Book Club for Adults: Animal Farm at Vermont Square Library. LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Animal Farm by George Orwell. This classic political satire follows a group of farm animals who rebel against their owner in hopes of creating a more equal society, only to face new forms of power and corruption. Together, we’ll explore the novel’s themes of leadership, inequality, propaganda, and control in a warm, welcoming, and inclusive space where all perspectives are encouraged and respected.
Where: Vermont Square Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 24th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 1201 W. 48th St., Los Angeles, CA 90037
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/book-club-adults-3
Queer Book Club: House of Impossible Beauties at Cellar Door Bookstore – Online Event
Participants will discuss the novel House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara.
A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and ’90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning
It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.
Joseph Cassara was born and raised in New Jersey. He holds degrees from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is his first novel.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Monday he 24th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-08-24/queer-book-club-house-impossible-beauties
Los Feliz Writers: Shut Up and Write in Los Feliz at Sidewalk Grill – In-Person Event
Looking for some dedicated writing time? Come by our weekly neighborhood meetups:
Mondays @ 6:45 pm – 8 pm at Sidewalk Grill (NEW)
Wednesdays @ 6;45 – 8 pm at Bar Alcove & Bakery
All writers and all experience levels are welcome!
We’re starting a Shut Up and Write event on Mondays too, thanks to @jack_andcat.
Hosted by @literarypixie!
RSVP at link in bio.
Where: Sidewalk Grill
Date: Monday the 24th
Time: 6:45 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1727 N. Vermont Ave. #102, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: Instagram Page
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 24th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501
Website: Facebook Event Page
Sarah Mesle, with Karen Tongson, & Tangled at Skylight – In-Person Event
Sarah Mesle, in conversation with Karen Tongson, will discuss Tangled: Seven Iconic Moments in White Women’s Hair and What They Tell Us About Power, Pleasure, and Complicity.
A witty, razor-sharp cultural critique of white women’s hair—and the politics it quietly carries
In Tangled, acclaimed cultural critic Sarah Mesle unpacks the surprising power of white women’s hair in shaping American identity, politics, and pop culture. From rom-coms to TikToks, blowouts to legislation, Mesle explores how hair—often dismissed as trivial—has been a stealth vehicle for transmitting whiteness, privilege, and conservative values.
White women’s hair evokes pleasure, pride, anxiety, and envy. But unlike women of color, who navigate hair as a deeply political terrain, white women often treat their styles as purely aesthetic. Mesle argues that this perceived innocence is precisely what makes white women’s hair so potent—and so dangerous.
Through 7 iconic hair moments spanning the Reagan era to Trump’s rise, Tangled blends personal essay with cultural analysis, revealing how hair has mirrored—and fueled—the rollback of feminist progress. With wit, depth, and originality, Mesle invites readers to rethink what hair has done in America—and what it could do differently.
Smart, funny, and fiercely insightful, Tangled is essential reading for anyone interested in feminism, race, media, and the hidden politics of beauty.
Sarah Mesle is a professor of writing at the University of Southern California and the author of Reasons and Feelings: Writing for the Humanities Now. The former senior humanities editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Mesle is also the founding co-editor of the LARB channel Avidly and the short-books series Avidly Reads. Mesle’s writing about gender, media, and culture has appeared in venues ranging from Studies in American Fiction and InStyle to the New York Times Magazine.
Where: Skylight
Date: Monday, the 24th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-08-24/sarah-mesle-w-karen-tongson-tangled
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 24th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: Beyond Baroque Event 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 25th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Virtual Book Club: A Far Flung Life via La Crescenta Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us on Zoom for a weekly discussion of ‘A Far-Flung Life’ by M.L. Stedman. Please contact Marta Wiggins via email at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for your invitation to join the Zoom Meeting. For adults.
We discuss 1/4 of the book each week. See below for the breakdown of the weekly discussions.
August 25 — Chapter 60 – 82 — Pages 315 – to the end of the book
Remote Western Australia, 1958: here, for generations, the MacBrides have lived on a vast sheep station, Meredith Downs. It is a million acres, an ocean of arid land. On an ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. And then, tragedy revisits when a twist of consequences claims the life of one sibling, and leads another to give up everything for the sake of an innocent child. Matt, the youngest MacBride, is plunged into a moral and emotional journey for which there is no map, no guide. The secrets at the heart of this gutting and beautiful story force him to choose between love and duty, sacrifice and happiness
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16632625
Virtual Event: Author Talk: Beronda Montgomery & When Trees Testify via Virtual Event, LACL – Online Zoom Event
Join us on Zoom for a conversation with biologist Beronda Montgomery as we discuss her book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy. The history of trees in America is also the history of Black Americans.
Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.
In When Trees Testify, award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees, as well as the cotton shrub, are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.
Register today for this insightful discussion about Black history and botanical mastery.
Where: Virtual Event, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16705120
Bestsellers Book Club: Something Wilder at Stevenson Ranch Library. LACL – In-Person Event
Join us and enjoy a lively book discussion on this Bestseller book selection: Something Wilder by Christina Lauren. For adults.
Duke Wilder was a famous treasure-hunter obsessed with finding the cache allegedly hidden by clever bank robber Butch Cassidy. Duke’s daughter, Lily, gave up on finding the treasure long ago. Instead, she uses her late father’s cryptic maps and journal to guide city-slickers on outlaw trail tours. When her past love, Leo Grady, returns after 10 years as part of a guys’ good-fun vacation, it throws her world into disarray.
This page-turning adventure full of second chances, complicated relationships, and the breathtaking beauty of the American Southwest will take you on one wild ride.
Where: Steverson Ranch Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 12 pm – 1 pm
Address: 25950 The Old Rd., Stevenson Ranch, CA 91381
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16989961
Nonfiction Book Club: The Oregon Trial at Agoura Hills Library. LACL – In-Person Event
Join us to discuss The Oregon Trail by Rinker Buck. Copies available at Customer Service. For adults.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16823941
Walkthrough A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West at California African American Museum – In-Person Event
Through recorded interviews, lyrical texts, archival photographs, and historic posters and prints, A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West reveals little-known aspects of Hughes’s work as a champion for justice and the special relationships he cultivated during his many sojourns in California, Nevada, and Mexico. Join Susan D. Anderson, History Curator, as she provides an in-depth tour of the exhibition.
