Where: Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 15^th

Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm

Address: 12006 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066

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

Book Discussion for Adults: Other Birds at Sorensen Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us to read and discuss Other Birds: A Novel by Sarah Addison Allen. For Adults.

When Zoey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at the Dellawisp she meets her quirky and secretive neighbors, including a young woman with a past, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and a lonely chef, and three ghosts. The sudden death of one of Zoey’s new neighbors sets off a search that leads to the island’s famous author and to a long-estranged relative of the sisters.

Each of them has a story, and each story has an ending which hasn’t yet been written.

Pick up a copy for checkout at the Customer Service Desk today.

Where: Sorensen Library, LACL

Date: Monday the 15^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 6934 Broadway Ave., Whittier, CA 90606

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16332567

Philosophical Horror Book Club: Their Vicious Games at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington.

A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren’t just high, they’re deadly, in this “spine-chilling thriller” (Publishers Weekly).

You must work twice as hard to get half as much.

Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It’s why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything.

And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted from her top choice Ivy League college and any other. Her only chance to regain the future she’s sacrificed everything for is the Finish, a high-stakes contest sponsored by Edgewater’s founding family in which twelve young, ambitious women with exceptional promise are selected to compete in three mysterious events: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. The winner will be granted entry into the fold of the Remington family, whose wealth and power can open any door.

Adina knows the deck is stacked against her—it always has been—so maybe the only way to survive their vicious games is for her to change the rules.

Joelle Wellington grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where her childhood was spent wandering the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Her love of the written word led her to a BA in creative writing and international studies. When she isn’t writing, she’s reading and when she’s not doing that, she’s attempting to bake bread with varying degrees of success or strengthening her encyclopedia-like pop culture knowledge. She’s the author of Their Vicious Games, The Blonde Dies First, and Girls Who Play Dead.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Monday the 15^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-15/philosphical-horror-book-club-their-vicious-games

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 15^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501

Website: Facebook Page

Zays Ayers Dohrn & Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Zays Ayers Dohrn will discuss Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground.

The son of Weather Underground radicals tells the story of a childhood on the run and a half-century of revolutionary struggle in America.

Zayd Ayers Dohrn was born underground. His parents were fugitives after a decade fighting the US government; his mother was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. All his life, Dohrn’s parents said his birth marked a clean break with violent revolutionary struggle, but in this explosive memoir, he discovers that story wasn’t entirely true.

This masterpiece of personal and social history brings us inside an infamous family and their lives underground. Drawing on exclusive interviews, declassified FBI files, and long-hidden letters, photos, and diaries, Dohrn tells a new story of radical resistance, including revelations about the Weathermen’s bombing campaign, their secret alliance with the Black Liberation Army, and the dramatic prison break of Assata Shakur.

Reckoning with the emotional damage the Weathermen inflicted on their victims, their children, and themselves, Dohrn’s unflinching memoir explores the roots of radicalism and asks how a young person survives when the place they feel safest—with their family—also puts them in danger.

An acclaimed playwright and screenwriter, Zayd Ayers Dohrn is a professor and director of the MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage at Northwestern University. He is creator of the hit narrative podcast Mother Country Radicals and the rock protest musical Revolution(s).

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday the 15^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-06-15/zayd-ayers-dohrn

Reyna Grande, with Leslie Priscilla, & Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

Reyna Grande, in conversation with Leslie Priscilla, will discuss and sign Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget.

An ambitious memoir in essays by beloved bestselling author Reyna Grande that illuminates the hidden cost of the American Dream and the complex journey of healing that follows survival.

What is the true power of stories? Can they heal the jagged edges of a traumatic childhood? Is the cost of telling the story worth the price of the cure?

Reyna Grande has spent her career capturing the raw reality of life across borders. In this intricate and deeply intimate memoir-in-essays, the author of the landmark memoirs The Distance Between Us and A Dream Called Home again turns her gaze inward to explore the scars left by migration and the ongoing work of stitching herself back together.

With her signature blend of sophistication and raw honesty, Grande interrogates how living between two nations, two languages, and two identities has shaped the woman, mother, and writer she has become. Moving from the legacy of violence in her hometown of Iguala, Mexico, to a bittersweet family vacation in Europe spent reconciling her own impoverished past with her children’s world of abundance, she uncovers startling truths about the nature of survival.

Whether being racially profiled in the Arizona borderlands or finding unexpected wisdom from the slugs in her garden, Grande unflinchingly asks: How do we bridge the gap between who we were and who we have become? How do we turn pain into power? When memory threatens to define us, how can we use story to heal while still honoring our boundaries?

Migrant Heart is a powerful testament to Grande’s role as a storyteller and cultural witness. It expands our understanding of life in the United States and the complex people who cross and live within its borders. It is an essential read for the seekers, the dreamers, and anyone who believes in the enduring, transformative power of finding one’s voice.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Monday the 15^th

Time: 7 pm

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

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-15/reyna-grande

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 15^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)

Website: Free Workshop 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 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 16^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

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

Website: Event Page

Virtual Book Club: The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club via La Crescenta Library, LACL – Online Event

Join us for the weekly Virtual Book Club. In June we will be discussing The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club by Martha Hall Kelly.

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

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

Week 2: June 16: Chapters 10 – 23 — Pages 79 – 156

Week 3: June 23: Chapters 24 – 36 — Pages 157 – 228

Week 4: June 30: Chapters 37 – 49 — Pages 229 to the end of the book

Please note there will not be a meeting on Tuesday, June 2.

Two sisters living on Martha’s Vineyard during World War II find hope in the power of storytelling when they start a wartime book club for women-a spectacular novel inspired by true events from the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls

Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: Online Event (see site) 

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16603403

Boardwalk Bookworms Book Club: A Moveable Feast at Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us for a lively discussion of our current selection over fresh bagels and coffee.

June 16: A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Where: Venice – Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library, LAPL 

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

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

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/boardwalk-bookworms-book-club-1

Tuesday Afternoon Book Club: Slaughterhouse Five at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join the Tuesday Afternoon Book Club to discuss Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This club is available in person and on Zoom; please email silver@lapl.org for the link.

Books are available at the Reference Desk. Light refreshments are served.

Where: Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL 

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 1 pm

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

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/tuesday-afternoon-book-club-5

Before the Ban Book Club: All American Boys at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join us to discuss All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a 2024 MacArthur Fellow, a Kirkus Award winner, a UK Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, an Odyssey Award Winner and two-time honoree, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors, a Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He was also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); When I Was the Greatest; The Boy in the Black Suit; Stamped; As Brave as You; For Every One; the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu, and Coach); Look Both Ways; Stuntboy, in the Meantime; Stuntboy, In-Between Time; Miles Morales Suspended; Ain’t Burned All the Bright (recipient of the Caldecott Honor) and My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (both cowritten with Jason Griffin); Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…; and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. His debut picture book, There Was a Party for Langston, won a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Brendan Kiely is the New York Times bestselling author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), Tradition, The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His most recent book is The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. His work has been published in over a dozen languages, and has received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Award, and ALA’s Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. A former high school teacher, he is now on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program. He watches too much basketball and reads too many books at the same time, but most importantly, he lives for and loves his wife and son. Find out more at BrendanKiely.com.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 1 pm – 3 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-16/ban-book-club-all-american-boys

Book Club: Stone Blind at Pico Rivera Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join the Pico Rivera Library Book Club as they discuss Natalie Haynes’s novel Stone Blind, a retelling of the classic Greek myth about Medusa. For adults.

When the sea god Poseidon assaults Medusa in Athene’s temple, the goddess is enraged. Athene takes revenge—on the young woman. Punished for Poseidon’s actions, Medusa is forever transformed into a monster. Cursed with the power to destroy all she loves with one look, Medusa condemns herself to a life of solitude until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon.

Where: Pico Rivera Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 9001 Mines Ave., Pico Rivera, CA 90660

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16250492

Naughty Novel Society eBook Club: Pole Position at Lawnd Library, LACL – In-Person Event

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 ages 18+.

June’s Pick: Pole Position by Rebecca J. Caffery. Available in Audiobook and eBook on Hoopla.

Where: Lawndale Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 14615 Burin Ave., Lawndale, CA 90260

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/15992634

Adult Book Club: The Keeper of Lost Things at Lawnd Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join the Adult Book Club for a discussion of our latest selection, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan. For Adults

An elderly man has made it his duty to rescue lost objects, give them a new home and write stories about them, a project he started when he unexpectedly lost his wife on the same day that he misplaced one of her keepsakes. He decides to leave his housekeeper the house and all of the objects in it in hopes that she will fulfill his wish to reunite the lost things with their owners, a mission that she embarks on with a group of new companions that ultimately will change her life.

If you would like a copy of the book, please drop by Baldwin Park Library to pick up a copy or check the catalog for a digital copy.

Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees..

Where: Baldwin Park Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16419143

Classic Detectives Book Club: Nemisis (and Caribbean Mystery for extra credit) at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join us and please have Agatha Christie’s Nemesis read, Caribbean Mystery is extra credit if you get to it but not mandatory for the meeting.

In Nemisis: A Miss Marple Mystery #11, Miss Marple receives a letter from a dead man instructing her how to conduct an investigation into a puzzlingly unspecific crime.

In utter disbelief, Miss Marple read the letter addressed to her from the recently deceased Mr. Rafiel—an acquaintance she had met briefly on her travels. He had left instructions for her to investigate a crime after his death. The only problem was, he had failed to tell her who was involved or where and when the crime had been committed. It was most intriguing.

Soon she is faced with a new crime—the ultimate crime—murder. It seems someone is adamant that past evils remained buried…

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her books have sold more than a billion copies in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages. She died in 1976, after a prolific career spanning six decades.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-16/classic-detectives-book-club-nemesis-extra-credit-caribbean-mystery

Author Event: Sonya Walger, with Samantha Dockser, & Wifehouse at Zibby’s Bookshop – In-Person Event

Sonya Walger, in conversation with Samantha Dockser, will discuss Wifehouse.

Annie and Hector have been hosting their friends Candace, Edouard, and their son, Remy, in the guest house of their Connecticut home for many months while their friends’ home undergoes renovations. As a thank-you, Candace gifts Annie French lessons with twenty-six-year-old local French tutor, Thierry. Hector, an actor, goes to film on location, leaving Annie—newly bereaving her mother—to single-parent their two kids.

As the lessons progress, she finds herself unexpectedly vulnerable to the charms of a man closer in age to her own teenage daughter than to her own. A new life for Annie emerges, one she could never have foreseen.

Told over the course of one year, through the shifting perspectives of wife, husband, lover, best friend, and children, Walger paints a contradictory, nuanced portrait of a woman who walks away from every role that tradition and society have expected of her.

