 65,000 fans in Liverpool or beholding a chess master castling in dead silence, BIG FAN is about why we love what we love and how fandom connects us in a time when so much else pulls us apart.

Michael Schur is an Emmy Award–winning American television producer and writer. He created or co-created the comedy series Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place, and A Man on the Inside, after getting his start on Saturday Night Live and The Office. Schur lives in California with his wife, Jennifer Philbin, and their children.

Joe Posnanski is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including Why We Love Baseball, Why We Love Football, and The Baseball 100. He has won two Sports Emmys, been named National Sportswriter of the Year by five different organizations, and, most proudly, was inducted into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame. For this book, Mike challenged him to watch and participate in a pickleball tournament, a sport he loathes. Posnanski lives in Charlotte, N.C. with his wife Margo and their ancient poodle Westley.

Justin Halpern is a Golden Globe-winning and Emmy-nominated Creator, Showrunner, Director, and Executive Producer through his and creative partner Patrick Schumacker’s company, Delicious Non-Sequitur Productions, which is currently under an overall deal with Warner Bros. Television. He is the Executive Producer and co-showrunner of the Emmy-winning hit series ABBOTT ELEMENTARY on ABC alongside Quinta Brunson and Patrick Schumacker. The series has been nominated for Best Comedy Series in both 2022 and 2024, among other honors.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 5 pm

Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-05-22/special-author-event-michael-schur-and-joe-posnanski

Black Lit Book Club: Junie at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Junie: a Novel by Erin Crosby Eckstine, a tale of survival as civil war looms.

Sixteen years old and enslaved since she was born, Junie has spent her life on Bellereine Plantation in Alabama, cooking and cleaning alongside her family, and tending to the white master’s daughter, Violet. Her daydreams are filled with poetry and faraway worlds, while she spends her nights secretly roaming through the forest, consumed with grief over the sudden death of her older sister, Minnie.

When wealthy guests arrive from New Orleans, hinting at marriage for Violet and upending Junie’s life, she commits a desperate act—one that rouses Minnie’s spirit from the grave, tethered to this world unless Junie can free her. She enlists the aid of Caleb, the guests’ coachman, and their friendship soon becomes something more. Yet as long-held truths begin to crumble, she realizes Bellereine is harboring dark and horrifying secrets that can no longer be ignored.

With time ticking down, Junie begins to push against the harsh current that has controlled her entire life. As she grapples with an increasingly unfamiliar world in which she has little control, she is forced to ask herself: When we choose love and liberation, what must we leave behind?

Erin Crosby Eckstine is an author of speculative historical fiction, personal essays, and anything else she’s in the mood for. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, Eckstine grew up between the South and Los Angeles before moving to New York City to attend Barnard College. She earned a master’s in secondary English education from Stanford University and taught high school English for six years. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their cats.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508 

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-05-22/black-lit-book-club-junie

Karesha McGee, with Marin Fader, & The Family Healthcare Playbook Caregivers’ Action Lab at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Introducing The Caregivers’ Action Lab, an interactive, in-person workshop designed to help you prepare for your role as a family caregiver. After a brief overview, each attendee will receive a copy of one of the foundational worksheets in The Family Healthcare Playbook. We’ll work together to complete it and outline next steps.

You’ll leave this workshop with momentum and some helpful tips and tricks you can put into practice immediately.

Stay Ready So You Don’t Have To Get Ready!

Karesha McGee is an award-winning global tech communications leader and sought-after public speaker with more than 20 years of experience in the high-tech industry. She is also a caregiver. Throughout her career, McGee has advised C-level and senior executives at companies including Slack (now Salesforce), Cisco, Oracle, Uber, BEA Systems and Hello Tractor. Interspersed with these high-powered professional milestones have been intense seasons of serving as the primary caregiver for her mother through significant health crises, including breast cancer and two brain aneurysms which resulted in multiple brain surgeries and other medical interventions. The dichotomy of working as a senior enterprise software tech executive while simultaneously serving as her mother’s primary caregiver has forced McGee to develop a pragmatic, systems-based approach to navigating healthcare and decision-making under pressure. Her experiences of embracing the joys and challenges of caregiving became the foundation for her book, The Family Healthcare Playbook: An Action Plan for the Accidental Caregiver, which translates hard-earned lessons and best practices into an empowering resource for families, medical professionals, business leaders, and anyone who suddenly finds themselves caring for a loved one.

Mirin Fader is a senior staff writer for The Athletic and the New York Times covering the NBA. She’s also the author of the New York Times bestselling book: Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA Champion and Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon. She is also a caregiver.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 6 pm – 8 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Book Event: Rachel Gillig, with Victoria Aveyard, & The Knight and the Moth Indie Deluxe Editionat The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event

Rachel Gillig, in conversation with Victoria Aveyard, will present and discuss The Knight and the Moth Indie Deluxe Edition.

A book signing will follow the event, which is ticketed and includes the book.

This event is SOLD OUT. To join the waitlist, email eventstherippedbodice.com with your name, event date/location, and phone number.

Where: The Ripped Bodice

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA 90232

Website: https://www.therippedbodice.com/events-and-tickets

At Skylight: Julia Wertz, with Priyanka Mattoo, & Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here) at Skylight – In-Person Event

Julia Wertz, in conversation with Priyanka Mattoo, will discuss Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here).

Raw, honest, and hilarious, Bury Me Already (It’s Nice Down Here) chronicles the joy and horror of becoming a mother during challenging times.

In this follow-up to the acclaimed memoir Impossible People—a book about getting sober and becoming a professional artist in New York City—cartoonist Julia Wertz returns home to Northern California where she reunites with her family and rekindles a relationship with an ex-boyfriend. After a surprise pregnancy and a marriage proposal, Julia settles (somewhat reluctantly) into a quiet life in a small town. But as 2020 approaches, her world, and the world at large, takes a sharp turn toward unexpected chaos. Through comic vignettes, essays, and diary doodles, Julia recounts the events of her pregnancy and its attendant body horror, a miscarriage, family trauma, marriage, a life-altering accident, and the joy and surprises of parenthood as it all unfolds against the backdrop of local wildfires and a global pandemic. The result of this unconventional collection is a heart-wrenching and hilarious story of adversity, resilience, and, ultimately, love.

Julia Wertz is a professional cartoonist, amateur historian, and part-time urban explorer. Her books include The Fart Party, Museum of Mistakes, Drinking at the Movies, The Infinite Wait and Other Stories, Tenements, Towers, & Trash: An Unconventional, Illustrated History of New York City and Impossible People: A Completely Average Recovery Story. She does monthly comics and doodles for the New Yorker and the New York Times. After leaving New York City, she settled down in Northern California with Oliver (yes, that Oliver) and their son, Felix.