Free RSVP is encouraged, but not required. Walk-ins are welcome.
RSVP
Where: California African American Museum (CAAM)
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 600 State Drive, Exposition Park, Los Angeles, CA 90037
Blockbuster Book Club: The Princess Bride at Clifton M. Brakensiek Library. LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for our two-part book club for books that have made it to the screen! This second session we will watching the film The Princess Bride. Film is rated PG. Ages 18+
Where: Clifton M. Brakensiek Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 9945 Flower St., Bellflower, CA 90706
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16617998
Lomita Book Club: Mexican Gothic at Lomita Library. LACL – In-Person Event
This month we’ll explore Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This horror fiction brings us to Mexico in the ’50s. Noemí Taboada sets off to rescue her newlywed cousin who claims her new husband is poisoning her. What will Noemí find? For adults.
Where: Lomita Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 24200 Narbonne Ave, Lomita, CA 90717
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16923903
Hooked on Books Book Club: This Is Not About Us at Quartz Hill Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us as we slice into Allegra Goodman’s This Is Not About Us. Copies are available at the Customer Service desk and newcomers are always welcome! For adults
Where: Quartz Hill Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 5040 W. Ave M 2, Quartz Hill, CA 93536,
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16990015
LGBTQ+ Book Club: My Antonia at West Hollywood Library, LACL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join the LGBTQ+ Book Club for a hybrid (in-person and online) discussion of My Ántonia by Willa Cather. For adults.
This is a hybrid event and will be hosted in-person in the West Hollywood Library Community Meeting Room as well as on Zoom. Please register at the link below to receive the link to the meeting via email.
https://library-lacounty-gov.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0pd-Goqz4uGNNbzVuW720zsRrGxTK1VeLG
West Hollywood Library’s LGBTQ+ Book Club meets on the last Tuesday of the month to discuss literary works of relevance and interest to the LGBTQ+ community.
Please contact the library to borrow a print copy of the book. eBook and downloadable audiobook are available through hoopla digital (no wait) and Libby.
Summary provided by the publisher:
After the death of his parents, Jim was sent to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk Nebraska. There he befriended Ántonia, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Years later, Jim, now a successful lawyer in New York, returns to his childhood home and Ántonia. Jim’s love for Ántonia has endured, much as she herself has endured tragic circumstances.
Where: West Hollywood Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 625 N, San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16471868
Iacobani Library Book Club: The Alchemist at Angleo M. Iacobani Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for our monthly book club! This month we’ll be discussing The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Copies of the book will be available at the customer service desk. This program is for adults.
Where: Angelo M. Iacobani Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 4990 Clark Ave., Lakewood, CA 90712
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17061864
Phy-Sci Book Club: Breath at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor.
There is nothing more essential to our health and well-being than breathing: take air in, let it out, repeat twenty-five thousand times a day. Yet, as a species, humans have lost the ability to breathe correctly, with grave consequences.
Journalist James Nestor travels the world to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers aren’t found in pulmonology labs, as we might expect, but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of São Paulo. Nestor tracks down men and women exploring the hidden science behind ancient breathing practices like Pranayama, Sudarshan Kriya, and Tummo and teams up with pulmonary tinkerers to scientifically test long-held beliefs about how we breathe.
Modern research is showing us that making even slight adjustments to the way we inhale and exhale can jump-start athletic performance; rejuvenate internal organs; halt snoring, asthma, and autoimmune disease; and even straighten scoliotic spines. None of this should be possible, and yet it is.
Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.
James Nestor is an author and science journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside, The New York Times, and more. His first nonfiction book, Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us About Ourselves (2014), was a PEN America finalist, an Amazon Best Science Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His second book, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, is an international bestseller, with more than three million copies sold in forty-four languages. Breath was awarded the Best General Nonfiction Book by the American Society of Journalists and Authors and was a finalist for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. Nestor’s collaboration with the Global Classroom, a partnership with the World Health Organization and supported by UNICEF, teaches millions of children around the world to breathe better. More at mrjamesnestor.com.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd. Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-08-25/phy-sci-book-club-breath
La Crescenta Library Book Club: Great Big Beautiful Life at La Crescenta Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Emily Henry’s bestselling novel: Great Big Beautiful Life. Find your copy of the book at the Book Club Corner located across from the Customer Service Desk. For adults.
La Crescenta Library Book Club meets on the 4th Tuesday evening of each month. If you have any questions, please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov
Two writers compete for the chance to tell the larger-than-life story of a woman with more than a couple of plot twists up her sleeve in this dazzling and sweeping new novel from Emily Henry. Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: To write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years-or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the 20th Century. When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game. One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice-and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over. Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication. Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition. But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room. And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story-just like the tale Margaret’s spinning-could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad…depending on who’s telling it
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 25th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm
Address: 2809 Foothill Blvd., La Crescenta-Montrose, CA 91214
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17061864
Sci-Fi Fantasy Book Club: The Hacienda at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
The Village Well Book Club offshoot, the Sci-fi Fantasy Book Club! To the Tolkien nerds, SJM stans, and R.F. Kuang enjoyers, this group is for you! On the fourth Tuesday of every month, we will come together and discuss a story that falls within the realms of either science fiction or fantasy (or sometimes both!). To join our emailing list, reach out to events@villagewell.com.
This August’s pick is The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas.
Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches.
During the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father was executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security that his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.
But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.
When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears, but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark the doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?
Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will save her.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 25th
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 25th
Time: 7 pm – 10 pm
Address: 14537 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
Website: Instagram Page
Winnie M. Li, with Jeff Yang, & What We Left Unsaid at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Winnie M. Li, in conversation with Jeff Yang, will present and discuss What we Left Unsaid.
On an unexpected road trip, three estranged siblings uncover a startling family secret and larger truths about being Asian American in a post-COVID world.
The Chu siblings haven’t seen each other in years but when they’re told that their ailing mother is scheduled for an operation next month, they agree to visit her together. Then their mother makes an odd request; before seeing her, they must go on a road trip together to the Grand Canyon.