Sonya Walger is an award-winning actress, best known for her role as Penny Widmore on Lost and Molly Cobb in the first three seasons of Apple TV+’s For All Mankind. Other career highlights include the original Broadway production of Frost/Nixon, Parenthood, Tell Me You Love Me, Scandal, Flashforward, and In Treatment. She studied English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford and was the host of the literary podcast, Bookish. Her first book, Lion, a semiautobiographical novel was published by New York Review Books in February 2025. She lives in Malibu, California.

Samantha Dockser is the co-head of Logue Social, an author exclusive social media marketing agency, and the co-founder of @ThePreoccupied and Preoccupied Walking Book Club, which was recently profiled in the LA Times as a gen-z and millennial book club reshaping the literary scene. She is a well-established content creator herself with over 300k followers across channels. Samantha lives in Los Angeles with her fiancé and their toy poodle, Mr. Darcy.

RSVP at website link.

Where: Zibby’s Bookshop

Date: Tuesday the16^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

Address: 1113 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, CA

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/author-event-sonya-walger-with-samantha-dockser-tickets-1989428102007

Book Club Tuesdays: El Dorado Drive at Hollydale Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us this month for a facilitated discussion of El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott. For adults.

Where: Hollydale Library, LACL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

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

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16521009

The 3^rd Tuesday Book Club: Hamnet at Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us for a lively discussion of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell. All are welcome!

Where: Playa Vista Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6:30 pm

Address: 6400 Playa Vista Dr., Los Angeles, CA 90094

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/3rd-tuesday-book-club-4

Matt Witten, with Patricia Smiley, & 51% at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Matt Witten, in conversation with Patricia Smiley, to discuss 51%l.

In a future where corporations own everything—including people—one murder could ignite a revolution.

Twenty years from now, the United States is completely privatized. The Big Six syndicates own schools, roads, police departments…even human beings.

When a young immigrant woman-51% owned by the syndicates-is brutally murdered, NYPD, Inc. Detective Juke O’Keefe and his partner, Crime Marketing Consultant Haylee Navarro, catch the case. Pregnant and broke, Haylee knows they can’t crowdfund enough from a dead immigrant to pay for basic forensics, let alone their paychecks. But Juke, with his old-school sense of justice, is determined to find the killer.

Their search for the truth leads them to Juke’s ex, Safiya Jones, a Resistance leader on the syndicates’ most wanted list. As the three join forces, they stumble onto a conspiracy designed to destroy the last shreds of American freedom. To rescue fifty-one percenters-and everyone else-from syndicate control, they’ll have to defeat the most ruthless, powerful AI in the world.

51% is a gritty, fast-paced thriller about power, justice, and what happens when everything-even people-can be owned.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

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

Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-06-16/matt-witten-51%25

Original Book Club: Transcription 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 June’s pick is Transcription by Ben Lerner.

From “the most talented writer of his generation” (The New York Times Magazine), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store—or to erase—our memories.

The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail from the future and the past simultaneously and who reenchants the air when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.

What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and an exploration of fathers and sons, male friendship and rivalry, and the challenges of parenting in a burning world. One of the first great novels about the early days of Covid, it is also a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Full of startling insight, but summoning the intensity of a séance, Lerner’s writing shows us how the air is full of messages, full of ghosts. Ultimately Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Tuesday the 16^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 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 10 pm

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

Website: Instagram Page

Tracy Lynne Oliver, with Roxane Gay, & Magician: A Novel at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Tracy Lynne Oliver, in conversation with Roxane Gay, will discuss her debut novel, Magician.

A dark magic debut novel featuring the Boy who becomes the Magician and the villainous Mother whose sadism might end it all—for fans of Our Share of Night and The Changeling

First, he is a Boy, born to a Mother who cannot abide his existence. Despite her torments, the Boy finds a way to survive and create a small space for himself in the world.

The Boy endures unspeakable cruelties, saved only by a mysterious magic that intervenes in moments of need: magic he learns is his to command. When he finally escapes the Mother, a beguiling circus troupe welcomes him into their family and the Boy begins to imagine a life beyond survival, one where circus lions roar and enchanted forests spiral far into the distance. For the first time, he discovers chosen family, community, and love. He eagerly apprentices under the circus’s conjurer—only to realize his gifts far outstrip his mentor’s. Thus, the Boy becomes the Magician. But as ambition bends his power, a primal threat stalks, determined to destroy not just the Magician, but all he holds dear.

Echoing the fairytale cadence of Helen Oyeyemi and Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s disquieting excavation of grief and trauma, Tracy Lynne Oliver has created a spellbinding world of twisted patriarchal darkness and a powerful magic that threatens to consume everyone, including its wielder. A debut novel of uncommon accomplishment, Magician establishes its author as a new voice that will hold readers rapt.

Tracy Lynne Oliver is a writer based in Los Angeles. She has been published online at a variety of places such as Medium, Fanzine, and Occulum. She co-authored the graphic novel, The Sacrifice of Darkness, with Roxane Gay. Her story, “This Weekend” is included in Best Microfiction 2019.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-06-16/tracy-lynne-oliver

North Fig Book Club: Sunburn: a Novel at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person & Online Zoom Hybrid ybrisEvent

Our North Fig Book Club invites you to join our discussion of Chloe Michelle Howarth’s Sunburn: A Novel.

RSVP for further information.

Where: North Figueroa Bookshop

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042

Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-eeafb46a-09a2-436d-90b3-c30483a2ea79

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.

We read romance novels. Book selection is done by voting prior at each meeting so that the following month’s book will be available on time prior to the nest meeting.

Facilitated by Lisa Becker

RSVP for further information.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

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

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-06-16/romance-book-club  

At Skylight: Nick Martino, with Amanda Scarf, & Scrap Book at Skylight – In-Person Event

Nick Martino, in conversation with Amanda Scarf, will discuss Scrap Book, the debut collection from Nick Martino, is a lyric, hybrid exploration of his father’s prison sentence and its aftermath—an inherited history marked by silence, fracture, shame, and addiction. Weaving poems with invented forms, familial documents, and fragmented memory, Martino constructs an autoethnographic study of carceral trauma and its reverberations across generations.

Set within a Midwestern family home along the shores of Lake Michigan, Scrap Book draws on Marianne Hirsch’s theory of postmemory: “the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their birth but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply.” Interwoven with poems grounded in a familial archive—such as journal entries and Polaroids of Martino’s father in prison—the collection uses the idea of photographic development as a framework for exploring how insight into family history can emerge gradually, like an image appearing in a darkroom.

Through its use of ekphrasis and archival fragments, Scrap Book creates a textural interior landscape in which the speaker wrestles with how they see themselves and how they are seen by others. Ultimately, Scrap Book is a work of gathering and repair—a lyrical stitching-together of fragments in search of meaning. In reassembling the family archive, Martino opens a space for readers to do the same: to sift through memory, injury, and ego, and fashion from their own “scraps” a deeper understanding of what they carry.

Nick Martino is a poet and teacher from Milwaukee who currently lives in LA. His poems have been published in Best New Poets, Narrative, Ninth Letter, The Boston Review, and The Southern Review, among others. A finalist for the 2024 Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, he holds an MFA from the University of California, Irvine, where he received the 2022 Excellence in Poetry Prize.

Amanda Maret Scharf is the author of To Make a Bell Ring Back, winner of the 2025 Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry (forthcoming, spring 2027) and coauthor of the collaborative chapbooks, Metal House of Cards (Finishing Line Press) and Astral Gaze (dancing girl press, forthcoming). Her poems can be found in Narrative, Poetry Northwest, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She teaches at USC and lives in Los Angeles with her wife and their dog, Silver.

Where: Skylight

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

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

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-nick-martino-presents-scrap-book-w-amanda-scharf

Ticketed: Double Author Event: CJ Leede & Kyle Kouri, in conversation with Chuck Tingle and Liz Kerin, present: Headlights and The Problem Drinker, respectively, at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

CJ Leede will present and discuss Headlights.

Special Agent Daniel Stansfield is ready for a change. Burnt out and defeated by the job, it’s his last day with the FBI. But before he can turn in his badge, he’s summoned back to Denver, the city he ran from four years ago, with a chilling message: it’s happening again.

Seemingly innocent people are waking up on the side of the highway, with no memory of how they got there, wearing the skin of victims they’ve allegedly never met. And they each share one haunting detail: a strand of a stranger’s hair is tied around their tongue.

Now Daniel is pulled back into the gruesome cycle, and every clue leads him deeper into the shadows of his own past. He will have to confront the ghosts of his traumatic childhood and face what’s been hunting him all along— before he and the people he loves become the next victims.

CJ Leede is a horror writer, hiker, and Trekkie. She is the author of Maeve Fly, American Rapture, and Headlights. Her debut novel Maeve Fly won the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award and Splatterpunk Award, and earned a Bram Stoker Award nomination. When she is not driving around the country, CJ can be found in LA with her boyfriend and rescue dogs.

Kyle Kouri will present and discuss The Problem Drinker.

His girlfriend is horror famous, his own writing and acting is floundering, and he is drinking to make sense of it all.

Kyle Kouri’s debut non-fiction collection is full of ‘whiskey courage’ staring at the abyss of family, writing rejection, relationships, and his own drinking. From hijinks at AWP to hustling in the movie business, Kouri bridges the gap in drama between indie and horror.

At turns hilarious and heartbreaking, The Problem Drinker is the story of an artist living with another artist, yearning to move the needle in his career, amidst a sea of personal tragedies and comedies. If F. Scott Fitzgerald had one foot in the 2020s horror scene, that’s the spirit of Kouri’s caustic and big-hearted, lush and refreshingly candid debut.

Kyle Kouri (@kylekouri on Instagram) received his MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. He is the co-founder of Slashtag Cinema, a film production company, and has directed and acted in several films and plays. This includes directing and starring in the award-winning horror short film Keep Coming Back, and acting in Family Movie, which premiered at SXSW. His writing has appeared in Hobart Pulp, Maudlin House, Pool Party Magazine, Cleaver Magazine, the Columbia Journal, Farewell Transmission, Bruiser Magazine, BULL, and Icebreakers Lit. The Problem Drinker is his first book. His first novel, Graveyard, is forthcoming from Rejection Letters. He lives nowhere with his rescue dogs and his girlfriend, the writer CJ Leede.

RSVP at website link.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

Address: 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-09/ticketed-lisa-see

Hip Hop Block Party: Barbara Fant hosts Open Mic at Grammy Museum – In-Person ybrisEvent

Poet Barbara Fant is returning to the @grammymuseum again this year to host the Poetry & Comedy stage and Poetry Open Mic at the Grammy Museum Hip Hop Block Party!!