Priyanka Mattoo is the author of the memoir Bird Milk & Mosquito Bones (Knopf, June 2024). She was formerly an agent at UTA and WME, as well as Jack Black’s partner at their production company, Electric Dynamite. Priyanka co-founded EARIOS, the women-led podcast network, and co-hosted its critically-acclaimed beauty/wellness podcast, Foxy Browns. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vulture, and The Hairpin, and her film work in festivals from Sundance to Cannes. She was raised in India, England, and Saudi Arabia before moving to the U.S. in high school and holds degrees in Italian and Law from the University of Michigan.

Where: Skylight

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-julia-wertz-presents-bury-me-already-its-nice-down-here-w-priyanka-mattoo

Poetry Reading: féli martinez, César Montero, Camila Valleat Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event

féli martinez is an Argentinian YouTube personality and content creator who shot to prominence after launching his self-titled channel. He posts a combination of vlogs and story times for more than 140,000 subscribers.

César Montero N/A

Camila Valle is a writer, educator, translator, editor, and abortion doula. Her work has appeared in Interview, ’68 to ’05, and Polyester Zine, among other publications. She is the translator of Set Fear on Fire: The Feminist Call that Set the Americas Ablaze (Verso, 2023) by the Chilean feminist art collective LASTESIS.

Where: Stories Books & Café

Date: Friday the 22^nd

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://storiesla.com/events/5438720260522

L.A. Anthology Book Launch: Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War at Beyond Baroque – In-Person Event

Join us for the book launch of a new environmental poetry anthology!

Unique in its scope, Convergence: Poetry on the Environmental Impacts of War, offers a vital perspective that has rarely been considered: war’s destruction of the more than human environment. Arranged somewhat chronologically, 90 poems and their contextual notes by 61 contemporary poets bring into vivid focus the eco-injustice of military damages in 37 nations on 6 continents and on the moon. Framed by a cogent introduction and a pair of forewords, one on poetry, the other on science, and accompanied by a tally of environmental costs and a set of thought-provoking discussion and writing prompts, this groundbreaking anthology will rouse readers to confront intolerable devastation, yet also to envision restoration of the natural world.

The evening will feature readings by co-editor Teresa Mei Chuc, as well as contributors Sean Mclain Brown, Hazel Clayton, Lisbeth Coiman, Lucille Lang Day, Alicia-Viguer Espert, and Shahé Mankerian.

Teresa Mei Chuc was born in Saigon, Vietnam. Shortly after the Vietnam War, Chuc, her mother, and her brother were granted political asylum and settled in Pasadena, California. Teresa has a Bachelors Degree in Philosophy, professional teaching credentials in primary and secondary education from California State University, Los Angeles, and a Masters in Fine Arts in Creative Writing (poetry) from Goddard College. She is the author of Red Thread (Fithian Press, 2012 and republished by Shabda Press, 2021), the chapbook Incidental Takes ​(Hummingbird Press, 2023) and the anthology Convergence: Poetry on Environmental Impacts of War (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2025), among others.

Sean Mclain Brown is a combat disabled Marine Corps veteran. His writing is heavily influenced by his experience in combat and living with consequences of war. His writing has appeared in more than 50 journals and is featured in An Introduction to the Prose Poem and Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace.

Hazel Clayton Harrison served as a 2018-2020 co-poet laureate for the Altadena Library District where she organized community events and co-edited the Altadena Literary Review. Her poetry and prose have been published in numerous anthologies, including River Crossings-Voices of the Diaspora and Grand Fathers. She is a Pushcart prize nominee and the author of a children’s book The Story of Christmas Tree Lane, a memoir Crossing the River Ohio, and a book of poetry and prose, Down Freedom Road.

Lisbeth Coiman is a bilingual poet who strives to magnify the voices of the struggle in Venezuela, those who migrate out of despair, and those who stay behind to fight a thousand battles for freedom. In her poetry, she seeks to create awareness about the human rights violations and the humanitarian crisis afflicting her homeland and those she holds dear to her heart. She is the author of the memoir I Asked the Blue Heron (2017) and the poetry collection Uprising/Alzamiento (Finishing Line Press, 2021).

Lucy received her M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing at San Francisco State University, and her B.A. in biological sciences, M.A. in zoology, and Ph.D. in science/mathematics education at the University of California at Berkeley, where she held a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Her memoir, Married at Fourteen: A True Story (2012), received a 2013 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2013 Northern California Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. Her full-length poetry collections are Birds of San Pancho and Other Poems of Place (2020) and Becoming an Ancestor (2015), among others.

Alicia-Viguer Espert was born and raised in Valencia, Spain, travelled the world, learned English as an adult and on her first writing attempt, (2017) was the winner of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Book with her chapbook To Hold a Hummingbird. In 2021 Four Feather Press published her chapbook Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea. She writes about relationships to nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published in national and international journals, anthologies, and magazines. She was selected as one of the “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” in the Special Edition” by Spectrum Publications, and “Editor’s Choice” by Panoply in 2022. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.

Poet Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory A. & M. Hovsepian School in Pasadena, CA. He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Music Center’s BRAVO Award, which recognizes teachers for innovation in arts education. From 2008-2018, he co-directed CSULA’s Los Angeles Writing Project. Recently, he served as the co-editor of Rockvale Review (College Grove, TN). His debut poetry collection is History of Forgetfulness (2021).

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Friday, the 22^nd

Time: 7:30 pm (Doors at 7 pm)

Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291 

Website: Eventbrite Page

Fourth Fridays: Cherry Blossum Poetry Collective: Volume One: Conney D, Williams hosts Open Mic and Features Billy Burgos and Jessica Gallion at Fragrance of Elegance – In-Person Event

Join us for the first reading of Cherry Blossum Poetry Collective hosted by Conney D. Williams. This event will be held on Fourth Fridays of the month.

Conney D. Williams is the author of three books of poetry: Leaves of Spilled Spirit from an Untamed Poet (2002), Blues Red Soul Falsetto (2012), and The Distance of Observation (World Stage Press, 2021). He has released two CDs of poems set to music, River & Moan and Unsettled Water. His work has aired on KJLH and KPFK, been performed at USC, UCLA, the Black Arts Festival, and the Leimert Park Village Book Fair, and was featured on the L.A. Public Library’s Poems on Air by City Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson.

Billy Burgos, born in Belize and moved to Los Angeles at eight years old, settling in Leimert Park where he still lives—and writes, and paints, and shows up to the room. He is a triple threat: poet, illustrator, and graphic designer, and his work in each medium feeds the others.

Billy is an active member of the same Anansi Writers Workshop that Conney once facilitated—the World Stage’s legendary writing circle. He has hosted Beyond Baroque’s First Sunday Reading, facilitated their Wednesday-night workshop, and run Word Ballast, a poetry talk show on which he’s interviewed Nikki Giovanni, Nikky Finney, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Jericho Brown, and Nick Flynn. The L.A. Poetry Festival named him a “newer poet to watch” in 2009.