Thirty years ago, a strange incident had aborted a previous family road trip there. No one’s ever really spoken about it, but during this journey, the middle-aged Chu siblings have no choice but to confront their childhood experience.
Together, Bonnie, Kevin, and Alex travel along Route 66—but as the trip continues, they realize the Great American Road Trip may not be what they expected. Facing their own prejudices and those of others, they somehow learn to bridge the distances between them, the present-day, and their past.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-08-25/winnie-m-li
Arved Ashby and Jonathan Alexander, on Queer Art and Aesthetics Now at Page Against the Machine – In-Person LGBTQIA+ Event
Join us on Tuesday, August 25th at 7 pm for a candid, intimate, and entertaining conversation on Queer Art and Aesthetics Now with authors and professors Arved Ashby and Jonathan Alexabder who will be presenting, discussing, and signing their latest books.
What are queer aesthetics? And what do they have to tell us about being queer right now? These and other questions related to queer art and cultural production will be discussed through the lenses of Ashby’s and Alexander’s respective, and thematically-related, books.
In his remarkably intimate book, My 1980s Gayboy Playlist (punctum books), award-winning music writer Arved Ashby muses over pieces that impacted his sexual and musical awakenings as a troubled gay adolescent—pieces by Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Beethoven, Anton Bruckner, Alban Berg, Prince, Kurt Cobain, and Tom Petty. Jonathan Alexander’s new book, Danage: Notes on a Queer Aesthetic (Fordham UP), asks how to look at images marked by queer pain without turning that pain into shock or pretending it isn’t there. Alexander answers by pairing close looking with lived experience. The result is intimate and analytic at once, a book that stays with hard feelings while still making room for possibility.
Arved Ashby is Emeritus Professor of Musicology at Ohio State University. Award-winning author of many books, he has moved ever further from restrictive and impersonal norms of thinking and writing, a process that has reached its culmination (so far) in My 1980𝘴 Gayboy Playlist. Following the pandemic and resurgence of fascism and brutal deceits, and picking up on the discussions of shame found in 𝘔𝘺 1980𝘴 Gayboy Playlist, Ashby has now focused on indignity and intolerance. To that end, he is currently working on a book titled 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘔𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘖𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯.
Jonathan Alexabder is Chancellor’s Professor of English and Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Irvine, where he also currently serves as chair of the Department of English. Author of more than twenty books, he blends memoir and criticism in work often described as autotheory. His titles include Writing & Desire, Stroke Book, and a trilogy—Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology; Bullied: The Story of an Abuse; and Dear Queer Self.Honors include a Lambda Literary finalist nod, a gold IPPY, an INDIES finalist citation, and the Lavender Rhetorics Award.
The event is free and open to the public, no tickets or reservations required!
Where: Page Against the Machine
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 2724 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: Facebook Event Page
Los Angeles Poets Open Call Poetry Audition at Sims Library of Poetry – In-Person Event
Join us to Pitch your book to publishers at our annual Author Draft.
Attend our in-person audition for a seat in our poetry book publishing class.
DM or email us if you have any questions admissions@communitylit.org
Or visit our website for more details
Share this with a poet who needs to join this class!
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: Instagram Page
Diana Giovinazzo, with J. Ryan Straydal, & Daughters of Naples at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Diana Giovinazzoo, in conversation with J. Ryan Straydal, will discuss Daughters of Naples: A Novel.
Set in Naples, Italy, during World War II, three sisters must survive in the face of danger.
Naples, 1940. The three Cozzolino sisters, Leta, Marcella, and Bianca, live together in their small home during Mussolini’s domination. Leta runs the De Rosa dress shop, where she takes care of her mother-in-law while her husband is at war. Marcella is an apprentice to a midwife, bringing up the next generation of Italian soldiers, much to the pride of her boyfriend, who is inspired by Mussolini’s rule. But when their youngest sister, Bianca, decides to join the partigiani—the Italian resistance—after her childhood sweetheart is sent to war, familial tensions are brought to light.
The sisters are soon at odds, questioning where they stand in the war effort. When Leta’s old flame, Pasquale, asks if he can use the dress shop to send messages for the partigiani, she refuses. But when Naples is bombed, the sisters are forced to reevaluate their stances and how far they are willing to go for each other and their country. With the threat of Nazism looming over the city after Mussolini is ousted, the Cozzolino sisters will have to confront what they are willing to sacrifice and their loyalties to each other and to their country.
This inspiring novel examines the true nature of sisterly bonds and what one will do to survive.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-08-25/diana-giovinnazo
Coyotes Fiction Book Club: The Twenty Days of Turin at Skylight – In-Person Event
Join us every fourth Tuesday of the month for our fiction book club!
On Tuesday, August 25 at 7:30 p.m., we will be discussing The Twenty Days of Turin: A Novel by Giorgio De Maria.
In the spare wing of a church-run sanatorium, some zealous youths create “the Library,” a space where lonely citizens can read one another’s personal diaries and connect with like-minded souls in “dialogues across the ether.” But when their scribblings devolve into the ugliest confessions of the macabre, the Library’s users learn too late that a malicious force has consumed their privacy and their sanity. As the city of Turin suffers a twenty-day “phenomenon of collective psychosis” culminating in nightly massacres that hundreds of witnesses cannot explain, the Library is shut down and erased from history. That is, until a lonely salaryman decides to investigate these mysterious events, which the citizenry of Turin fear to mention. Inevitably drawn into the city’s occult netherworld, he unearths the stuff of modern nightmares: what’s shared can never be unshared.
An allegory inspired by the grisly neo-fascist campaigns of its day, The Twenty Days of Turin has enjoyed a fervent cult following in Italy for forty years. Now, in a fretful new age of “lone-wolf” terrorism fueled by social media, we can find uncanny resonances in Giorgio De Maria’s vision of mass fear: a mute, palpitating dread that seeps into every moment of daily existence. With its stunning anticipation of the Internet—and the apocalyptic repercussions of oversharing—this bleak, prescient story is more disturbingly pertinent than ever.
Brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Ramon Glazov, The Twenty Days of Turin establishes De Maria’s place among the literary ranks of Italo Calvino and beside classic horror masters such as Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Hauntingly imaginative, with visceral prose that chills to the marrow, the novel is an eerily clairvoyant magnum opus, long overdue but ever timely.
Giorgio de Maria (1924–2009) was a pianist, critic, playwright, and novelist. He wrote four novels, the best remembered of which is The Twenty Days of Turin.
Ramon Glazov has contributed to many US and Australian publications, including Jacobin and Tincture Journal. He splits his time between Perth and Turin.
If you’ve made it to this page, it means you’re interested in books and literature and sharing your reading experiences with fellow readers—that’s awesome! We’d love to have you at our meetings. And it’s free to come! The group is open to the public, there’s no need to sign up, and no mandate to come.
If you’d like to get on the Discord and receive book club updates from us, email bo@skylightbooks.com. If not, check in here for information about this month’s book and meeting.
To join the mailing list, contact Bo!
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Where: Skylight
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-08-25/coyotes-fiction-book-club
Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert & Guest Howie Good, plus Open Reading – Online Zoom Event
Cobalt Poets Reading & Open Mic and host Rick Lupert will welcome guest Howie Good, plus an Open Reading online.
Howie Good is a retired journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz and an American poet. He is the author of numerous poetry collections and chapbooks, including Lovesick, The Loser’s Guide to Street Fighting, and Frowny Face, which mixes prose poems and collages. He lives on Cape Cod.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: Cobalt Event Page
DiPiazza’s Open Mic at Di Piazza’s Pizza – In-Person Event
Open Mic Every Tuesday! Signups 8:30 pm, late-night happy hour, live music, pizza & cocktails.
Host: Tamara Madison
Features: TBA
Often follows Trivia Night at 6 pm for a full evening of fun.
No cover mentioned—come early to grab a spot!
Step up to the mic and shine!
Where: Di Piazza’s
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 8:30 pm
Address: 5205 Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach, CA
Website: Eventbrite Page
Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic Featuring Freequency at ASTRO – Summer Residency in Arts District – In-Person Event
The nation’s largest weekly spoken word Open Mic event is 28 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. This summer is one of collaboration, through August 25, 2026.
About our sponsor: Humna Khan is the Founder and CEO of ASTRO, an advanced aerospace and manufacturing lab, and a lifelong engineer who has spent more than two decades building the systems and standards that power the modern space economy across NASA, SpaceX, and the U.S. Air Force/Space Force. She spent 13 years as a professor, helping train the next generation of builders and problem‑solvers, and somehow picked up five degrees from universities in the City of Angels along the way. Nearly twenty years ago, she started going to Da Poetry Lounge as a quiet face in the crowd who never got on the mic, but still felt seen. A longtime activist who speaks up about injustice and inequity, she’s honored to host DPL at her facility and help keep that kind of space alive in the city that raised her.
Freequency is a story|teller, organizer, host, workshop leader, chaos collagist, youth worker & performance artist, FreeQuency is a gender-renegade Kenyan e|immigrant who is masculine off center, femme adjacent, an AunTea and|or a prettyboi. FreeQuency’s anti-disciplinary work interrogates and occupies the in between while exploring the nuances and stark contradictions of existence under racialized capitalism. This humanoid is the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, the founder of Paza Sauti: Kenya & has been featured in or written for numerous outlets. Their work has amassed millions of views online including a TED Talk that almost didn’t get released.
*Educational workshops and all programming outside of Tuesdays will continue in Leimert Park.*
$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. See website link for details.
Where: ASTRO Summer Residency, New ARTS DISTRCT Location
Date: Tuesday, the 25th
Time: 9 pm – 11 pm (Doors at 8:15 pm)
Address: 430 Colyton St., Arts District DTLA, CA
Website: Instagram Page
Mystery Book Group: Blood Relay by Devon Mihesuah at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Event
Start your morning with a lively discussion of Devon Mihesuah’s Blood Relay!
Whether you loved it, hated it, or haven’t finished it, we want to see you at our Mystery Book Group at America’s Oldest Children’s Bookstore!
We will be meeting to discuss the book outside of the shop in the circle in front of Star Cafe, as weather permits.
In this richly layered debut thriller reminiscent of the real issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people, a badass Choctaw detective discovers an insidious plot against her reservation while investigating the disappearance of a beloved champion athlete.
Devon Mihesuah is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the Cora Lee Beers Price Professor in the Hall Center for the Humanities at the University of Kansas. A historian by training, she is a former editor of the American Indian Quarterly and the author of numerous award-winning nonfiction and fiction works about Native history and culture.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event 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 26th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Classics Book Club: The Plague at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for a lively discussion of the 1947 novel The Plague by Albert Camus.
Where: Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm
Address: 10640 Petit Ave., Los Angeles, CA 91344
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/classics-book-club-plague
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 2nd Monday of the month on KPFK Los Angeles 90.7 FM.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: KPFK 90.7
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 2 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: On-air Event
Website: https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/poets-cafe/
Comedic Storytelling Night at Chevalier’s – In-Person Event
After a successful run last summer, the Comedic Storytelling Night returns to Chevalier’s Books, hosted by Larchmont Village resident Michèle Haines.
Join us beginning Wednesday, August 26th at 5:30 pm for an evening of engaging true stories with a comedic thread, shared by seasoned storytellers and first-time performers alike.
If you have a story to tell, sign up at the event or contact producer and host Michèle Haines on Instagram: @cheleonearth.
Come laugh, connect, and celebrate the art of storytelling with the Larchmont Village community! It’s Free.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 5:30 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/poets-cafe/
Canyon Readers Collective Book Club: Creation Lake at Topanga Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner, a literary thriller that follows an undercover operative whose mission draws her into a mysterious community in rural France. For adults.
Where: Topanga Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 122 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga, CA 90290
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17025647
Classic Detectives Book Club: Farewell, My Lovely at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Farewll, My Lovely (A Philip Marlowe Novel #2) by Raymond Chandler.
Philip Marlowe’s about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.