Hope to see you there!! Tuesday, June 16th at 7 pm! Would love to have you in the space!

Where: Grammy Museum

Date: Tuesday the 16^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 11:30 pm

Address: 800 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite A245, Los Angeles, CA 90015

Website: Instagram Page

Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert and featured poet Sneha Madhavan-Reese – Online Zoom Event

Cobalt Poets Reading & Open Mic presents host Rick Lupert and welcomes guest poet Aaron Tyler Hand.

Aaron Tyler Hand is a creative writer and literary critic with an MFA from Texas State University who is based in Portland, Oregon. He has previously been published in San Antonio Express-News, Houston Chronicle, Faultline Journal, GASHER Journal, HASH Journal, Funicular Magazine, Meniscus, among others. In addition to his own creative writing pursuits, Aaron volunteers his time to the prison teaching non-profit Rough Draft and hosts the poetry podcast The Personhood Project.

Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event

Date: Tuesday, the 16^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Address: Online event (see site)

Website: Event Page

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.

G.S. Pōmaika’i Gushiken (@maikapomai)is a Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Uchinānchu educator, researcher, poet, and UC Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at UCLA. Their research examines how queer and māhū Native Hawaiian cultural workers create decolonial pedagogies through performance, protest, and art in Hawai’i and the Hawaiian diaspora.

Sining at Kultura Lab (@siklabmedia) is a collective of Filipino filmmakers and artists committed to producing community based multimedia that uplift the stories of everyday working people.

Ren Kanoelani (@renmaicha) is a queer, non-binary Kanaka Maoli, Chamoru, Taiwanese, and Japanese visual artist and illustrator. Based in Los Angeles and Honolulu, their creative work features graphic illustrations, zines, and risograph art.

@thatflypinay is Caroline Calderon (she/her), also known as “THATFLYPINAY” is a queer Pinay DJ hailing from Los Angeles, CA. As a member of Manila Sound LA and proud alum of the Beat Junkies Institute of Sound/Ladies of Sound, THATFLYPINAY brings her eclectic sound to community events, private celebrations, and a variety of cultural spaces.

Always free, open to the public, no tickets or assigned seating. Come through, make plans with a friend, like, comment, share, etc. etc.

🎤Want to perform for our Open Mic? Make sure to sign up for our lottery by 7 pm, there will only be 3 spaces available, two performances per performer per season please! We may ask to review your content. Please read the rules at

https://www.tuesdaynightproject.org/how-to-perform

.🤿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 16^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 16^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 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: Wednesday the 17^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

Meets monthly, generally on the third Wednesday of each month at 10 am.

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

Facilitated by Linda McLoughlin Figel.

Please RSVP to amy@pagesabookstore.com.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

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

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-06-17/coffee-time-book-club

Book Club: Tell Me Everything at Washington Irving Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join us in reading and discussing the novel Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. 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 17^th

Time: 12 pm

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

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

Book Club: The Queens of Crime at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join us for a lively discussion of the 2025 novel The Queens of Crime by Marie Benedict.

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 17^th

Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm

Address: 10640 Petit Ave., Granada Hills, CA 91344

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

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 17^th

Time: 2 pm – 2:30 pm

Address: On-air Event

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

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

Meets monthly, generally on the third Wednesday of each month at 4:30 pm.

We 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 17^th

Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm

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

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-06-17/middle-grade-book-club

Book Club for Adults: An Unfinished Love Story at San Fernando Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us as we discuss An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns. Copies of the current title are available at the Information Desk. New members are always welcome! For adults.

Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. They realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade. Their project gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time—John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives.

Where: San Fernando Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

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

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16452957

Book Launch Event: Warren Liu & First Contact at Glendale Central Library – In-Person Event

Join us to celebrate the launch of Warren Liu’s debut collection of speculative poetry First Contact.

Joining Liu for a wonderful, jam-packed night of poetry will be Diana Arterian, author of Agrippina the Younger (Northwestern University Press, 2025), and Jason Magabo Perez, author of I ask about what falls away (Kaya, 2024).

Where: Glendale Central Library, Auditorium

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 222 E. Harvard St., Glendale, CA 91205

Website: https://kaya.com/2026/06/first-contact-launches-at-glendale-central-library/

Book Launch: Patrick Coughlin & Dark Side of the Boom at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Patrick Coughlin, in conversation with Vanessa Grigoriadis and Brian Merchant, to discuss Dark Side of the Boom: How Scammers Highjacked the AI Revolution.

They will be discussing Deepfakes, scams, and reclaiming digital trust in the AI era.

Patrick Coughlin is a cybersecurity expert and the author of Dark Side of the Boom.

Vanessa Grigoriadis is a journalist at Vanity Fair and NYT Magazine, and an author and podcast host.

Brian Merchant is a tech columnist at the LA Times and the author of Blood in the Machine.

Where: North Figueroa Bookshop

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm

Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042

Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-06feecc7-fae3-45ad-b5c6-de3ede49bad0

The Classics Book Club: The Thorn Birds at Alondra Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Join us as we discuss The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. Copies of this title are available at the Circulation Desk. For ages 18 and up.

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

Where: Alondra Library,LACL

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 11949 Alondra Blvd., Norwalk, CA 90650

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16540618

Fiction Book Club: The Emperor of Gladness 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:

June 17 – The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

Where: Studio City Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 17^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

Creative Writing Workshopat Sherman Oaks Martin Pollard Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Explore creative writing in a fun, supportive environment! Each session will include some combination of writing exercises, readings, discussion, and opportunities for sharing and feedback. Suggested homework will also be provided to keep you writing between sessions.

Writers are welcome to bring up to 500 words (about 2 typed, double-spaced pages) to read aloud each session. Open to adults and teens ages 16+.

Email katie.wright@lapl.org with any questions.

Where: Sherman Oaks Martin Pollard Branch Library,LAPL

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 6:30 pm

Address:14245 Moorpark Street, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/creative-writing-workshop-7

Special Author Event: Amy Ephron & Unseasonably Cold at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to meet and hear Amy Ephron, author of Unseasonably Cold, discuss her new novel. We hope you can join us on Wednesday, June 17th at 6:30 pm.

Set in 1939 New York, the novel begins with the disappearance without a trace of a beloved socialite and columnist, enveloping her circle of acquaintances in a fog of suspicions, secrets, and deceptions, while the police and press struggle to solve the mystery.

Rendered in Ephron’s lovely, austere literary prose, it is utterly worthy of the era it depicts, when the polite mask of high society’s mannered calm disguised the turbulence, grief, and fear just beneath; a mirror for the terrible events swirling in Europe at the lead-up to the Second World War. Unseasonably Cold, Ephron’s tenth novel, is classic storytelling, an elegant, melancholy noir, a mystery crafted with an artist’s eye.

Amy Ephron is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter and occasional producer, whose work explores the intersection of history, society, and the hidden emotional lives beneath polished worlds. She is a 2026 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Her new novel, Unseasonably Cold, marks her first return to literary fiction since One Sunday Morning.

Ms. Ephron is an internationally bestselling, award-winning author of ten novels, including A Cup of Tea, which spent 37 weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list and One Sunday Morning, which received Booklist Best Fiction and Best Historical Fiction honors.

Born in Beverly Hills into the Ephron family of writers, she is the sister of Nora, Delia, and Hallie Ephron. She began her career in film, serving as an executive producer on A Little Princess and working on major motion pictures including Out of Africa and Born on the Fourth of July.

A longtime contributor to Vogue and T (magazine). Her writing has also appeared in Air Mail, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Harper’s Bazaar, The National Lampoon, and The Realist.

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

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

Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-06-17/special-author-event-amy-ephron

Ashley Wren Collins and Jordan Rockwell & She Wrote, He Wrote at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Ashley Wren Collins and Jordan Rockwell, to discuss their new novel She Wrote, He Wrote: a New York Love Story.

When aspiring writer Joanna Peterson-Mills and finance scion Logan Thurgood attend a dinner party one autumn night in New York, it’s a sidesplitting romp through their “Not-so Meet Cute” under the Manhattan skyline as they navigate career and dating hijinks in the modern world.

This laugh-out-loud romantic comedy, told from alternating perspectives, features a lovable cast of characters: Joanna, balancing her burgeoning writing, has big city dreams despite a creepy boss, and living in a cramped East Village walk-up, she shares with two eccentric roommates. Logan, on the other hand, is determined to break away from the labels of his wealthy Connecticut family and forge a name for himself on Wall Street. As Joanna and Logan’s paths keep crossing and their stories unfold, one question remains: Can these two get out of their own way and find their happy ending?

Ashley Wren Collins is an award-winning author, director, choreographer, producer and actor. Her books include Along Comes the Association: Beyond Folk Rock & Three-Piece Suits (Rare Bird) with Russ Giguere, The Cheap Bastard’s Guide to Los Angeles (Globe Pequot), The Cheap Bastard’s Guide to New York City (Globe Pequot, sixth edition), and Produce Your Own Damn Movie! (Routledge) with Lloyd Kaufman. Ashley produced Chasing Taste, “Best Comedy” winner at the Burbank and Manhattan Film Festivals (available on Amazon). She is an alum of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab and a recipient of an Edward F. Albee Foundation writing fellowship. Ashley lives in New York City with her husband, daughter, and chihuahua, Taco.

Jordan Rockwell is an award-winning writer, actor, producer, director, and composer. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Baltimore, he discovered his love of cinema with a 70mm screening of Lawrence of Arabia. He defected to Los Angeles from the east coast to follow his passion. Jordan loves making movies both in front of and behind the camera. He has been known to crank-call his friends as former Governor Schwarzenegger and to cry when he sees a screening of his favorite great film of all time, Disney/Pixar’s Up. Jordan recently obtained his private pilot license. Jordan lives in Los Angeles with his wife, their children, and their labradoodles, Chewbacca and Minnie.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

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

Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-06-17/ashley-wren-collins-jordan-rockwell-she-wrote-he-wrote

Book Tour Event: Reyna Grande & Migrant Heart/ Corazón Migrante at The Untold Story Anaheim – In-Person Event

Join The Untold Story Bookstore in welcoming author Reyna Grande on Wednesday, June 17th at 6:30 pm for a book signing! Get to meet Reyna Grande and pick up a signed copy of her book Corazón Migrante available in English and Spanish.

*CHECK HIGHLIGHTS FOR BOOK PRE-ORDER*

Where: The Untold Story, Anaheim

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 6:30 pm

Address: 301 N. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim, CA 92805

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 17^th

Time: 6:45 pm – 8:15 pm

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

Website: Instagram Page

Nathan Vigliotti, with Joy Benedict, & Torched: How a City Was Left to Burn, and the Olympic Rush to Rebuild L.A. at Book Soup – In-Person YA Event

CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti’s presents Torched, hissearing firsthand account of the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, the failures that fueled the catastrophe, and the high-stakes battle over how the city will rebuild ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.