His Faces of Poetry portrait series—pen-and-ink and acrylic studies of L.A. poets—has shown at Beyond Baroque and The World Stage, and he was commissioned to paint Amiri Baraka for the Leimert Park Book Fair. His first collection of poetry, Eulogy to an Unknown Tree, was published by Writ Large Press in 2013.

Jessica D. Gallion (Yellawoman) writes from Louisiana into Los Angeles. A published author and poet, she’s also a poetry events curator — and co-host of the Anansi Writers Workshop at The World Stage in Leimert Park, the same legendary writing circle that anchors so much of L.A.’s spoken-word lineage.

Her work and her presence move through rooms most poets don’t enter: she has collaborated with Rupi Kaur, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Public Library, the Broad Museum, El Silencio Mezcal, Coca-Cola, Compton College, and many others.

Her poetry drops you into a deep pot of gumbo with no ladle in sight.

NOTE: FREE; All ages – Bring a poem. 

Where: Fragrance of Elegance

Date: Friday, the 22^nd

Time: 7:30 pm – 11 pm (Doors at 7 pm)

Address: 10925 S. Crenshaw Blvd., Suite 106, Inglewood, CA 90303

(Free Parking on site)

Website: Instagram Page

Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block MWF 9-10 am and TuTh 10 am for a brief intro, discussion of her highly-effective 12 Question method, and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgment. Afterwards you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca brief questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 9 am – 10 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Mystery Book Club: The Lost Man at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss The Lost Man by Jane Harper.

Read the book and join our lively discussion!

Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mystery-book-club-14

View Park Library Book Club: Sankofa at View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library, LACL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join us to discuss Sankofa by Chibundu Onuzo. For adults.

The View Park Library Book Club meets monthly on a Saturday, in person at View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library or via Zoom. Please visit the library, call, or email cray@library.lacounty.gov to be added to the email list.

Where: View Park Bebe Moore CampbellLibrary, LACL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 3854 W. 54th St, Los Angeles, CA 90043

Ariadna es autora y poeta de Oaxaca, México. Este cuento es un cuento personal en la que encontró una manera de hacer homenaje a la historia de su papá como beisbolista y legado de su comunidad.

Where: Casita Bookstore

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Join author Susana Porras and illustrator Dan Makin for an adventure inspired by friendship, travel, resilience, and imagination.

Danny’s Trails: Mossley, England, blends real-world locations with a touch of fantasy, inviting young readers on a life-changing journey filled with discovery, creativity, and heart. Set against the backdrop of Mossley, England, this story encourages children to explore new places — both around the world and within their own imagination.

Susana Porras is a Pasadena-based author and avid traveler who loves sharing stories about friendship, culture, and imagination. Inspired by her journeys around the world, she writes books that encourage children to explore new places and ideas. Susana enjoys connecting with young readers and celebrating the joy of storytelling through community events.

Dan Makin is a UK-based illustrator and stroke survivor whose artwork brings the landscapes of Mossley, England to life in Danny’s Trails. After a life-changing stroke, he discovered a passion for illustration that became both therapeutic and inspiring. Today, Dan shares his story of resilience through art and creativity.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Fifth Annual Pomona Poetry and Book Fest at Pomona Fairgrounds, Carousel Stage (Day 1) – In-Person Kids/Family Event

Join us all day at the Carousel Stage at the Red Café at the Pomona Fairplex to hear performances form a variety of poets. authors, and spoken word artists, presented by Lionlike MIndstate.

David Judah One will host: Benjamin Seith Jr., Simone Swearingen, Lady K Poetry, Scott Mclane, Brandon Allen, Sean Eras, and many more. See flyer for details.

Where: Los Angeles County Fairplex, Pomona

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 12 pm – 6 pm

Address: Carousel Stage, 1101 McKinley Ave., Pomona, CA 91768

Website: Instagram Page

Poetry of Place: Examining Delicate Spaces with Jessica Wilson at Campo de Cahuenga Museum – In-Person Event

Join us for a poetry writing workshop led by Jessica Wilson titled Poetry of Place: Examining Delicate Spaces.

Poetry of Place is an examination of the world around you and your relationship to it. A place can be physical, it can be the familiar, it can be a longing, it can also be a state of mind or a place, emotionally, that you hold on to. In this offering, we will be exploring the places that have stayed with us through time through embodied guided writing exercises.

We will use embodiment within these places, that align with our senses to gather all the details, and all the pertinent relationships that we have attached to this particular place. We will think about the places where we find comfort or familiarity and also think about the places that have contributed the most to our growth. We will also explore the places that we go when things don’t feel well for us. Is it a space in our mind, our heart, or in our history? What are the symbols of your place? What brings you there? Let’s examine how these lay out upon the page, revealing our own personal geography, the roadmap of our(self).

This programming is brought to you by the Los Angeles Parks Foundation and community members like you.

Where: Campo de Cahuenga Museum

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm

Address: 3919 Lankershim Blvd., Studio City, CA 91605

Website: Instagram Page

Meet the Author: Gregor Mendoza & Born and Raised: Growing Up in the Heart Of L.A.’s Raw Era at Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us to meet and hear author Gregor Mendoza discuss his book, Born and Raised: Growing Up in the Heart Of L.A.’s Raw Era.

He will give a short reading, answer questions, and sign copies of his new book, Born and Raised: Growing up in the Heart of LA’s Raw Era, sharing his unique experiences from Venice in the 1990s.

Where: Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 1 pm – 3 pm

Address: 501 S. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/born-and-raised-growing-heart-las-raw-era

Open Mic Poetry: Seven Dahr features at Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Share your original poems, lyrics, spoken word, or just enjoy listening. Each poet will have five minutes to read an original work. If you wish to read, sign up when you arrive.

Our featured speaker will be Seven Dhar, who performs in English, Sanskrit, Gaelic, and Spanish. A yogi and urban shaman with Native American roots (Kizh/Tongva), Dhar won the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival chapbook and broadside contests, among other honors, and has been published in several anthologies and journals, including The Stone Bird: Anthology of the Eagle Rock Library.

Dhar also was a featured poet at L.A. Shakespeare Fest and LitFest Pasadena along with the troupe Poets in Distress.

Where: Eagle Rock Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 1 pm – 3 pm

Address: 5027 Caspar Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90041

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/open-mic-poetry-2

Coretta Scott King Honoree: Loveis Wise & Hello Beautiful at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Coretta Scott King Honoree Loveis Wise at Cellar Door Bookstore. A celebration of hope and the promise of new babyhood by Sibert Honoree Traci N. Todd (illustrator) and Coretta Scott King Honoree Loveis Wise.

An inspirational love letter from caregiver to a child, Hello, Beautiful is an intimate and uplifting depiction of love and courage. With its warmth and promise for a bold and confident future, it lyrically reminds children that they should take up space, follow their own unique paths, and find humanity in everyone around them and, most importantly, in themselves—because that is beautiful.