Raymond Thornton Chandler (1888 – 1959) was the master practitioner of American hard-boiled crime fiction. Although he was born in Chicago, Chandler spent most of his boyhood and youth in England where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a freelance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator. During World War I, Chandler served in France with the First Division of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, transferring later to the Royal Flying Corps (R. A. F.). In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing fiction, publishing his first stories in Black Mask. Chandler’s detective stories often starred the brash but honorable Philip Marlowe (introduced in 1939 in his first novel, The Big Sleep) and were noted for their literate presentation and dead-on critical eye. Never a prolific writer, Chandler published only one collection of stories and seven novels in his lifetime. Some of Chandler’s novels, like The Big Sleep, were made into classic movies which helped define the film noir style. In the last year of his life he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died in La Jolla, California on March 26, 1959.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd. Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-08-26/classic-detectives-book-club-farewell-my-lovely
Book Club of California Event: Sam Quinones & Our Lady of th4e Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles at Blinn House – In-Person Event
Sam Quinones will present and discuss Our Lady of the Angels: The Virgin of Guadalupe on the Walls of Los Angeles.
Join Angel City Press at the Blinn House in Pasadena for an evening of contemplation on the importance of iconography, the people to whom the Virgin of Guadalupe signifies security and safety, and the meaning of street art to the communities of Los Angeles.
Registration is required to attend. Link in our bio for more information.
Where: Angel City Press at Blinn House
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 160 N. Oakland Ave. Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: Instagram Page
Short Story Write Night at Good Girl Books – In-Person Event
Join us on August 26th for a Short Story Write Night at Good Girl Books.
One Prompt. Endless possibilities.
This month’s theme is GRAVITY.
At the start of the evening, we’ll reveal a writing prompt or theme to spark your imagination. You’ll have time to write on-site, although you’re also welcome to bring a pre-written story! Guests will then have the option to share their work and offer feedback. Link in bio to purchase your tickets.
Where: Good Girl Books
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 12444 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
Website: Instagram Page
Mystery & Thriller Book Club: We Don’t Talk About Carol at Studio City Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us on the last Wednesday of every month for our Mystery & Thriller book club!
Upcoming meeting:
August (8/26) – We Don’t Talk About Carol by Kristen L. Berry
Where: Studio City Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 12511 Moorpark St., Studio City, CA 91604
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/mystery-thriller-book-club
Romantasy Book Club: In the Veins of the Drowning at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of In the Veins of the Drowning by Katie Cassidy. Copies available at Customer Service. For adults.
Imogen Nel is in hiding. When a neighboring king comes to visit, Imogen can no longer hide. He knows precisely what she is, and he believes she can save both their kingdoms from an even greater monster. But Imogen’s power threatens to violently reveal itself, and the two form a blood bond that protects them both. As the lines between duty to their people and desire for each other begin to blur, Imogen worries her own ancestral powers may not be enough to kill what hunts her—the only way to defeat a monster may be to become one herself.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16823984
AI Ethics Book Club: Culpability with Bel Canto Books Off-site at Ambitious Ales – In-Person Event
AI Ethics Book Club with Bel Canto Books, led by Agatha Isabel, invites readers into a welcoming, judgment-free space to explore the human impact of emerging technologies through story. Our first pick was Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power and Greed, which uses an insider memoir of Big Tech to spark conversations about power, responsibility, and what “care” should look like in the age of AI.
Future selections—including Empire of AI, Culpability, and Exit Interview—will continue examining how technology, institutions, and individuals shape one another.
Meeting quarterly at Ambitious Ales, this book club blends accessible reading, guided discussion, and community-building for anyone curious about AI ethics…no technical background required!
If you live in the Long Beach/LA area, you may purchase books directly from Bel Canto Books by visiting our Retro Row location (2106 E 4th Street) or our KUBO LB location (3976 Atlantic Avenue). A link is included below to purchase the book online via open_in_newBookshop.org.
See site for guidelines.
Where: Bel Canto Books at Ambitious Ales
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address:4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: https://belcantobooks.net/events
Double Author Event: Michael Chatfield and Andrew Givler Present Their Books at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to welcome Michael Chatfield and Andrew Givler, to discuss and sign The Two Week Curse and Cold Wind, respectively.
Michael Chatfield’s The Two Week Curse is the first book in the addictive million-copy bestselling Ten Realms series, where tactical military science fiction combat meets high-stakes LitRPG progression fantasy. Fortune favors the strong. Two veterans are about to show a magical world what modern military discipline can do in this action-fantasy adventure from international bestselling author Michael Chatfield.
Erik West served as a combat medic alongside his marine buddy Jimmy ‘Rugrat’ Rodriguez.
After being marked with the two week curse, they have just 14 days until they’re teleported from their lives. No one else that has been ‘cursed’ has ever returned. All of them have started seeing stat screens and being able to do things that should only be possible in games.
When the curse teleports them to the first realm they’re going to have to learn and quickly. Strength is security here and they’ll have to use all of their newfound skills and abilities combined with all their training and knowledge to forge their own path.
Andrew Givler’s The Ironbound continue to rise in Cold Wind, Book 2 in the epic fantasy adventure series, Ironbound!
Lost and forgotten, Castor is a prisoner of the very Iron Empire he once served.
Thought of as a common criminal, Castor guards his dangerous secret—that he has bound a second Symbol—with his life. If the Censors knew, they’d execute him on the spot.
There is only one path to freedom and avenging his family.
He must earn it no longer as a member of the Iron Legions, but by spilling blood for one of the great Houses.
The dead gods stir in their rotting slumber. Dangerous enemies stalk his new master. Surrounded on all sides, Castor must learn the secrets of his Cor Heart and reach new heights of power before it is too late.
Michael Chatfield is a Canadian Army veteran and international bestselling author who writes the kind of books he always wanted to read, character- driven, gritty, tactical, and grounded in reality. With millions of books and audiobooks sold, and tens of thousands of reviews his work spans LitRPG, military sci-fi, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic survival.
Andrew Givler is the author of The Debt Collection & Ironbound series. He is also a gaming YouTuber known as Sigils with over 1.4 Million subscribers. He loves making people laugh, video games, and food. (Not always in that order.) He lives in LA.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Unsoupervised Readers Club: Lovers XXX at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Unsoupervised Readers Club participants will discuss Lovers XXX: A Novel by Allie Rowbottom.