In Torched, Vigliotti brings readers inside the inferno that devastated Los Angeles, weaving on-the-ground reporting with the deeper story of how a century of unchecked development and political mismanagement set the stage for disaster. With clarity and verve, he recounts the chaos of the fire, the flawed emergency response, and the human stories of survival and loss in the city he loves.

But this is more than a chronicle of destruction. Vigliotti unravels this catastrophe by placing it within the larger history of Los Angeles, a city that has in many ways been defined by its attraction to reinvention and deference to those who “move fast and break things”—an impulse that now puts it at risk of a short-sighted post-fire rebuild in the run-up to the 2028 Olympic Games. A future that might maximize profits but could potentially do too little to prevent similar disasters in the future or address the rampant inequities this blaze brought to global attention.

Urgent, unflinching, and deeply reported, Torched captures Los Angeles at a turning point—and reveals why its choices matter for us all.

Jonathan Vigliotti is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award–winning CBS News national correspondent whose work has appeared on numerous platforms including CBS Sunday Morning, Face the Nation, 48 Hours, and more. His reporting has taken him to more than forty countries and territories across six continents. Follow him on X @JonVigliotti. He is the author of Torched and Before It’s Gone.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-06-17/jonathan-vigliotti

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 17^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

At Skylight: Deb Olin Unforth, with Amy Bender, & EARTH 7 at Skylight – In-Person Event

 Deb Olin Unforth, in conversation with Amy Bender, will present and discuss EARTH 7.

An end-of-the-world love story, an epic full of pathos and humor, asking what can be saved of our planet.

Well, that’s about it for the story of planet Earth, poor Earth, reduced to not much more than a piece of burnt coal. But, as Deb Olin Unferth shows in her latest electrifying novel, life and love persist, even in the most unexpected, inhospitable places.

Two women meet on a beach of artificial sand. One was raised in a pod in the ocean and the other may or may not be a robot. Their love—or any love—seems so unlikely. Earth is severely depopulated. Some people have given up, gone off to Mars. Others pursue eternal life as digital code. And yet others, like Dylan and Melanie, are holdouts—and some of those holdouts are constructing a vast molecular collection in hopes that a future person may be alive to make a new Earth. Foolhardy? Misguided? Quixotic? Probably. But what can a human (or a robot) do?

By the end of Unferth’s wild, poetic, revelatory, and slyly philosophical novel, the reader has traveled to the very edges of the cosmos as a “soul globule” and between grains of sand as a microscopic tardigrade. A slim book tackling big questions (is all matter conscious? will we tech ourselves into salvation, or out of existence?), Earth 7 is a poignant inquiry into death, mourning, and indefatigable life, the most exhilarating work to date by one of our most original and beloved writers.

Deb Olin Unferth’s next book, the novel Earth 7 will appear in 2026. She is the author of six other books, including the novel Barn 8 and the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance. Her stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, the Paris Review, Granta, and New York Times Magazine. She was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and has received a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation. A professor at the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches for the Michener Center for Writers, the New Writers Project, and directs the Pen City Writers at a south Texas penitentiary.

Aimee Bender is the author of six books of fiction, including the bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and NY Times Notable Book The Color Master. Her short fiction has been widely published in places such as Granta, McSweeney’s, Harper’s, and more, and she teaches creative writing at USC.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Skylight

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://www.skylightbooks.com/event/skylight-deb-olin-unferth-presents-earth-7-w-aimee-bender

Banned Books Club: Rolly the R’s 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 June pick is: Rolly the R’s by R Zamora Linmark

Linmark’s tour-de-force experiments in narrative structure, pidgin and perspective roll every “are,” throwing new light on gay identity and the trauma of cultural assimilation. Rolling the R’s goes beyond “coming of age” and “coming out” to address the realities of cultural confusion, prejudice, and spiraling levels of desire in humorous yet haunting portrayals.

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 – Suggested donation $5-20 or donate a gently used banned book.

Where: Underdog Bookstore

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

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

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

Kerri Schlottman, with Tim Cummings, & Daytime Moon at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

 Kerri Schlottman, in conversation with Tim Cummings, will discuss and sign her novel Daytime Moon.

Isa has a gift. Premonitions, intuitive insight, a knack for tarot. But she is adrift.

Years ago, she ran away from one coast to the other and never looked back, but when her brother Cole unexpectedly shows up on her stoop, she’s convinced that it’s time to go home. Back in the California desert, Isa is swept up in her former life of late-night drag races by the Salton Sea, beers with the locals, and haunting reminders of the twin sister she lost and the mother she never got to meet.

When Dane, the man who raised them, becomes terminally ill, Isa is forced to confront everything she ran away from. In a posthumous letter, his revelations ignite her fearless internal drive. Traveling up and down California highways, through desert and forest, roaring coastline and border towns, Isa will follow the signs so delicately woven into the fabric of her life – a name, a constellation, a painting, a gleam of recognition on the water’s surface. If she can piece them together, she just might reunite the shattered remains of her beloved family.

Artfully narrated, Schlottman’s novel is an unforgettable journey through hidden stories, the depths of women’s secrets, the shimmering fluidity of memory, and the magic of transmutation.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Wednesday the 17^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-17/kerri-schlottman

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 — Maria d. Duarte Ortiz & On the Edge of Immobilityand Andres “RHIPS” Rivera & Forged by Earthquake, Words & Fire
• 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — Open mic

Andres “RHIPS” Rivera is a soul-stirring spoken word poet, emcee, and graphic designer from South Central Los Angeles and Compton. He uses his artistic expressions as tools to uplift social justice, community advocacy, resilience and personal transformation narratives. Under the pen name of RHIPS, an acronym which means resting humbly in poetry and song. RHIPS turns trauma into poetic protest and healing, inviting readers to jump through portals of transformation to reclaim oneself. He explores the impact of oppression on the psyche, personal development and healing practices. He is the author of Forged by Earthquake, Words & Fire (World Stage Press, 2026).

Maria D. Duarte Ortiz is a poet, creative and writer who received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert. She has published poems in Verdad Magazine from Long Beach City College, in the anthology The Good Grief Journal: A Journey Toward Healing, in the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora, Los Angeles Poetry Beach 2022 and Kelp Journal. Her personal essay “Dear America” appears in Alta Journal and her Op-ed “As a ‘Dreamer,’ I’m never not afraid” appeared in the LA Times. Duarte’s book, ‘Into the Blue’ was published by Kelp Books and ‘On the Edge of Immobility’ was published by World Stage Press in 2025. She is currently the poetry editor for Kelp Journal and a CLI Alumna. She is the author of On the Edge of Immobility (World Stage Press).

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 17^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: TBA

Where: Art Parlor

Date: Wednesday the 17^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 17^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Address: Online event (see site)

RiN is a spoken word artist from Harlem, New York. Since middle school, she has been using poetry as a space for reflection, storytelling, and human connection while drawing inspiration from the culture and resilience of the communities that helped shape her voice. After graduating from City College of New York in 2018, she took a hiatus from the stage, but has returned to promote community, vulnerability, accountability, and self-growth. She is the self-published author of the poetry collection With a Kadence and has been featured in publications including the American Library of Poetry Discovered: 2013 Poetry Collection, Graffiti Literary Magazine, and Promethean Literary Journal. Through spoken word, RiN aims to foster peace, emotional honesty, and authentic community connection. Her book is available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYBH8LGX

$5 cover fee, cash only

$5 cover fee, cash only

Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange

Date: Wednesday, the 17^th

Time: 8 pm – 10 pm

Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866

Website: Facebook 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: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

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

Website: Event Page

Author Talk: Ted Page & Good Grandpa via Virtual Program, LACL – Online Event

Join the virtual conversation with storyteller and blogger Ted Page as we chat about how he gathered stories and wisdom from grandfathers for his new book Good Grandpa: Stories from the Heart of Grandfatherhood.

When author Ted Page found out he was going to be a grandpa, he did a web search to learn more about the experience in store for him, but all he could find were references to the movie Bad Grandpa. He couldn’t help but wonder, “Where are the good ones?” Page started a blog, GoodGrandpa.com, and set out to talk with grandfathers across a diverse spectrum. This included an NFL pro athlete, a priest, a rabbi, an imam, newsman Tom Brokaw, comedy legend John Cleese, Chinese and Indians, physicians adapting to disability, an air force general, a Vietnam combat vet, and many more—plus his Aunt Lois and the Dalai Lama, because why not?

Along the way, Page delved into family histories—his own and those of the grandpas he interviewed—to reveal fascinating stories and lessons for living a good life. In every conversation he asked grandpas for their number one most important piece of wisdom—one thing that could help our grandchildren grow to become the greatest generation of all time. Would the collective wisdom Page gathered turn out to be one singular idea, or a constellation of north stars that illuminate a path toward a better future? A unified and unforgettable picture does in fact emerge.

Good Grandpa is inspiring, uplifting, evocative, and filled with genuine emotion. It is a recipe of hope for a divided America, and the book that will be on every grandparent’s reading list.

Register today and find out why Ted Page says, “our greatest generation is to come.”

Ted Page is a storyteller and performer. He is the author of Good Grandpa: Stories from the Heart of Grandfatherhood (Regalo Press) featured on NBC’s The TODAY Show, NPR and in Forbes Magazine. His nonfiction stories have appeared in Boston Magazine and the Boston Globe Magazine, and his comedy screen credits include work with John Cleese and Florence Henderson. His blog for grandfathers—GoodGrandpa.com—has been featured in The New York Times. Ted’s book of true family stories, The Willoughby Chronicles, was published in 2017. He lives in New England and has a bunch of grandchildren.

Where: Virtual Program,LACL

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: Online Event (see site)

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16208944

Book Club for Adults: The Talented Mr. Ripley at Chet Holifield Library, LACL – Online Event

Whether you like historical fiction, sci-fi, romance, or memoirs, this book club reads it all. This month, join us for a discussion of The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Pick up a copy at the information desk today! For adults.

Where: Chet Holifield Library,LACL

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 4 pm – 5 pm

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

“With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.” – Criterion Collection

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-18/adaptation-book-club-ran-1985-film-screening

Bel Canto Book Club: Ma and Me at Bel Canto Books, Retro Row – In-Person Event

Bel Canto Book Club meets on the third Thursday of the month, from 6:30 pm – 8 pm.

June’s selection for discussion is Ma and Me: A Memoir by Putsata Reang.