Traci N. Todd is a Sibert Honor-winning author and book editor whose work focuses on Black culture and social justice. Her books Nina: A Story of Nina Simone, illustrated by Christian Robinson, and Holding Her Own: The Exceptional Life of Jackie Ormes, illustrated by Shannon Wright, both won the Coretta Scott King Honor. She lives, writes, and ponders in New York City.

Loveis Wise is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and illustrator. Their work has been featured in publications like The New Yorker, TIME magazine, and The New York Times. They’ve illustrated several picture books, including The People Remember by Ibi Zoboi, which won the Coretta Scott King Honor, and Girls on the Rise by Amanda Gorman, which was a New York Times bestseller. They live, draw, and dream in Los Angeles.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 1 pm – 2 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508 

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/loveiswise

Weekend Book Club: Three Kings at Carson Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Patrons can join a facilitated discussion of fiction and nonfiction titles. A limited number of titles are available for attendees to pick up at the library.

May’s book: Three Kings by Todd Balf. For adults.

Where: Carson Library, LACL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 2 pm – 3 pm

Address: 151 E. Carson St., Carson, CA 90745

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16448441

Manhattan Beach Library Speaker Series: Julia Quinn & Bridgerton Series Off-site at Mira Costa High School Auditorium – In-Person Event

The Manhattan Beach Library Speaker Series is pleased to invite you to their spring event, featuring bestselling romance novelist and author of the Bridgerton series, Julia Quinn.

Join the Manhattan Beach Library Speaker Series and the City of Manhattan Beach as they welcome best-selling romance novelist and author of the Bridgerton series, Julia Quinn, to the Mira Costa High School auditorium on Saturday, May 23 at 2 pm.

Sitting in conversation with LA County Librarian and Director, Dr. Skye Patrick, Julia will dive into all things swoony and steamy. What is it about romance that makes our hearts skip a beat? And as someone who has been writing in the genre for a while, what does she think the current romance renaissance says about us and our moment in time?

A book signing and reception will follow, with book sales provided by {pages}: a bookstore.

This program is taking place in the Auditorium at Mira Costa High School, 1401 Artesia Blvd, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266.

Books will be available for purchase as preorders and at the event from {pages} a bookstore. If you’d like to preorder and pick up your books at the event on May 23, please make a note in the “Customer Comments” section when completing your purchase.

The Manhattan Beach Library Speaker Series is made possible by the generous support of the City of Manhattan Beach.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn loves to dispel the myth that smart women don’t read (or write) romance, and if you watch reruns of the game show The Weakest Link you might just catch her winning the $79,000 jackpot. She displayed a decided lack of knowledge about baseball, country music, and plush toys, but she is proud to say that she aced all things British and literary, answered all of her history and geography questions correctly, and knew that there was a Da Vinci long before there was a code. Her novels have been translated into 42 languages, and in March 2021, all eight Bridgerton novels were on the New York Times list at the same time, a record (at that time) for an adult fiction author.

On December 25, 2020, Netflix premiered Bridgerton based on her popular series of novels about the Bridgerton family. Julia’s newest novel is Queen Charlotte, co-written with television pioneer Shonda Rhimes. The book is a powerful and romantic novel of Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte and King George III’s great love story and how it sparked a societal shift. Queen Charlotte was inspired by the original series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, created by Shondaland for Netflix.

If you have any questions about ADA accessibility at Mira Costa High School, please reach out to Cary Jordahl, CJordahl@mbusd.org.

Any other questions can be directed to LA County Library at cmctighe@library.lacounty.gov.

Where: Mira Costa High School

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 2 pm – 4 pm

Address: 401 Artesia Blvd., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16161200

Book Talk Round Table: Love Your Asian Body at Echo Park Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Sponsored by the Carlos Bulosan Book Club, this round table discussion focuses on the history of Asian American HIV/AIDS activism. Featuring Eric Wat, Martin Manalansan, and Gil Mangaoang.

Celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

Where: Echo Park Branch Library, LACL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 2 pm – 3 pm

Address: 1410 W. Temple Street, Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/book-talk-round-table-love-your-asian-body

L.A. Book Launch: The Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodriguez at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Online Hybrid YouTube Event

Join us for a book launch of The Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodriguez, detailing the life and legacy of Luis J. Rodriguez, author of Always Running and founder of Tía Chucha Centro Cultural & Bookstore.

The book launch release features readings and Q&A with Luis J. Rodríguez. Detailing his life’s journey and literary legacy as the author of several poetry collections and the award-winning memoir Always Running. Rodriguez served as Los Angeles poet laureate (2014-2016), and founded Tía Chucha Centro Cultural, an arts organization based in Sylmar, California. The author will be joined by co-editors Josephine Metcalf and Ben V. Olguín. Book signings to follow in the Scott Wannberg Bookstore & Lounge.

The Life, Literature, and Legacy of Luis. J Rodríguez features new and unique critical essays and reflections by scholars and artists throughout Europe and the Americas on the work of ex-prisoner, author, and activist, Luis J. Rodríguez. Contributors explore Rodriguez’s visceral accounts of urban working-class life that includes youth gang violence, incarceration, and drug abuse, grueling factory work and union organizing activities, as well as publications by Rodriguez offer a range of perspectives for fans of the renowned artist, intellectual, and activist. The book is indispensable for anyone interested in understanding the full complexities and impacts of Rodriguez’s life and literature.

Dr. Josephine Metcalf is a Reader in American Studies & Criminology at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom where she has research interests in how and why people may read and write in contexts of confinement. Jo has edited anthologies of poetry and prose for people in prison as well as prison staff, and with Ben Olguín is the co-editor of The Life, Literature, and Legacy of Luis J. Rodríguez.

Ben Valdez Olguín is the Robert and Liisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Olguin’s research and teaching include service-learning projects in community centers and schools in underserved communities, as well as in prisons, juvenile jails, and immigrant detention centers. As founder and director of the Global Latinidades Center, Olguín has received over $2.1 million in grants, which help support multiple educational and community-based initiatives.

Luis J. Rodriguez is an American poet, novelist, journalist, critic, and columnist. He was the 2014 Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Rodríguez is recognized as a major figure in contemporary Chicano literature, identifying himself as a native Xicanx writer. His best-known work, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A., received the Carl Sandburg Literary Award and has been controversial on school reading lists for its depictions of gang life.

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Saturday, the 23^rd

Time: 2 pm – 4 pm (Doors at 1:30 pm)

Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291 

Website: Eventbrite Page

Fourth Saturdays Poetry: Marcus Omari & Charles Harper Webb at the Claremont Helen Renwick Library – In-Person Event

Fourth Saturdays: Poetry at the Claremont Library is a free monthly poetry reading series organized by local poets Lucia Galloway, Karen Maya, Genevieve Kaplan, George Hammons, & Chloe Martinez, and supported by Friends of the Claremont Library.