Set against the neon-lit porn world of 1980s Los Angeles, a raw and evocative portrait of sex, friendship, and the perilous edge of liberation for two young women—from the author of Aesthetica.
For fans of Mary Gaitskill, Emma Cline, and Rachel Kushner.
Hosted by Book Soup Manager, Jess!
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-08-26/unsoupervised-readers-club
LA Romantasy Panel: Callie Hart, Holly Blakc & Sarah Rees at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
We’re hosting a romantasy book panel in LA with authors Callie Hart, Holly Black & Sarah Rees Brennan on August 26th at 7 pm. The conversation will be moderated by Maude Garrett, founder of Maude’s Book Club.
Tickets include a $25 store credit towards purchasing pre-signed books from all three of our romantasy authors.
Callie Hart: Quicksilver, Brimstone
Holly Black: The Cruel Prince, Book of Night, Thief of Night
Sarah Rees Brennan: Long Live Evil, All Hail Chaos, Tell the Wind & Fire
There will be an extended fan Q&A. Don’t forget to submit questions when purchasing your ticket.
Callie Hart is the#1 New York Times bestselling author of the international phenomenon QUICKSILVER, along with many other bestselling dark romance and dark academia titles. A British expat now living in California, Callie can most likely be found sequestered away in the corner of a library, fantasizing about exciting new realms and the brooding anti-heroes who occupy them.
Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy books, including the Novels of Elfhame, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, the Spiderwick Chronicles, her adult debut, Book of Night, as well as an Arthurian picture book called Sir Morien. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and the Lodestar Award, and the recipient of the Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula, and a Newbery Honor. Her books have been translated into 32 languages worldwide and adapted for film. She currently lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret library. You can follow her on Instagram @blackholly
Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. After living in London, New York and Australia, she now uses Ireland as a base for her adventures. She is the author of The Demon’s Lexicon and Lynburn Legacy series, standalones Tell the Wind and Fire, In Other Lands, and several collaborations with other writers such as Cassandra Clare, Maureen Johnson and Kelly Link. Her books have been long-listed for the Carnegie Medal, shortlisted for a Nebula Award, and received multiple starred reviews.
Maude Garrett is a multi-talented media personality and content creator based in Los Angeles, California. She is the Founder and Content Director of Maude’s Book Club, a sci-fi/fantasy book club that aims to make reading fun and exciting for its community.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA, 90232
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 26th
Time: 7 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm; Open Mic at 8 pm)
Address: 3200 W. Temple St., Ste. 100, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: Instagram Page
Alexandra Romanoff, with A.J. Daulerio, & Vacation Self at Skylight – In-Person Event
Alexandra Eomanoff, in conversation with A.J. Daulerio,, will present and discuss Vacation Self: An 831 Stories Romance (Big Fan).
In the long-awaited third book in the Big Fan series, love comes for Mischief band member Ramsey, a reformed rake, and Maggie, an overworked florist.
This is Maggie’s first real vacation in years. She’s checking into a tucked-away Vermont enclave, and for once, she isn’t compulsively responding to work emails or taking on a last-minute floral job. All she wants is time to herself.
But what she gets is a run-in with Jake Ramsey, a onetime hard-partying pop star in recovery who’s spiraling about his own life in the aftermath of his best friend Charlie’s wedding.
Are Maggie and Jake providing each other with much-needed distraction from their real lives—or are they showing each other a way out of the woods?
Alexandra Romanoff is a journalist, a cultural critic, and the author of 831 Stories’s Big Fan series. She’s also written three novels (under Zan Romanoff), most recently Look, which O: The Oprah Magazine called “one of the LGBTQ books that will change the literary landscape.” She cohosts the podcast On the Bleachers, which examines the intersection of sports and pop culture. Her favorite member of One Direction is Louis Tomlinson. She lives and writes in LA.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 26th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA, 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-08-26/alexandra-romanoff-w-aj-daulerio-vacation-self
Vroman’s Fiction Reading Group: Bug Hollow: A Novel at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
The Vroman’s Fiction Reading Group meets the 4th Wednesday of every month at 7 pm.
The Vroman’s Fiction Reading Group explores contemporary fiction—long and short—from a diverse selection of writers. Enjoy lively discussions at our one-hour meetings. Our Fiction Reading Group is free and inclusive—there are no requirements nor criteria to join. We announce upcoming titles 3-6 months in advance and choose titles that are available in paperback. Drop by our next meeting!
August’s pick is Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven.
A decades-spanning family saga featuring the messy but loving Samuelson clan trying to make sense of the world after one event changes their lives forever
When Sally Samuelson was eight years old, her golden boy brother, Ellis, went missing the summer he graduated from high school. Ellis finally turned up at the bucolic Bug Hollow, a last gasp of the beautiful Northern California counterculture of the seventies. He had found joy in the communal life there, but died in a freak accident weeks later.
From that point, the world of the Samuelsons never spins on the same axis, especially after Julia, Ellis’s girlfriend from Bug Hollow, shows up pregnant on their doorstep. Each Samuelson has sought their own solace: Sybil Samuelson pours herself into teaching and numbing her pain after the loss of her beloved son; her husband, Phil, had found respite in a love that developed while he was working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia; Katie, the high-achieving middle Samuelson, comes home to try and make peace with her mother after a cancer diagnosis. And Sally has become the de facto caretaker to Eva, the child Ellis never knew.
Fiction Reading Group meetings are held inside Vroman’s Bookstore on the second floor in the event space
Michelle Huneven is the author of Round Rock, Jamesland, Blame, Off Course, and Search. Her books have been New York Times Notable Books and finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award for Fiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a James Beard Award, and a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She received her master’s in fine arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-08-26/vromans-fiction-reading-group
Anansi Writers Workshop: Mike Bonifer & 30 Poems About 30 Poets 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 — Mike Bonifer & 30 Poems About 30 Poets; Photography by Eternal Mind & D. Hideo Maruyana; Music by DJ S.O.U L.
- 9:05 pm – 10:00 pm — Open mic.
Suggested: $10.00 Donation via PayPal: The World Stage Gallery.