Ma and Me is a critically acclaimed book exploring the author’s complex relationship with her Cambodian refugee mother, cultural identity, and coming out as a lesbian, all set against a backdrop of inherited trauma from the Khmer Rouge genocide. Published in 2022, the memoir details the author’s struggle with filial duty and the conflict that arises when her identity clashes with her mother’s expectations, ultimately becoming a story about love, belonging, and the search for selfhood.

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: Bel Canto Books, Retro Row

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm

Address: 2106 E. 4^th St., Long Beach, CA 90814

Website: Withfriends Page

Nathan Jakubowicz, with Edgar Ramirez, & The Adventures of Juan Planchard at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us to welcome Nathan Jakubowicz, in conversation with Edgar Ramirez, to discuss The Adventures of Juan Planchard.

This book is the bestselling wild, fast-paced ride through sex, drugs, revolution, and the morally gray hustle of a man who dares to game the system that destroyed his country—it’s The Wolf of Wall Street meets Scarface.

“My name is Juan Planchard. I’m twenty-nine years old, and I have five million dollars in my account. I own a house in Caracas, another in Madrid, and a high-rise apartment in New York. I run a sportsbook at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas. I share a private jet with a friend’s frontman. And I’m convinced—down to my bones—that every decision I made during the revolution was the right one. My descendants will thank me.”

So begins The Adventures of Juan Planchard, the story of a middle-class nobody turned millionaire by weaponizing the very corruption that swallowed Venezuela. He dines with oligarchs, sleeps with models, and navigates a world where power is the only currency—and morality is a luxury no one can afford.

But in the middle of the chaos, greed, and blood money, Juan falls hard for Scarlet, a sharp, seductive American beauty who just might be his way out—or his ultimate downfall.

Jonathan Jakubowicz is an acclaimed Venezuelan filmmaker and writer. His breakthrough film, Secuestro Express, was recognized as a “Critics’ Pick” by The New York Times in 2005. He has since directed the films Hands of Stone (starring Edgar Ramirez, Ana de Armas, and Robert DeNiro) and Resistance (starring Jesse Eisenberg, Ed Harris, and Bella Ramsey). In 2016, Jakubowicz’s debut novel Las Aventuras de Juan Planchard became a bestseller in the Spanish-language market, and one of the bestselling books from a Venezuelan author of all time.

Where: Diesel, A Bookstore

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

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

Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-06-18/jonathan-jakubowicz-edgar-ramirez-adventures-juan-planchard

Joe McEwen, withGeorge Drakoulias, & Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars at Book Soup – In-Person Event

Author Joe McEwen, in conversation with George Drakoulias, will discuss Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars.

Tastykakes, Soul Songs and Shining Stars is a labor of love, half a century in the making, for music industry veteran Joe McEwen. A Philadelphia native and legendary A&R executive for Columbia, Sire/Warner Brothers, Verve, and Concord Music Group, McEwen now McEwen gathers a lifetime’s worth of encounters, essays, and reveries into one radiant collection—a love letter to the rhythm-and-blues and soul music that shaped him.

Its pages are bursting with vivid, compelling, up-front, and personal profiles and encounters with a host of important figures: Pops and Mavis Staples, George Clinton, Allen Toussaint, Betty Wright, Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin, Don Covay, and many more. Alongside these portraits are heartfelt musings spanning the 1960s through the ’80s, illuminating the creative processes behind the songs that defined a generation.

Interwoven throughout are reflections on basketball, memory, and movement—parallel sources of rhythm, improvisation, and joy. The book culminates in an extended 2024 conversation with esteemed music author and longtime confidant Peter Guralnick (Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke), a fitting finale to a collection that captures the soul of a lifetime in music.

Joe McEwen was born in Philadelphia and raised in the near suburbs, where his affection for soul, R&B, blues, and jazz thrived. His first major experiences as a music writer and critic and radio DJ took place in and around his college years in Boston, writing for the Boston Phoenix and Real Paper, and graduating to the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and other outlets in the US and UK. He contributed five chapters to the original Rolling Stone History of Rock & Roll (1976), to Greil Marcus’ Stranded (1978), and numerous anthologies. His first book was Sam Cooke: The Man Who Invented Soul (Sire Books/ Chappell Music Company, 1977). Joe McEwen currently resides in Laguna Niguel, California.

George Drakoulias is one of modern music and film’s most influential figures. A protégé of Rick Rubin and one of the first employees at Def Jam, he went on to produce seminal albums for The Black Crowes, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and The Jayhawks. As a premier music supervisor, his credits span over 50 films and television series, including Joker, Barbie, The Batman, The Hangover trilogy, and Severance. He lives in Los Angeles.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-06-18/joe-mcewen

Jeremy Atherton, withJustin Torres, & Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told at Chevalier’s – In-Person Event

Jeremy Atherton, in conversation with Justin Torres, will discuss Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told.

From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love.

It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams—a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit—just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.”

With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before: smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.

Jeremy Atherton Lin is the author of Gay Bar, a New York Times Top Book of 2021 and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His essays appear in numerous places including the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Yale Review, for which he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. He has reviewed fiction for the Guardian and the Washington Post. His sound programs have been broadcast on NTS Radio. He is based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England.

Where: Chevalier’s

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-06-18/jeremy-atherton-lin-author-deep-house

LFLA Presents: ALOUD Literary Series: Dave Eggers, with Jim James, & Contrapposto: A Novel at UCLA Nimoy Theater – In-Person Event

Dave Eggers, in conversation with Jim James, will discuss his highly anticipated forthcoming novel about friendship, love, and the lifelong pursuit of art, Contrapposto. Moving and witty, the book examines the rules and the market forces of the art world, but chiefly it’s about two friends who believe they can change the world and bring new meaning to it.

25 years ago, Dave Eggers gave us A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a remarkable bestselling memoir. Now five years since he’s published his last book, he’s coming to the ALOUD stage to talk with Jim James of My Morning Jacket.

Dave Eggers is the author of The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Museum of Rain, among other books. He is the cofounder of 826 National, a network of youth writing centers, and Art + Water, a nonprofit visual art hub on San Francisco’s waterfront. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Eggers has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and is the recipient of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the American Book Award. In 2024, The Eyes and the Impossible was awarded the Newbery Medal.

Where: LFLA ALOUD atUCLA Nimoy Theater

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

Address: 1262 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024

Website: https://lfla.org/event/contrapposto-dave-eggers/

Ticketed Event: A Night of Letter Writing, inspired by Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event

Join us for night of letter writing and stationery love inspired by Virgina Evan’s The Correspondent.

Did you read and love The Correspondent by Virgina Evans? You’re in good company. This book has taken the literary world by storm and captured the hearts of many, many readers – {pages} staff included.

Channel your inner Sybil and write a letter to your friends, family, a famous author, favorite bookstore or even send a postcard in a global postcard exchange! We’ll also offer a curated list of books featuring letters.

$10 ticket includes snacks, a goodie bag, a raffle, small sips, and cute postage on any letters completed at the event.

Facilitated by Cherish and Leo.

Where: pages: a bookstore

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

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

We are joined by visionary writer and cultural worker Walela Nehanda and celebrating their literary cornerstone Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir.

With poetry from:

Walela Nehanda is an American writer, poet, and cultural worker from Los Angeles. Their debut book, Bless the Blood: A Cancer Memoir, was published by Kokila in 2024. The book won the 2025 International Literacy Association Young Adult Nonfiction Book Award.

Benjamin Earl Turner is a recording artist, writer, actor, and educator from Antioch, California. A frequent collaborator with creative powerhouses like Daveed Diggs from the critically acclaimed Hamilton movie to the Blindspotting TV Show.

Marvin James is an artist researcher whose practice of re-membering intuition concerns itself with Afro-Indigenous histories and liberation.

Samuel LaMontagne N/A

Rhys Langston is an L.A. born-and-raised musician, writer, visual artist, and educator whose work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, SPIN, AFROPUNK, and more. Using musical projects to transcend genre and cross disciplines, works like Language Arts Unit: A Rap Textbook and Grapefruit Radio Operator’s Manual have combined his compositions in sound, word, and art. His most recent work is the album Pale Black Negative (2025). His debut book of poetry is forthcoming from Writ Large Projects in 2026.

Hosted by Tori Gesualdo

With musical accompaniment from Carson Childs and a sick set from Huma Abedin (Jasminne Morataya and Chris Mckelway)

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Stories Books & Café

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

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

Website: https://storiesla.com/events/5621320260618

All Women’s Open Mic Night 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 to bring children.

Get your tickets at website!

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8 pm

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

Website: Event Page

Ticketed: Joan Lunden, with Diana Nixon, & Joan: Life Beyond the Script at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

 Joan Lunden, in conversation with Diana Nixon, will discuss and sign Joan: Life Beyond the Script.

In this fearless and inspiring memoir, trailblazing journalist Joan Lunden pulls back the curtain on the defining moments that shaped her extraordinary life—from breaking barriers on national television to reshaping motherhood, survivorship, and aging on her own terms.

Since bursting onto the national morning news scene in 1980 as cohost of Good Morning America, Joan Lunden has been a catalyst for revolutionary societal changes. She didn’t just report the headlines; she made headlines for shattering the mold in a news industry dominated by older white men and rewrote the rules entirely. In a bold move that challenged workplace norms, Joan was one of the first to bring her newborn daughter to work so she could continue breastfeeding, showing the world that she could be a dedicated mom and a top-tier journalist at the same time.

In her 50s, after raising three grown daughters from her previous marriage, Joan and her husband, Jeff Konigsberg, welcomed two sets of twins via surrogate, proving women can embrace motherhood at any age.

Then, in her 60s, Joan discovered she had breast cancer. She bravely went public with her diagnosis, chronicling her journey and fearlessly posing bald on the cover of PEOPLE. Standing in her truth, she became an advocate for women to be better informed about the disease. She even lobbied Washington to require mammogram testing results be made available to all women, especially those with dense breast tissue. Her valiant efforts enabled early cancer detection and surely helped save countless lives.

During the later-life care of her mother, Glady, Joan advocated again—this time for senior citizens. She testified before Congress to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to include senior care, imploring that caregiving isn’t just something we do at the start of life—it happens at the end, as well.

At every turn, Joan has been willing to step out of her comfort zone while reinventing herself and the environment around her. JOAN: Life Beyond the Script shares the extraordinary transitions this journalist, television host, author, and advocate has undergone and how she has influenced our life transitions as well. By deeply reflecting on the most pivotal moments in her life and career, accepting the times when she faltered as much as when she was sure of herself, Lunden encourages us all to be open to change and the profound transformations it brings.