Called by Lifescape “Southern California’s most inventive and accessible poet,” Charles Harper Webb has published 14 books of poetry with University of Wisconsin Press, BOA, University of Pittsburgh Press, and most recently, Old Gnu with Longleaf Press and The Elephant of Surprise (prose poems) with Moon Tide. His book of craft essays, A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, was published by Red Hen Press, which also published his novel Ursula Lake. Webb’s awards in poetry include the Morse Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Felix Pollock Prize, the Benjamin Saltman Prize, and the Editor’s Choice Award from Longleaf Press. His poems have appeared in many distinguished journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Yale Review, Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Tin House, Poets of the New Century, Best American Poetry, and The Pushcart Prize. A former professional rock musician and psychotherapist, he is the editor of Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology, and recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a fellowship from the Guggenheim foundation. He is professor emeritus of English at California State University, Long Beach.

Marcus Omari is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and performer whose work lives at the intersection of language, community, and sound. A featured poet on Verses & Flow (TV One), he is the author of two chapbooks and has spent over a decade collaborating across poetry, music, and education. Through his arts initiative Poetic Reform Party, Marcus designs and leads literary programs that center access, depth, and creative exchange. His work has taken him from classrooms and community spaces across California to international performances and workshops in the United Kingdom, France, and Indonesia. His practice also includes collaborative work with classical composers, most recently contributing original text to the world premiere of Critical Mass, composed by Tarik O’Regan and performed in London with choral and orchestral accompaniment. Grounded in a tradition of literary activism and soulful inquiry, and shaped by writers such as June Jordan, Nikki Giovanni, and Walter Benton, Marcus approaches poetry as an invitation—to listen closely, speak honestly, and imagine together.

Where: Claremont Helen Renwick Library, Claremont

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 2 pm – 4 pm

Miriam’s Garden Poetry Series is hosted by author, librarian, and writer Yago Cura and is held on the fourth Saturday of the month in the garden of the library.

Chiwan Choi, co-founder of Writ Large Projects, is the author of five books of poetry: The Flood, the Daughter trilogy—Abductions, The Yellow House and my name is wolf—and Sky Songs. He wrote, presented, and destroyed the novel Ghostmaker throughout the course of 2015.

Genesis Perez is a queer Chicana poet and performer from Oxnard, California. They are the Program and Bookstore Assistant at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. From 2019 to 2020 they were the Youth Poet Laureate of Ventura County. They released their debut collection of poetry Flash Photography in 2021. Perez has performed at Paak House, Medicine for Nightmares, and Da Poetry Lounge. @panicversuseuphoria

Lila Juergens is a chef, poet, community builder, and other dimensional trans priestess bringing you poems from beyond the k-hole. @fabfoodfairy

Where: Hyde Park Miriam Matthews Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 2:30 pm – 4 pm

Address: 2205 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043

Website: Instagram Page

Creative Writing Group at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Calling all writers of fiction, screenplays, poetry, etc. Get feedback on your writing in a fun, supportive environment! The Central Library Creative Writing Group meets every other Saturday for fellowship, feedback, and snacks. Meetings start out with a short writing prompt exercise, then writers are invited to share up to five pages of their work for feedback from the group. Whether you are just starting out or well on your way to glory, join us and banish (at least temporarily) those Lonely Writer Blues!

NOTE: See site for complete scheduled of meeting dates.

Where: Central Library, LAPL, Meeting Room B

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 3 pm – 5 pm

Address: 630 W. 5^th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/creative-writing-group

Community in Conversation:Family Edition: Queso, Just in Time at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Kids, and your parents!!!

Join us for our first ever Community in Conversation event for families to read and discuss books together! Read Ernesto Cisneros’s amazing middle grade novel Queso, Just in Time together as a family. Then on Saturday, May 23rd at 3:00 pm, come to our store and sit with us to discuss the book. Parents and kids, aunts, uncles, grandparents…everyone is welcome!

About Queso, Just in Time: “If you could travel back in time to when your parents were your age, get to know them before life shaped them into the adults they are, would you want to go? Quetzalcoatl Castillo Anguiano Ceballos Regalado, Queso for short, tolerates a lot of jokes about his nickname, but at least people can pronounce it. He is named after his abuelo who, like so many immigrants, gave up his dreams so that future generations could have theirs. Queso’s dad’s dreams though, were taken by his experiences in the Vietnam war, and he died young, so when Queso discovers that he has travelled back in time and can get to know his dad before the PTSD, he is ecstatic! With a voice tuned perfectly to a grieving, kind middle-schooler, Cisneros gifts us with another book for our times and our kids.” -Linda

Come in and buy your copy (or copies!) of Queso, Just in Time so that you can read the book together before the meeting! Or add the book to your cart below if you’d like to buy your copy from us online.

We’ll see you there!

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 3 pm – 4 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508 

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-05-23/community-conversation-family-edition-queso-just-time

Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Published Book Readings by Lynn Bronstein & Steven Kutcher & Four Feathers Press led by DKC at Lamanda Park Branch Library, Pasadena – In-Person Event

Join us to hear Lynn Bronstein and Steven Kutcher read from new publications and authors read from their work in Four Feathers Press’ Turtle Island Poetry. Don Kingfisher Campbell hosts and curates these events.

Where: Lamanda Park Library

Date: Saturday, the 23^rd

Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm

Address: 140 S. Altadena Dr., Pasadena CA

Website: https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/

Public Works Improv Presents: Storyphile Event with Lee Boek & guest performers at Church in Ocean Park, Santa Monica – In-Person Event

Storyphile is back, presented by Public Works Improv Theatre, and Lee Boek always delivers a seriously fun night. This round brings a little extra flavor with live jazz (yes, jazz), plus poetry and storytelling.

Miyo Yamauchi, born and raised in Japan, brings a unique perspective and sense of humor to storytelling. Her insatiable curiosity about life, people and the world leads her on many adventures and results in stories that delight her audience.

Paul Fleisher is a library technician and was a photo editor for Getty Images for many years.

$20 donation

NOTE: Tickets at door.

Where: Church in Ocean Park

Date: Saturday, the 23^rd

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm

Address: 235 Hill St., Santa Monica, CA 90405 (street parking; see site)

Website: https://miyo.net/event/storyphile-20260523/

Horror Book Talk: Tamika Thompson, with Rachel Howzell Hall, & The Curse of Hester Gardens at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Kids Event

Former Journalist Tamika Thompson celebrates the release of her new book The Curse of Hester Gardens with a lively discussion with this storyauthor Rachel Howzell Hall.

This book is an innovative twist on the haunted house novel: about a mother desperate to protect her sons from the twin specters of gun violence and otherworldly menace in their public housing project.