NOTE: See site for further details and any change in the schedule. Contact on Instagram @ _yellawoman.
Where: The World Stage (use left rear entrance)
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
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: Story Salon After Dark
Where: Art Parlor
Date: Wednesday the 26th
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 Rooja Mohassessy 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.
Rooja Mohassessy is an Iranian-born poet and educator. Her debut poetry collection, When Your Sky Runs Into Mine, is an Elixir Press Award winner. Her poems and prose appear in Narrative Magazine, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, and The Adroit Journal. Her work is anthologized in Colossus: Body and California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. Poetry media and podcasts that feature Rooja include NPR, The Hive Poetry Collective, and The Slowdown. She is a MacDowell Fellow and serves as a poetry editor for CALYX Journal. Rooja holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Pacific University.
NOTE: See site for further details, tickets, and information.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Poetry Reading & Open Mic by Two Idiots Peddling Poetry with Ben Trigg & Guest Simone Swearingen at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Host Ben Trigg guest poet Simone Swearingen to share her work
Simone Swearingen is a poet whose voice rises from the sun-soaked streets of Southern California, weaving a sultry sound with piercing intrigue. Her work is a hypnotic blend of sensuality and strength—words that don’t just land, but linger.
She is a regularly performing artist with LionLike Mindstate, gracing the stage at the annual Pomona Poetry & Book Fest for four consecutive years, since its inception.
Her newly released book, Mindful Musings, is a testament to her evolution as an artist. Intimate and thoughtful, the collection explores the intersections of love, desire, empowerment, and resilience.
When she’s not working in her field of electrical engineering, you can find her spending time with loved ones, traveling the world, at an open mic, and -you guessed it- writing. Whether on the page or behind the mic, her presence allures and incites connection.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday, the 26th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: Facebook Event 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 7ooks & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Author Talk: Lucy Foley & Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel via Virtual Program, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a thrilling conversation with acclaimed author Lucy Foley as we delve into her brand-new Miss Marple mystery, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel.
High in the Swiss Alps, accessible only by a single, winding railway, stands the luxurious Grand Alpine Hotel. With glorious mountain views and exclusive access to powdery slopes, it draws guests from far and wide.
The notorious actress.
The high-flying politician.
The society wife.
The reckless friend.
The shrewd doctor.
But not everyone is here for a winter holiday. Beneath the champagne and furs, dark histories simmer; old grudges emerge like cracks in the ice. And someone is watching from the shadows. A polite, unassuming woman with an extraordinary mind: Miss Marple. When a body is found and a blizzard cuts off all escape, only Miss Marple can connect the clues before the killer strikes again. Because it isn’t a question of who has a motive, but who’s next…
Lucy Foley is a No.1 Sunday Times, Irish Times, and New York Times bestselling author. More than 10 million copies of her books are in print worldwide, and several are currently being adapted for the screen. She is a Waterstones Thriller of the Month author, a three-time nominee at the British Book Awards, and The Guest List was a Reese’s Book Club selection and winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Mystery Thriller. As a life-long Agatha Christie fan, Lucy has drawn immeasurable inspiration from the Queen of Crime. She was one of 12 writers to contribute to Marple, a collection of short stories featuring the beloved detective. And in Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, she was inspired to transport Miss Marple – her favorite Christie creation – to the glamorous post-war setting of the Swiss Alps, in a mystery that feels gloriously escapist yet utterly relevant to our times.
Where: Virtual Program,LACL
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16705127
“Saved by a Story” Seniors Writing Group at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for “Saved by a Story” Seniors Writing Group monthly on the fourth Thursday, 1 – 2:30 pm.
Where: Westwood Branch Library,LAPL
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/saved-story-senior-writing-workshop-1
Marina Del Rey Book Club: Truly by Lionel Richie at Marina Del Rey Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
This month, we’ll explore the autobiography Truly by Lionel Richie. Funny, warm, and riveting, Lionel recalls his childhood in Tuskegee, Alabama, where he grew up on its university campus during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement. For adults 18+.
The story will also delve into Richie’s coming-of-age in late 1960s Harlem, the culture shock playing gigs on the French Riviera, the big break of being signed to Motown, his meteoric solo career that included an Olympics performance witnessed by two billion around the globe, all the way through to writing and recording “We Are the World” and his current multi-generational fame as a judge on American Idol.
Where: Marina Del Rey Library,LACL
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm (A 2nd session is offered later at 6 pm)
Address:14533 Admiralty Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16687462
A Collaborators Reading: Anger Is a Gift Anthology via Editors – Online Zoom Event
As James Baldwin reminded us, “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” This anthology answers that call.
Join us and experience the Revolutionary Poetry Resistance with Anger is a Gift Contributors Zoom Reading on Thursday, August 27 at 5 pm.
An anthology of Resistance and Response Poems to the 2024 Election, from Editors Adrian Ernesto Cepeda and Edward Vidadurre.
DM for Zoom link.
Where: Anger Is a Gift Anthology
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: Instagram Page
Between the Lines Book Club: When the Moon Hits Your Eye at Castaic Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us as we relish John Scalzi’s When the Moon Hits Your Eye, a witty and dark science fantasy. Copies are available at the Customer Service desk and newcomers are always welcome! For adults.
Where: Castaic Library,LACL
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 27971 Sloan Canyon Rd., Castaic, CA 91384
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16824001
Adaptation Book Club: Women Talking (2023), Film Discussion at Cellar Door Bookstore – in-Person Event
Participants will discuss the film they viewed last week Film: Women Talking (2023), dir. Sarah Polley. Have Miriam Toews’s Women Talking,
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508:
Cookies & Comics Graphic Novel Book Club via Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Do you love graphic novels? Does your family get tired of having to talk about Watchmen – again? Looking for someone to geek out with you over the new stuff from Brian K. Vaughan? Then this is the club for you!
This month, we’ll discuss Porcelain (Issues #1-5) by Maria Llovet, available with your library card on hoopla.
Beryl’s life in the desert, living with her aunt and her cat, is relatively sim-ple…until the day she finds and enters the Dollhouse. Stuck inside an ever-changing mystery house that hunts children and turns them into dolls, Beryl goes on a psychedelic journey where she must face the notion of her own limitations and move past them…before she becomes the building’s new-est prey. This graphic novel has been described as a “psychologically thrilling experience.”