A book signing will follow the presentation.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm

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

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-18/ticketed-joan-lunden

LiveTalks LA Presents: Eddie Huang, with Ottessa Moshfegh, & Come Undone at Vroman’s – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

 Eddie Huang, in conversation with Ottessa Moshfegh, will discuss his novel Come Undone.

In his subversively funny first novel, the bestselling author of Fresh Off the Boat delivers a portrait of a haunted manchild and his messy search for love, with hilarious and insightful takes on sex, dating, food, culture, intimacy, and masculinity along the way.

Eddie Huang is a decorated chef, director, and New York Times bestselling author. Owner of the iconic Baohaus, which ushered in a generation of Taiwanese-Chinese restaurants and launched his career hosting Huang’s World for Vice, Huang went on to adapt his memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, into a critically acclaimed ABC comedy series. He also wrote and directed the Taylour Paige and Pop Smoke film Boogie and directed and starred in his second feature Vice is Broke.

Ottessa Moshfegh‘s first novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Death in Her Hands, her second and third novels, were New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of the short story collection Homesick for Another World; a novella, McGlue; and her new novel is Lapvona.

NOTE: See site to RSVP.

Where: Ann and Jerry Moss Theatre at New Roads School

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 8 pm

Address: 3131 Olympic Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90404

Website: https://livetalksla.org/events/eddie-huang/

Poetry Diet Open Micat The Living Room, DTLA – In-Person Event

An intimate open mic night for poets, storytellers, and lovers of the spoken word.

Poetry Diet Mic Night is a weekly open mic, every Thursday, dedicated to language, rhythm, and truth-telling. Set inside The Living Room DTLA, this night creates space for poets, writers, and creatives to share their work in an intimate, supportive atmosphere.

Whether you’re stepping to the mic or just soaking it all in, expect thoughtful performances, real energy, and a room that listens.

Hosted by: Kerm (Jonathan Kermah)

Music by: DJ Stardust

🎤 Open mic sign-ups available

🕯️ Intimate lounge setting

🍸 Bar open

Where: The Living Room, DTLA

Date: Thursday the 18^th

Time: 8:30 pm – 10:30 pm

Address: 1014 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA (Door 123)

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 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: Friday the 19^th

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 19^th

Time: 9:30 am

Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020

Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page

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 19^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

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

Website: Event Page

Mystery Book Club: Spirit Crossing at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join participants to discuss Spirit Crossing: A Novel (Cork O’Connor Mystery Series #20) by William Kent-Krueger

The disappearance of a local politician’s teenage daughter is major news in Minnesota. As a huge manhunt is launched to find her, Cork O’Connor’s grandson stumbles across the shallow grave of a young Ojibwe woman—but nobody seems that interested. Nobody, that is, except Cork and the newly formed Iron Lake Ojibwe Tribal Police.

As Cork and the tribal officers dig into the circumstances of this mysterious and grim discovery, they uncover a connection to the missing teenager. And soon, it’s clear that Cork’s grandson is in danger of being the killer’s next victim in this white-knuckled mystery from “a master storyteller at the top of his game” (Kristin Hannah, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

William Kent Krueger is the New York Times bestselling author of The River We Remember, This Tender Land, Ordinary Grace (winner of the Edgar Award for best novel), and the original audio novella The Levee, as well as twenty acclaimed books in the Cork O’Connor mystery series, including Spirit Crossing, Fox Creek, and Lightning Strike. He lives in the Twin Cities with his family. Learn more at WilliamKentKrueger.com.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Friday the 19^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Date: Friday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm)

Address: 5841 Bellflower Blvd., Lakewood, CA 90713

Website: Instagram Page

At Skylight: Cory Doctorow, with Brian Merechant, & The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI at Skylight – In-Person Event

Join us to hear Cory Doctorow, in conversation with Brian Merchant, discuss The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI.

In modern tech parlance, a centaur is a person able to use technology to be a better, more productive version of themself. A reverse centaur is a person who is forced by technology to work at an inhuman pace—a driver made to deliver all day long, nonstop; a warehouse worker made to work without food or bathroom breaks; a programmer made to crank out impossible amounts of code.

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI is not another anti-AI screed. Cory Doctorow uses AI in his work every day. As a creative person, he has no moral or dogmatic issue with AI—he thinks the technology is useful, even exciting, and full of potential. And yet.

AI has arrived surrounded by unprecedented hype driven by a tech industry desperate to maintain its unprecedented valuation based on its own promises of endless financial growth. Despite the fact that almost all of AI’s real-world implementations have proved underwhelming, AI is projected to be worth more than $16 trillion—a number that only makes sense if AI replaces vast swathes of the wage-earning human workforce. To justify that level of “value,” every story about AI must be presented as inevitable, world-changing disruption. Even the tales of the robot apocalypse are a calculated attempt to bolster the fearsome power of AI.

For Doctorow, it is imperative to see through that hype to the real story, to understand the technology not just for what it does, but for who it does it to and who it does it for. From that point of view, the story of AI is indeed dramatic and unprecedented, having generated an investment bubble so big that it endangers the entire world economy. In The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI—as he so successfully did in Enshittification—Doctorow recounts both how we found ourselves in this dire situation and how we can get through it, to a life “after” AI in which the tools work for us, not the other way around.

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of many books, including The Lost Cause, a solarpunk science-fiction novel of hope amid the climate emergency. His nonfiction book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation is a Big Tech disassembly manual.Other recent books include Enshittification; Red Team Blues, a science fiction crime thriller; Chokepoint Capitalism, nonfiction about monopoly and creative labor markets; the Little Brother series for young adults; In Real Life, a graphic novel; and the picture book Poesy the Monster Slayer. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter and author based in Los Angeles. Author of the newsletter BLOOD IN THE MACHINE and a reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute, his work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Harper’s, The Guardian, and beyond. Previously, he was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and the senior editor at Motherboard. He is the author of The One Device: the Secret History of the iPhone (2017) and Blood in the Machine: the Origins of the Rebellion against Big Tech (2023), and a founder of VICE’s speculative fiction outlet Terraform. He coedited a best-of anthology, Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn, in 2022.

Where: Skylight

Date: Friday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm

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

Enjoy libations & poetry with Tommy Domino.

Hosted by Philosophy.

Our annual Juneteenth Celebration @thewickedwolflb will be popping like usual. Your host @philosophystyle will be bringing that energy. Pull up! 🎙

#spokenword #Juneteenth #spokenblues #longbeachpoetry #neverspeaklb

Where: The Wicked Wolf LBC

Date: Friday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm

Address: 2332 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, CA 90806

Website: Instagram Page

A Juneteenth Poetry Reading: Dual Book Launch Celebration: Audrey Shipp’s Poetry /Poes´ía/ Poésie in AfroDiaspora and Danielle P. Williams’s Chamorrita Song at Beyond Baroque – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Join us on Juneteenth for a double book launch celebrating Audrey Shipp’s new collection Poetry /Poes´ía/ Poésie in AfroDiaspora and Danielle P. Williams’s Chamorrita Song.

In this stunning collection, writer Audrey Shipp resuscitates the poems of her poetic voice, Adriana––a young poet who resists the alienation of her birth city, Los Angeles. Using multilingual diction, from Caló to French and English, for an acercamiento towards an African/Black diaspora she perceived as distant the time, she offers “poetry/poesía/poésie” that “cascades from las caderas / pushing from the thighs / como recién nacido.”

For poet and spoken-word artist Danielle P. Williams, Kantan Chamorrita is more than just the ancient craft of Chamorro folk song. It is also a return and a homecoming. This impromptu style of communal call-and response performance art forms the spokes for Williams’s debut collection. Rooted in oral tradition, Chamorrita Song pays homage to Black and Chamorro cultures, honoring the artistic expressions that these communities have created to reconcile lifetimes of imposed trauma. Williams intertwines spoken word poetry and gospel music with Chamorro storytelling, weaving together the nuanced histories of queer, Black, and Indigenous existence and literature.

Audrey Shipp is an AWP Writer to Writer mentee and a PEN America Emerging Voices Workshop LA honoree whose hybrid memoir When I Was a Bilingual Writer Birthed by Black L.A. will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2027. Her writing has been published in various literary journals including Good River Review, Panorama Magazine, Isele Magazine, A Long House, Another Chicago Magazine, Litro, and A Gathering Together. Her bilingual and trilingual poetry appeared in Americas Review (Arte-Público Press) which was formerly published by the University of Houston. She holds English degrees from both UCLA and Cal State L.A. and a Certificate in Creative Writing from UCLA Extension. Her professional life has been dedicated to teaching English and ESL in public high schools in Los Angeles. Founder and Editor at Decolonial Passage Literary Magazine, you can find her at https://audreyshipp.net.

Nicole J. Evans (she/her) is a Black woman, born and reared in Los Angeles who writes poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction. 2024 James Kirkwood Prize nominee, with poetry being published in an upcoming FlowerSong Press anthology and a Blacklandia/Inlandia Books anthology. Pre-Matriarch, future Ancestor, Black sheep, vision alchemist, generational curse breaker, generational blessing manifestor, dream catcher, tale weaver, aspiring griot, empath, latent gardener, inherent inherited beautician, poet by heart, writer by revelation, and singer of her own songs. IG @itsnicolejeanine.

Naomi Nightingale has been writing poetry since the age of seven. Until 2023, her poems, stories, reflections, and Spirit Talks remained in notebooks, journals, and informal pages rather than in a published collection. In 2024, she published It Is I Emerging: Poetry, Prose & Short Stories, a collection reflecting on living, learning, and becoming. She is currently working on a second book of poetry and short stories. Dr. Nightingale grew up in and resides in Venice, California. She is President and Founder of Oakwood Preservation Coalition, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Black history and culture of Oakwood-Venice.

Danielle P. Williams is a Black and Chamorro poet, essayist, translator, and spoken-word artist from Columbia, South Carolina whose work traces identity, heritage, and belonging across cultures and generations. She holds an MFA from George Mason University and fellowships from Open Mouth Poetry Retreat, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, The Watering Hole, and The Alan Cheuse Center for International Writers. Her chapbook Who All Gon’ Be There? was a finalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Competition and was published by Backbone Press in 2021, and her debut collection Chamorrita Song was published by University of Arizona Press in January 2026.

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

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Friday, the 19^th

Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm

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

Website: Eventbrite Page

SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music Event at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event

SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music is offered every 1st & 3rd Friday of the month and hosted by Loranzo Frank.

Featured guests: TBA

Tickets at Eventbrite.

NOTE: See site for details.

Where: Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center

Date: Friday, the 19^th

Time: 8 pm – 12 am

Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008

Website: https://www.depoet.info/swaam

Rapp Saloon Reading Series: Third Fridays Open Mic with host Elena Secota at Rapp Saloon, Santa Monica – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Third Fridays at Rapp Saloon is celebrating 10 years and has an Open Mic & Featured Readers every 3^rd Friday of the month.