Nona McKinley raised three boys in the Hester Gardens section of Medford, Michigan, an impoverished community divided by those who follow their faith in God and those who turn to crime to survive. With her drug dealer husband behind bars and her eldest son shot to death at eighteen, Nona has devoted herself to ensuring her other children escape their brother’s fate.

Her second son Marcus is on the right path. He’s a valedictorian heading to an Ivy League school. He can get out.

But then, strange things start happening to Nona and other residents: mysterious footsteps are heard when she’s alone, people have phantom encounters in the streets, unattended appliances go off at all hours. Even more concerning is the state of Nona’s living sons. Her youngest, Lance, is hanging around with a bad crowd, and Marcus becomes moody and secretive. Sometimes he even seems to act like a different person entirely. Nona has her secrets too. Her affair with the married church pastor has been weighing on her conscience, but that’s not the only guilt haunting her. She fears that someone—or something—is seeking revenge for an act she made in a moment of weakness to protect her family. And now everyone in Hester Gardens must pay the price.

Tamika Thompson is author of The Curse of Hester Gardens. A former journalist and producer, she is also author of Unshod, Cackling, and Naked, which is the 2024 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner for Horror, as well as author of Salamander Justice. Her work has appeared in several speculative fiction anthologies as well as in Interzone, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she hosts her own blog and newsletter, Tamika Talks Terror. Visit her online at tamikathompson.com or on social media @tamikadthompson.

Rachel Howzell Hall is the New York Times bestselling author of Fog and Fury, The Cruel Dawn, The Last One, What Never Happened, We Lie Here, These Toxic Things, And Now She’s Gone, They All Fall Down, and, with James Patterson, The Good Sister, which was included in Patterson’s collection The Family Lawyer. A two-time Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist as well as an Anthony, International Thriller Writers, and Lefty Award nominee, Rachel is also the author of Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes, and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. A past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America, she has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter. For more information, visit http://www.rachelhowzell.com.

Reserve your seat on EVENTBRITE!

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Noir at the Bar: Jordan Harper, Lawrence Allen, Lucinda Berry, Andrew Rubin, JM Petrick, Andrew Miller, Eric Beetner at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event

Reprise of an author event now held at The Book Jewel. See site for info.

Join us to celebrate these authors and their work.

Where: The Book Jewel

Date: Saturday the 23^rd

Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 6259 W. 87^th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045

Website: Instagram Page

Bilingual Book Launch & Celebration: William Archilla, with Omar Barcena, Mariano Zaro, and Carolina Rivera Escamilla, & Canicula/Dog Days at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Online Hybrid YouTube Event

William Archila’s Canícula/Dog Days is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry, The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, two collections that chart the emergence of a newcomer in the chorus of Latine Poetry. Canícula, which means “dog days” in English, takes the reader on a poignant journey from the unrest in El Salvador in the 1980s to the urban landscape of the US immigrant, revealing the turmoil and memory of the disempowered, the impoverished, and the displaced who struggle back home in Central America. In lyrical and often harrowing language, Archila unearths the vestiges of war and the exile’s return in an elegy, the fragments of a myth, or a jazz riff. They come together like the bilateral symmetry of a volcano, and the result is the introduction to Archila’s poetry for the Spanish reader.

The author will be joined by in The Wanda Coleman Theater for readings in English and Spanish.

Canícula/Dog Days de William Archila es una selección bilingüe de sus dos primeros libros de poesía, El arte del exilio y La arqueología del sepulturero, dos poemarios que marcan el surgimiento de un nuevo referente en la poesía latina. Dog Days, que significa “canícula”, lleva al lector a través de un viaje conmovedor desde la agitación en El Salvador en la década de 1980 hasta el paisaje urbano del inmigrante en los Estados Unidos, revelando la angustia y la memoria de los marginados, los empobrecidos y los desplazados, que luchan por volver a su hogar en Centroamérica. Con un lenguaje lírico y a menudo desgarrador, Archila desentierra los vestigios de la guerra y el regreso del exiliado en una elegía, en los fragmentos de un mito o en un riff de jazz. Estos se conjugan como la simetría de un volcán, y el resultado es la presentación de la poesía de Archila al lector en español.

El autor estará acompañado en el Teatro Wanda Coleman por Omar Barcena, Mariano Zaro y Carolina Rivera Escamilla para realizar lecturas en inglés y español.

William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For. His first collection The Art of Exile was awarded the International Latino Book Award, an Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer’s Center and was selected for The Fifth Annual Debut Poets Round Up” in Poets & Writers. The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, Archila’s second book, received the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. He has been awarded the Alan Collins Scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Fighting Fund Fellow Award from the University of Oregon. He was also awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship.

William Archila es el ganador del Premio Philip Levine de Poesía 2023 por su colección S is For. Su primera colección, The Art of Exile, fue galardonada con el International Latino Book Award, recibió una beca para escritores emergentes del Writer’s Center y fue seleccionada para la Quinta Muestra Anual de Poetas Debutantes (Fifth Annual Debut Poets Round Up) de la revista Poets & Writers. The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, el segundo libro de Archila, recibió el Premio de Poesía Letras Latinas/Red Hen. Ha sido distinguido con la Beca Alan Collins de la Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference y con la Beca Fighting Fund de la Universidad de Oregón. Asimismo, le fue otorgada la Beca Jack Hazard 2023.

Omar Bárcena is a poet and architect originally from the border city of Mexicali, Baja California, but also raised in adjoining Calexico, California. His two poetry collections were published by Valparaíso Ediciones of Granada, Spain, and other works of his appear in various trilingual anthologies across the American continent. At this stage in his life, he collaborates with Sonnam, a gothic rock band from Portland, Oregon, as a Spanish-language singer-songwriter.

Omar Bárcena es poeta y arquitecto, originario de la ciudad fronteriza de Mexicali, Baja California, pero igualmente criado en Calexico, Alta California. Tiene dos poemarios publicados por Valparaíso Ediciones de Granada, España, y otras piezas suyas aparecen en varias antologías trilingües del continente americano. En esta etapa de su vida colabora con Sonnam, un grupo de rock gótico de Portland, Oregón, como cantautor en español.

Carolina Rivera Escamilla is an educator, writer, poet, actor, documentarian, cultural activist, and organizer of literary community events. Born in El Salvador, She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles, and studied Spanish Literature and film at UCLA Extension. She is a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow. Her first collection of short stories, …after…, was published in 2015 by World Stage Press. Her debut collection of theatrical poetry, In a Corner of Your Country, was published in 2023 by Bellucci, Palms & Carmichael, LLC Press. The Spanish edition, titled “En una Esquina de tu País,” was released in March 2024 by Poetry Ambassador Press. She directed, wrote, and produced the documentary “Manlio Argueta, Poets and Volcanoes.” (2011) Her work has appeared in 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 the Altadena Poetry Review Anthology (Golden Foothills Press), Central American Women in Diaspora, Anthology (The University of Arizona Press), among others.www.altivofilms.com/www.carolinariveraescamilla.com

Carolina Rivera Escamilla es educadora, escritora, poeta, actor, documentalista, activista cultural y organizadora de eventos literarios comunitarios. Nacida en El Salvador, obtuvo una licenciatura en Literatura Inglesa por la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles, y cursos de estudió Literatura Española y Cine en UCLA Extensión. Ha sido becaria del programa Emerging Voices de PEN America. Su primera colección de relatos cortos, …after…, fue publicada en 2015 por World Stage Press. Su primera colección de poesía teatral, «In a Corner of Your Country», fue publicada en 2023 por Bellucci, Palms & Carmichael, LLC Press. La edición en español, titulada «En una Esquina de tu País», fue publicada en marzo de 2024 por Poetry Ambassador Press. Dirigió, escribió y produjo el documental «Manlio Argueta, Poets and Volcanoes». (2011) Su obra ha aparecido en 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 y Altadena Poetry Review Anthology (Golden Foothills Press), Central American Women in Diaspora, Anthology (The University Arizona Press), y otras publicaciones.

Mariano Zaro is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The Weight of Sound (Walton Well Press), Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press, Los Angeles) and Padre Tierra (Olifante, Zaragoza, Spain). His poems and short stories have been published in anthologies and literary journals in Mexico, Spain and the United States. His translations include Buda en llamas by Tony Barnstone and Cómo escribir una canción de amor by Sholeh Wolpé. He is a professor of Spanish at Río Hondo Community College (Whittier, CA).

Mariano Zaro es autor de siete libros de poesía; sus títulos más recientes son The Weight of Sound (Walton Well Press), Decoding Sparrows (What Books Press, Los Ángeles) y Padre Tierra (Olifante, Zaragoza, España). Sus poemas y relatos breves han aparecido en antologías y revistas literarias de México, España y Estados Unidos. Entre sus traducciones se encuentran Buda en llamas, de Tony Barnstone, y Cómo escribir una canción de amor, de Sholeh Wolpé. Es profesor de español en el Rio Hondo Community College (Whittier, CA).

NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information. 

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Saturday, the 23^rd

Time: 7:30 pm

Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291 

Website: Instagram Page

Sunday Jump Literary Festival: Caution! Writers at Play at Pilipino Workers Center – In-Person Event

Join us for Sunday Jump’s First Literary Festival: Caution! Writers at Play at the Pilipino Workers Center on May 24^th, 9:30 am – 4:30 pm.

There will be exhibitors, food, a catered lunch, poetry, and performances from our Showcase Features:

Matthew Cuban is a three-time Southern Fried poetry slam champion and an award-winning poetry coach, leading both Da Poetry Lounge adult teams and Get Lit Words Ignite youth teams to multiple final stage appearances at national and international poetry competitions. He is author of 3032 (Not a Cult, 2020)

Antonio Cortez Appling is a poet, teacher, and restaurateur. He is the Owner of “The Nest”, a breakfast restaurant in Bellflower, CA. He also founded “The Long Beach Poetry Slam” and “The Definitive Soapbox” the largest running spoken word open mic in the Long Beach area.

Maytie Macias is Los Angeles-based youth poet and Get Lit player honoring the lineage of storytellers.

Jade Phoenix is a queer trans femme Filipinx, genre non- conforming artist, rapper, producer, but always a spoken word poet at heart. Jade’s work is a poetic expression rooted in the vision of art as a process of cultivating a collective liberation.

Where: Pilipino Workers Center

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 9:30 am – 4:30 pm

Address: 153 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026

Website: Instagram Page

This Is a (Rep Club) Book Club: Brown Girl in the Ring at Reparations Club – In-Person Event

Participants will read and discuss Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson.

This is a Rep Club Book Club. We read Black books and talk about them.

Wanna read more in 2026 and need some accountability partners at your favorite bookstore? We got you. We also got a community of readers who would love to meet you. Join us! Let’s read more!

Where: Reparations Club

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 10 am – 11;30 am

Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?

Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block MWF 9-10 am and TuTh 10 am for a brief intro, discussion of her highly-effective 12 Question method, and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgment. Afterwards you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca brief questions about your writing.

Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Christian Robinson & A Celebration of Dad at Children’s Book World – In-Person Kids/Family Event

Join Caldecott Honoree, NY Times bestselling, and beloved children’s book creator, Christian Robinson, for a celebration of Dad, his acclaimed new picture book. Christian Robinson is bringing the magic of his storytelling and his kid friendly artistry to this very special Sunday morning book party!

Dad is a loving tribute to all kinds of dads. There are as many ways to be a dad as there are dads in the world. Dad is a big-hearted love letter to all of them, reflecting the range of relationships that dads, both animal and human, have with their little ones. Dad is destined to be a classic, an evergreen gift for new fathers, and one of those rare picture books that resonates with every reader at any age. The perfect gift for baby showers, Father’s Day, or all year round!

LA-based “kindie rocker,” Mista Cookie Jar, will also bring his urban-island-folky-rock-&-roll sounds to Children’s Book World. Blending a background in creative writing, poetry & hip-hop production, his music, regularly featured on Sirius XM’s Kids Place Live!, oozes positivity & love.

Where: Children’s Book World

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 11:30 am – 12:30 pm

Address: 10580 ½ W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064

Website: https://childrensbookworld.com/event/2026-05-24/christian-robinson-person-celebration-dad-special-guest-mista-cookie-jar

Black Children’s Book Fest & Author Event at Malik’s Books at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall – In-Person Kids/Family Event

Join us to celebrate culture, inspire young minds, and build legacy with live readings, author meet & greets, giveaways, kids’ activities & fun.

CJ Charles will present her book, My Father Is a Superhero.

Tyonie Patterson will present her book Dance, Dance.

Bridgette Hecht will present her book Tori and Jeff: A Tale of Friendship.

Shea Singleton will present her book Princeton’s Crown.

Alexsandra Pumphrey will present her book Rawr Rawr Dinosaur.

Sharifa Anozie will present her book It’s in You.

Charlie Ervin will present his book My Father Is a Superhero.

Alexus Mozell will present her book I Know I Can Too.

Nadine Luke will present her book They Call Me Africa.

Tiffany Heard will present her book Hues of HBCUs.

Vontavia Heard will present her book On the Way to Grandma’s House.

Christiana Davis will present her book Where the Palm Tree Grows.

Dr. Jacqueline Drummond Lewis will present her book Adventures with Doc JC.

Where: Malik Books at Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 12 pm – 3 pm

Join us all day at the Carousel Stage at the Red Café at the Pomona Fairplex to hear performances form a variety of poets. authors, and spoken word artists, presented by Lionlike Mindstate.