Third Friday: Elena Secota, Host

This is a hybrid event, live in-person while offering a Zoom option for our performers and guests.

Nina Wachenfeld N/A

Russell Greene is a Senior Fellow for the Economy at Stand Together Trust, where he manages a grantmaking portfolio focused on federal regulatory affairs and strategic litigation. Prior, he worked for CrossFit Inc., directing the company’s brand defense and government affairs efforts. He has a BS in International Politics from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where he learned both Classical and Modern Standard Arabic. He studies Ancient Greek and Latin in his spare time. Russ has published a number of articles on classical liberalism, ESG and related issues.

Where: Rapp Saloon at HISUA

Date: Friday, the 19^th

Time: 8:30 pm – 11 pm

Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90402

Website: Facebook Page

Graphic Novel Book Club: I Shall Never Fall in Love Again at Bel Canto Books, Retro Row – Online Event

Bel Canto’s Graphic Novel Book Club meets on the third Saturday of the month, from 10 – 11 am.

June’s selection for discussion is I Shall Never Fall in Love Again by Hari Conner.

Set in early 19th-century England, the story follows two best friends grappling with societal expectations and hidden feelings.

Where: Bel Canto Books

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

Address: Online Zoom Event

Website: Withfriends 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 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: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 10 am – 11 am

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

Website: Event Page

6^th Annual Queer Writers Festival at Placita Olvera, DTLA – In-Person LGBTQIA+ Event

Mark your calendars for our 6th annual Queer Writers Festival taking place June 20th in the heartbeat of Los Angeles at Olvera Street in partnership with the Queer Mercado!

Join us for a day of poetry, performances, reading, vendors and more!

Join us for our annual free celebration of Queer Writers from across LA and So Cal!

Hosted by Juana & Jess Saravia!

We’re celebrating Pride with our Queer Mercado familia at Placita Olvera! Featuring LA’s new Poet Laureate, Brian Sonia Wallace!

We’re offering Raffles for custom 6th annual Queer Writers Festival cobijas, a gift card to @1984vintageshop, and more!

Workshops! Panel discussions! Typewriter Poets! Featured Writers, DJ sets, Drag Story Time, Live Music and. Queer Lending Library!

See flyer at link for list of features and details.

Participate in our community poem, picnic on our lawn, or join our bubble party, sunbathe, and get drawn by the amazing Artist Robert Melendrez!

Now accepting Panel Proposals for the Queer Writers Festival platica. Email 1 page summaries to losangelespoetsociety@gmail.com

Call for volunteers: 10 am – 2 pm and 2 pm – 5 pm

Email losangelespoetsociety@gmail.com

Where: Placita Olvera, DTLA 

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 10 am – 4 pm

Address: 845 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

Website: Instagram Page

Central 100 Book Club: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd at West Valley Regional Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event

Join in the celebration of 100 years of Central Library by reading a book that was published in 1926 when Central Library opened! Copies of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie can be checked out at the West Valley Reference Desk. Then join us for a discussion about the book on June 20.

Where: West Valley Regional Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 11 am – 1 pm

Address: 19036 Vanowen St., Reseda, CA 91335

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/central-100-book-club-murder-roger-ackroyd-agatha-christie

Hora de Cuentos Para Ninos at LibroMobile – In-Person Event

Suzzie, voluntaria de LibroMobile y también una madre en comunidad, leerá “Por un ratito” de Gabriela Orozco Belt.

¡Vengan con sus hijos, sobrinas o nietos!

Where: LibroMobile

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

Address: 1150 Bristol St., #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704

Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/hora-de-cuentos-para-nin-s-1

Storytime + Movement with Tutu School Culver City: Everybody Dance at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Kids Event

Tutu School Culver City is a children’s dance school focused on imaginative, story-based movement, and we also host a ballet inspired book club for our young dancers. Their teachers will read a book from their Ballet Book Club, followed by a gentle, imaginative movement activity for the children.

This colorful picture book uses rhyme and rhythm to celebrate the joy of dancing, taking readers on a whimsical dance adventure. We love the diverse array of dances from all around the world, as well as dancers of different backgrounds and abilities.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

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

Website: Event Page

Daniel Brewster and Paul Paolilli & Pondering: A Story in Cinquains at Vroman’s – In-Person Event

This lyrically written and gorgeously illustrated ode to ponds is crafted in a uniquely American poetic form called American cinquain.

In this glorious celebration of nature, three girls walk an old trail in search of a hidden pond, marveling at treasures they discover along the way—darting dragonflies, croaking bullfrogs, fluttering sycamore leaves, and more. Written in a unique poetic form called American cinquain, the story seamlessly weaves together an invitation to readers to immerse themselves in nature, while also bringing attention to this endangered ecosystem. The info-packed pages at the end of the book include an overview of the pond ecosystem and the current threat to it, as well as an exploration of the cinquain form.

Where: Vroman’s

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

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

Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-06-20/daniel-brewer-paul-paolilli

Community Book Club: The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane at Lancaster Library, LACL – In-Person Event

Held on the third Saturday of each month at Lancaster Library’s group meeting room. June’s selection is The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See. For Adults

A moving story about tradition, tea farming, and the enduring connection between mothers and daughters. Li-Yan lives with her family in a remove villa of the Akha people in China. After meeting a stranger from the modern world, Li-Yan begins to reject the customs that have shaped her life. When she has a baby out of wedlock, she goes against tradition and wraps the infant in a blanket with a tea cake tucked in its folds, near an orphanage in a nearby city. After mother and daughter go their separate ways, both women lead separate lives but Li-yan still yearns for her lost daughter and Haley, now raised in California, wonders of her origins. A powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance, Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane paints an unforgettable portrait of a little-known region and its people and celebrates the bond that connects mothers and daughters.

Regular print copies will be available at the reference desk. Large print, audiobook, e-book, and e-audiobook versions are available within our system. Light refreshments will be served.

Where: Lancaster Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 12 pm – 1 pm

Address: 601 W Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster, CA 93534

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16566691

Monrovia Pride Book Festival at Monrovia Library Park – In-Person Event

Join us for the first Monrovia Pride Book Festival!

Join us for a celebration of queer storytelling with authors, vendors, community building, and free activities for all to enjoy!

This is an all-ages, family friendly event! Click at bookstore website to find out more!

On the Main Stage there will be a discussion on Lesbian Pulp Fiction.

Some of the attending authors are: CB Lee, Georgia K Boone, Carlyn Greenwald, Rebekah Faubion and Sophie Mutiara Novo.

Where: Underdog Bookstore at Monrovia Library Park

Date: Saturday, the 20^th

Time: 12 pm – 6 pm

Address: 321 S. Myrtle Ave., Monrovia, CA 91016

Copies of the authors’ books are available to check-out through the library.

Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.

Where: Agoura Hills Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm

Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301

Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16566701

Before the Ban Book Club: All American Boys at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join participants to discuss All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely.

In this New York Times bestselling novel, two teens—one black, one white—grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

A bag of chips. That’s all sixteen-year-old Rashad is looking for at the corner bodega. What he finds instead is a fist-happy cop, Paul Galluzzo, who mistakes Rashad for a shoplifter, mistakes Rashad’s pleadings that he’s stolen nothing for belligerence, mistakes Rashad’s resistance to leave the bodega as resisting arrest, mistakes Rashad’s every flinch at every punch the cop throws as further resistance and refusal to STAY STILL as ordered. But how can you stay still when someone is pounding your face into the concrete pavement?

There were witnesses: Quinn Collins—a varsity basketball player and Rashad’s classmate who has been raised by Paul since his own father died in Afghanistan—and a video camera. Soon the beating is all over the news and Paul is getting threatened with accusations of prejudice and racial brutality. Quinn refuses to believe that the man who has basically been his savior could possibly be guilty. But then Rashad is absent. And absent again. And again. And the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. As does the school. And the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before.

Written in tandem by two award-winning authors, this four-starred reviewed tour de force shares the alternating perspectives of Rashad and Quinn as the complications from that single violent moment, the type taken directly from today’s headlines, unfold and reverberate to highlight an unwelcome truth.

Jason Reynolds is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, a Newbery Award Honoree, a Printz Award Honoree, a two-time National Book Award finalist, a 2024 MacArthur Fellow, a Kirkus Award winner, a UK Carnegie Medal winner, a two-time Walter Dean Myers Award winner, an NAACP Image Award Winner, an Odyssey Award Winner and two-time honoree, and the recipient of multiple Coretta Scott King honors, a Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. He was also the 2020–2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. His many books include All American Boys (cowritten with Brendan Kiely); When I Was the Greatest; The Boy in the Black Suit; Stamped; As Brave as You; For Every One; the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, Lu, and Coach); Look Both Ways; Stuntboy, in the Meantime; Stuntboy, In-Between Time; Miles Morales Suspended; Ain’t Burned All the Bright (recipient of the Caldecott Honor) and My Name Is Jason. Mine Too. (both cowritten with Jason Griffin); Twenty-Four Seconds from Now…; and Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Coretta Scott King Honor. His debut picture book, There Was a Party for Langston, won a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. He lives in Washington, DC. You can find his ramblings at JasonWritesBooks.com.

Brendan Kiely is the New York Times bestselling author of All American Boys (with Jason Reynolds), Tradition, The Last True Love Story, and The Gospel of Winter. His most recent book is The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege. His work has been published in over a dozen languages, and has received the Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award, the Walter Dean Meyers Award, and ALA’s Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults. A former high school teacher, he is now on the faculty of the Solstice MFA Program. He watches too much basketball and reads too many books at the same time, but most importantly, he lives for and loves his wife and son. Find out more at BrendanKiely.com.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 1 pm – 2 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-20/ban-book-club-all-american-boys

One Book, One Coast: Online Book Discussion: They Called Us Enemy at Echo Park Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event

Join the Friends of the Echo Park Branch Library for an online discussion of the memoir They Called Us Enemy by George Takei.

RSVP:

Email echopk@lapl.org for the program link.

Where: Echo Park Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday, the 20^th

Time: 2 pm

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

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/one-book-one-coast-online-book-discussion

Concurso Sonámbulo: Federico García Lorca Tribute + Art Market & Open Mic at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event

An afternoon in the spirit of the Concurso de Canto Jondo celebrating the iconic Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca.

In celebration of Pride month at Beyond Baroque, join us for a day-long festival of poetry, music, art, and community celebrating the legacy of Federico García Lorca! One of the most celebrated poets and an enduring queer literary icon, Lorca’s influence extends far beyond literature into flamenco, music, and the artistic traditions of Andalucía.

The afternoon will feature readings of Lorca’s poetry, prose, as well as original poems inspired by his work in the Wanda Coleman Theater; featuring Lois P. Jones, Elena Barcia, Valeryee Jimenez, Adrian Ibarra, Iván Salinas, and Duncan Cuervo, followed by live Spanish guitar in partnership with La Sole Flamenco, an open mic to celebrate your favorite queer poets, and a mini art market featuring independent artists and craftmakers including Teaden, Hope Cerna, Faery Church, and more vendors to be announced!

If you’d like to be a vendor (prioritizing Queer/LGBTQIA+-identifying artists), there’s a few spots left! Please send an email to ivan@beyondbaroque.org. before June 10th.

Inspired by Lorca’s love of culture and the meeting of worlds that shaped his work, Beyond Baroque gathers poets, musicians, artists, and local makers for an afternoon that honors not only Lorca’s poetry, but the vibrant cultures that define Los Angeles today.

The event draws inspiration from the historic Cante Jondo (“Deep Song”) Festival organized in Granada in 1922 by Lorca and composer Manuel de Falla, which preserve the folkloric traditions of Andalusian flamenco music. Much like that original gathering, this celebration embraces poetry, music, and community expression. Rather than a formal tribute for Lorca scholars alone, the festival invites everyone to come together in the spirit of creativity, cultural exchange, and artistic solidarity.

Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 2 pm – 6 pm

Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291

Website: Eventbrite 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!

Where: Central Library, LAPL, Meeting Room B

Date: Saturday the 20^th

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

Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Michelle Smith + Poets Published in Four Feathers Press led by DKC via Zoom – Online Event

Featured: Michelle Smith + Poets published in Four Feathers Press online edition: SUN,

Send up to three poems on the subject of or at least mentioning the word sun, totaling up to 150 lines in length, in the body of an email message or attached in a Word file to donkingfishercampbell@gmail.com by 11:59 pm on June 19th. No PDF’s please. Color artwork is also desired. Please send in JPG form. No late submissions accepted. Poets and artists published in Four Feathers Press Online Edition: Sun will be published online and invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, June 20th between 3 pm and 4:30 pm.

Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry

Date: Saturday, the 20^th

Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm

Address: Online Zoom Event

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

Celebrating Poetry, Community, and Culture at Pacoima Branch Library, LAPL– In-Person Event

Join us for a special event dedicated to the power of the spoken word and music. We invite you to listen to five of our talented local poets and musicians (Alejandro Molina, Jesus Noyola, Pablo Martinez, Rafael Lamas, and Xochipilli Spirit) as they read works and perform music that beautifully celebrate their unique identities, vibrant communities, and rich cultural heritage. After the performances by our guests, members of the audience are invited to read a short writing of their own. Come and be inspired by the stories that connect us all.

Where: Pacoima Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Saturday, the 20^th

Time: 3:30 pm – 5 pm

Address: 13605 Van Nuys Blvd., Pacoima, CA

Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/celebrating-poetry-community-and-culture

Meet the Authors: N.T. McQueen and Eric Weintraub at The Open Book, Pasadena – In-Person Event

N.T. McQueen, in conversation with Eric Weintraub, will discuss Never Hide from the Devil.

This book is a YA Fiction story inspired by a true story of resistance during the Armenian Genocide. This stirring coming-of-age novel is a parable of courage, friendship, and impossible choices in the midst of unimaginable horror.

Where: The Open Book, Pasadena

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 5 pm – 7 pm

Address: 300 E. Colorado Blvd. Space #161, Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: Instagram Page

Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club: The Sapling Cage at Cellar Door Bookstore, Riverside – In-Person Event

Join participants to discuss The Sapling Cage (Daughters of the Empty Throne #1) by Margaret Killjoy.

In In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.

Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.

When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.

Margaret Killjoy (she/they) is a transfeminine author, musician, and podcaster. Some of her other books include The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, A Country of Ghosts, We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow, and Escape from Incel Island. She is the host of the radical history podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff and the individual and community preparedness podcast Live Like the World is Dying. She is the principal songwriter for the atmospheric black metal band Feminazgûl. She lives in West Virginia.

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 6 pm – 7 pm

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

Archila will read poems from the collection, and will be joined by poets:

Vickie Vertiz is an award-winning poet, writer, educator, and advocate. The oldest child of an immigrant Mexican family, Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, California. She is the author of Auto/Body (University of Notre Dame Press, 2023), winner of the Sandeen Prize, and Palm Frond with Its Throat Cut (University of Arizona Press, 2017), winner of the PEN America Literary Prize in Poetry. She lives in Los Angeles.

Ramón García’s “Strange Signatures” is an international, cinematic montage of the phantasmatic and the all-too-real, locating social transformation in memory, crime and the allegorical biographies of celebrated artists and poets. Zaro’s seventh poetry collection is rich in syntax and texture, “steeped in the drama of impermanence and the inevitable loss of all sentient beings.”

Janel Pineda is a Salvadoran poet, educator, and scholar of U.S. Central American Literature. Her research conceptualizes contemporary global Salvadoran poetics and investigates the ways that poetry can be used to counteract narrative silencing and to reclaim familial and cultural (hi)stories. She is the author of Lineage of Rain (Haymarket Books, 2021).

Luis J. Rodriguez is an acclaimed American poet, author, journalist, and activist, best known for his landmark 1993 bestselling memoir, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. Serving as the official Poet Laureate of Los Angeles from 2014 to 2016, he has dedicated his life to using literature and community healing circles to advocate for youth and challenge social injustice. His most recent publication is The Life, Literature and Legacy of Luis J. Rodríguez In the Long Run, edited by Josephine Metcalf, Ben Olguín

FREE EVENT.

Donations are always appreciated.

Where: Libros Schmibros

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 103 North Boyle Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90033

Where: Den Café

Date: Saturday the 20^th

Time: 7 pm – 10 pm

Address: 125 North Broadway, #D, Santa Ana, CA 92701

Website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/oc-poetry-slam-tickets-1991077017959?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

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: Sunday the 21^st

Time: 11 am – 12 pm

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

Website: Event Page

Cellar Door Book Club: Small Things Like These at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event

Participants will discuss Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

Claire Keegan works magic in this small novel about a truly good man in 1985 Ireland, and the difficult decision he faces at Christmastime. Keegan captures the extraordinary courage required to live an ordinary life with honor.

Small Things Like These is award-winning author Claire Keegan’s landmark new novel, a tale of one man’s courage and a remarkable portrait of love and family.

It is 1985 in a small Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal merchant and family man faces into his busiest season. Early one morning, while delivering an order to the local convent, Bill makes a discovery which forces him to confront both his past and the complicit silences of a town controlled by the church.

Claire Keegan’s works of fiction are internationally acclaimed and have been translated into thirty languages. Antarctica won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Walk the Blue Fields won the Edge Hill Prize for the finest collection of stories published in the British Isles. Foster won the Davy Byrnes Award—the world’s richest prize for a short story. Small Things Like These was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kerry Prize for Irish Novel of the Year. She was awarded Woman of the Year for Literature in Ireland, 2022, and Author of the Year, 2023

Where: Cellar Door Bookstore

Date: Sunday the 14^th

Time: 2 pm – 3 pm

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

Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-06-14/cellar-door-book-club-small-things-these

Character Development Workshop with Jared Sayet at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event

In this dynamic, collaborative workshop for writers of fiction and screenplays, participants will build a complex and compelling character from a set of arbitrary details. Together, with the instructor’s guidance, we’ll discover how seemingly unrelated (and sometimes even contradictory) details connect to form a rich psychological profile. From there, we’ll develop a story premise that activates that character’s inner life with meaningful and intriguing dramatic pressure. Participants will leave with a character and story premise they may want to pursue, along with a practical new approach for developing richer characters in new material or deepening characters in their works in progress.

Purchase tickets by clicking link at website!

Jared Sayet is a fiction writer and creative writing instructor. His stories have been published in North American Review, Booth, and Chiron Review, and received two Pushcart Prize nominations in 2025. His work has also earned him admission to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Iowa Summer Writers’ Workshop, among others. As an instructor, Jared leads the creative writing workshop program at the University of Pennsylvania. He also hosts classes and workshops around LA, and mentors writers 1-on-1 across the country.

Where: Village Well Books & Coffee

Date: Sunday the 21^st

Time: 2 pm – 4 pm

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

Website: Event Page

Unsupervised Readers Club: Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh at Book Soup– In-Person Event

An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time

Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author’s short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel.

And for good reason. There’s something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O’Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We’re in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.

WHAT MAKES AN UNSOUPERVISED READER BOOK?⁠

⁠Books that wander a little off the well-lit literary path. Curious, unexpected, and very much not assigned reading.⁠

Each month, a different bookseller picks the book—so the vibe is always changing. Expect titles you won’t see on bestseller lists, books that take risks, bend genres, or quietly blow your mind.⁠

Not your thing one month? No stress. Skip it and come back—the next pick might be exactly your flavor.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Sunday the 21^st

Time: 3 pm

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

Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-06-20/unsoupervised-readers-club

Speech Bubble Book Club: The Seasons at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event

Join participants to discuss The Seasons by author Rick Remender and illustrator Paul Azaceta.

In the tradition of Miyazaki and David Lynch, The Seasons is a new series that explores themes of fame, obsession, and sisterhood through a dark fairytale lens.

Summer, Winter, Spring and Autumn are the Seasons Sisters, the daughters of the world-renowned Seasons Detectives. Ten years ago, their famous parents disappeared. Left to raise themselves, the sisters formed an unbreakable bond. Now that bond is tested as the sisters fall prey to sinister forces. The youngest sister, Spring, is the last hope of saving them from a fate worse than death. Will Spring be able to piece her shattered family back together before it’s too late for them all?

Where: North Figueroa Bookshop

Date: Sunday the 21^st

Time: 3 pm

Address: 6040 N. Figuroa St., Los Angeles, CA, 90042

Website: https://northfigbookshop.com/event/#calendar-8a0f87f6-17d6-4f10-9815-04df4c8251ba-event-ebd2a2f3-d880-48fd-b24a-985970daff5f

June Focus on Craft Book Club: Can’t Resist Her at The Ripped Bodice LA – In-Person Event

Join us for the June Focus on Craft book club discussion of Can’t Resist Her by author Kianan Alexander. This meeting will be led by developmental editor and teacher Jeanne De Vita and everyone is welcome.

This event focuses on examining romance novels form a writer’s perspective, but you don’t have to be a writer to join us.

RSVP

Where: The Ripped Bodice, LA

Date: Sunday the 21^st

Time: 7:15 pm

Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA, 90323

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