David Judah One will host: Jonathan Kermah, Brandon Allen, Daxon Publishing, Ely Lupe, Clara Ximena, Erica Lopez, Jake Teran, Usolopher, Samantha Herrera & Tommy Domino, among others. See flyer for details.

Where: Los Angeles County Fairplex, Pomona

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 12 pm – 6 pm

Address: Carousel Stage, 1101 McKinley Ave., Pomona, CA 91768

Website: Instagram Page

Latinx Book Club: Dark Dude via Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person & Online Zoom Event

Join us to discuss Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos.

He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t leave a phone number. And he didn’t plan on coming back—ever.

Fifteen-year-old Rico Fuentes has had enough of life in Harlem, where his fair complexion—inherited from an Irish grandfather—keeps him caught between two cultures without belonging to either. He pours his outsider feelings into a comic book Dark Dude, with his friend Jimmy illustrating. But when Gilberto, who’s always looked out for Rico, moves to Wisconsin and Jimmy loses himself to an insidious habit, Rico decides enough is enough.

With Jimmy in tow, Rico runs away to the Midwest in search of Gilberto. The heavily white community feels worlds away from Harlem, and for the first time, Rico sees what it’s like to blend in—no longer the “dark dude” or the punching bag for the whole neighborhood. But the less energy Rico needs to put into proving he’s Latino, the less he feels like one. And the more he gets to know the people around him, the more it’s clear that a change in location doesn’t change human nature—and that there’s no such thing as a perfect community.

Faced with the truth that there are things that can’t be cut loose or forgotten, things that keep him from ever having an ordinary white kid’s life, Rico must decide whether he can make a home in the place he ran to…or the one he ran from.

Oscar Hijuelos (1951–2013) was a first-generation Cuban American and the first Latino to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction; he also won the Rome Prize and the Hispanic Heritage Award for Literature. He wrote several novels, including Dark Dude, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and Beautiful Maria of My Soul.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 2 pm – 3 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-05-24/latinx-book-club-dark-dude

Zillennial Book Club: Let This Radicalize You at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Let This Radicalize You by Kelly Hayes, Mariame Kaba.

What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.

Longtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes

examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.

The book is an assemblage of co-authored reflections, interviews and questions that are intended to aid and empower activists and organizers as they attempt to map their own journeys through the work of justice-making. It includes insights from a spectrum of experienced organizers, including Sharon Lungo, Carlos Saavedra, Ejeris Dixon, Barbara Ransby, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore about some of the difficult and joyous lessons they have learned in their work.

Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator, librarian, and prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionist who is active in movements for racial, gender, and transformative justice. Kaba is the founder and director of Project NIA, a grassroots abolitionist organization with a vision to end youth incarceration. Mariame co-leads the initiative Interrupting Criminalization, a project she co-founded with Andrea Ritchie in 2018. Kaba is the author of the New York Times Bestseller We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Press 2021), Missing Daddy (Haymarket 2019), Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Faciltators with Shira Hassan (Project NIA, 2019), See You Soon (Haymarket, March 2022) and No More Police: A Case for Abolition with Andrea Ritchie (The New Press, Aug 2022).

Kelly Hayes is a Menominee author, organizer, movement educator, and photographer. She is also the host of Truthout’s podcast Movement Memos. Hayes is a co-founder of the Lifted Voices collective and the Chicago Light Brigade. Her written work is featured in numerous publications and multiple anthologies, including Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books, 2016), Education in Movement Spaces: Standing Rock to Chicago Freedom Square (Routledge, 2020), and The Solidarity Struggle: How People of Color Succeed and Fail at Showing Up for Each Other in the Fight for Freedom (BGD Press, 2016). Hayes also coauthored an essay with Mariame Kaba in Kaba’s book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket Books, 2021). Hayes’s movement photography is featured in the Freedom and Resistance exhibit of the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 4 pm – 6 pm

Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-05-24/zillennial-book-club-let-radicalize-you

Embodied Book Club: The Body Is Not an Apology at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person MG Event

We invite you to join An Embodied Book Club—a dynamic, participatory series creating space for embodied dialogue, movement, and storytelling inspired by Sonya Renee Taylor’s groundbreaking book The Body Is Not an Apology.

Rooted in creative play, improvisation, breathwork, and collective movement practices, this four-workshop experience explores the power of radical self-love and our shared capacity to resist body-based oppression. Together, participants engage Taylor’s unapologetic, body-liberating writing through lived experience, imagination, and community practice—moving ideas off the page and into our bodies.

Across the series, participants will co-create an embodied performance piece, weaving personal stories with collective wisdom and joy. The journey culminates in a celebratory gathering featuring a live performance of CONTRA-TIEMPO repertoire, accompanied by live music and a DJ, amplifying rhythm, connection, and the liberatory power of dancing together.

Come ready to read, move, reflect, and imagine—building meaningful belonging through bodies in motion, radical welcome, and collective joy.

Holly Johnston is a movement artist, dance educator, and somatic specialist whose work lives at the intersection of choreography, embodied research, and community-based wellness. She holds an MFA in Choreography and a BA in Dance, and has taught extensively in higher education, including University of California–San Diego, California State University–Fullerton, Loyola Marymount University, Chapman University, and California State University–Long Beach.

Johnston’s artistic practice is grounded in somatic phenomenology, movement analysis, and trauma-informed pedagogy, approaching dance as both an aesthetic inquiry and a social practice. As founder and envisioning director of RESPONSIVE BODY, she leads body liberation practices that integrate movement research, care ethics, and collective healing. Since 2022, she has served as Somatic Ecologist with CONTRA-TIEMPO Activist Dance Theater, providing embodied wellness support, creative collaboration, and somatic-social practice development for artists and communities.

Her choreographic work has been commissioned by universities, festivals, and professional companies across the U.S. and internationally, supported by organizations including NEFA/NDP, NPN, the Department of Cultural Affairs–Los Angeles, and the Culver City Cultural Affairs Division. A former Dance Magazine “25 to Watch” artist and Lester Horton Award recipient, Johnston continues to research how movement can cultivate belonging, disrupt systems of body-based oppression, and generate cultures of care through artistic practice.

 Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232

Website: Event Page

Book Event: Alexa Yasemin Brahme, with Katya Apekina, & Good News: A Novel at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event

Alexa Yasemin Brahme, in conversation with Katya Apekina, will discuss her novel Good News.

In this story a young artist struggles to find her way in New York City while navigating strained relationships, the reappearance of an ex, and her burgeoning sense of self. A mess, of course, ensues.

Where: Stories Books & Café

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Orders Manager Katie S leads our Historical Romance Book Club. The meeting is on the 4th Sunday of the month at 7:15 pm.

Participants will discuss Unladylike Lessons in Love by Amita Murray.

No membership is necessary, but RSVP is required.

Where: The Ripped Bodice

Date: Sunday the 24^th

Time: 7:15 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA 90232

Website: https://www.therippedbodice.com/events-and-tickets