The intended audience for this monthly Zoom event is teens aged 16+ and adults.
Where: Westwood Branch Library,LAPL
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/cookies-comics-graphic-novel-book-club-14
Author Event: Lauren Hough, with Roxane Gay, & Monster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to welcome Lauren Hough, in conversation with Roxane Gay, to discussMonster of a Land: On the Road in Search of Modern America.
From The New York Times bestselling author of Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing comes an update of John Steinbeck’s trip in Travels with Charley, a cross-country journey exploring modern America with Lauren Hough’s signature observational wit, searing social commentary, and perspective as someone who knows what it’s like to truly exist on the margins in this country.
Lauren Hough has always been haunted by the road trips she never got to take: no money, no vacation days, no car capable of making the trip. So, upon finally finding herself in a situation where such a trip might be possible—being a writer may not always pay better than being a bartender or a cable guy, but at least the schedule’s flexible—she leaps at the chance, refurbishing a ramshackle 2001 Dodge van and setting off from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side.
Her influences feel obvious—but a lot has changed about the United States since the 1962 trip John Steinbeck chronicles in Travels with Charley. And Lauren Hough isn’t John Steinbeck—unless the Noble Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath had a secret past as a six-foot-tall lesbian and Air Force vet. But even better as a social lubricant than beer, a dog is the ultimate conversation starter. With Woody as wingman, Lauren chats—at gas stations and restaurants and auto shops and bars—with an incredible cross-section of Americans from all walks of life and every possible political perspective. And as she circumnavigates the country, she documents, with all-too-rare empathy, what it means to be poor, to be marginalized, and to be seen as Other in America.
Part travelogue, part social commentary, and 100% Lauren Hough, Monster of a Land unites her poignant vulnerability, her hilarious narrative voice, and her razor-sharp insights into a journey that will show us how far we’ve come as a country, and how far we still have to go.
Lauren Hough was born in Germany and raised in seven countries, and West Texas. She’s been an Air Force airman, a bartender, a bouncer, a construction laborer, a driver, a green-aproned barista, and a cable guy. She’s the author of the New York Times bestselling essay collection, Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, Texas Highways, Huffpost, and The Guardian. She’s a writer at large for Texas Highways. She lives in Austin with a dog named Woody Guthrie.
Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects. She also has a newsletter, The Audacity and once had a podcast, The Roxane Gay Agenda.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 27th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
A New Song: Poets Respond to Langston Hughes: Pam Ward, Luis Rodriguez, and Lynne Thompsonat California African American Museum (CAAM) – In-Person Event
Join us for A New Song: Poets Respond to Langston Hughes, a poetic response to the current exhibit Langston Hughes in the West at CAAM.
One of the world’s most famous Black poets, Langston Hughes is often associated with the writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance in New York. But starting in the 1930s, through the upheavals of the Great Depression, World War II, and McCarthyism in America, Hughes spent significant time in the West where he maintained deep connections and produced important work, including lectures, film scripts, plays, and his first book of short stories.
Join poets Pam Ward, Luis Rodriguez, and Lynne Thompson as they share original works inspired by A New Song: Langston Hughes in the West.
Pam Ward ’s poetry anthology, Between Good Men & No Man at All, World Stage Press, was a honorable mention for the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. She’s authored two novels, Want Some Get Some, and Bad Girls Burn Slow, Her YA novel is entitled, Stoves Don’t Cry and her just completed novel, I’ll Get You My Pretty, is based on her aunt’s role in the Black Dahlia murder.
Luis Rodriguez is a prominent Chicano author, poet, activist, and urban peacemaker who served as the Los Angeles Poet Laureate from 2014 to 2016. Raised in Watts and East Los Angeles, he overcame a youth of gang violence and heroin addiction to become an award-winning writer and community leader. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including My Nature is Hunger: New and Selected Poems 1989-2004 and Borrowed Bones: New Poems from the Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. His works cover many genres and collaborations, and he is known for his iconic memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.
Lynne Thompson was the 4th Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles. The daughter of Caribbean immigrants, her poetry collections include Beg No Pardon (2007), winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (2013), from What Books Press; and Fretwork (2019), winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Her latest is Blue on a Blue Palette: Poems. Thompson’s honors include the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award (poetry) and the Stephen Dunn Prize for Poetry as well as fellowships from the City of Los Angeles, Vermont Studio Center, and the Summer Literary Series in Kenya.
Where: California African American Museum (CAAM)
Date: Thursday, the 27th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 600 Stat Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90037
Website: https://caamuseum.org/programs/talks-and-workshops/a-new-song-poets-respond-to-langston-hughes
Fiction Book Club: The Great Wherever at Good Girl Books – In-Person Event
Join us for our Fiction Book Club as we discuss The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders.
When Aubrey Lamb inherits a stake in a Tennessee farm after her father’s death, she sees it as a chance for a fresh start. But once she arrives, she discovers the generations of stories, struggles, and secrets tied to the land.
As Aubrey uncovers her family’s history, the ghosts of her ancestors offer their own exasperated, gossipy commentary on the flaws of relatives living and dead, each claiming their own connection to the farm.
Spanning from Reconstruction to the present day, this powerful novel explores legacy, resilience, family, and the ways the past continues to shape us.
Where: Good Girl Books
Date: Thursday, the 27th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 12444 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
Website: Instagram Page
The Definitive Soapbox Open Mic: Luivette Resto & Danielle Mitchell at The Nest – In-Person Event
Join us for TDSB Open Mic on THURSDAY, August 27 at The Nest.
Grateful to feature the powerful voice of Luivette Resto alongside co-feature Danielle Mitchell.
Born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico and proudly raised in the Bronx, Luivette Resto is an award-winning poet, mother of three revolutionary humans, middle school English teacher, and CantoMundo and Macondo Fellow. Author of three poetry collections—Unfinished Portrait, Ascension, and Living on Islands Not Found on Maps—her voice anchors community through her service on boards like Beyond Baroque and Women Who Submit, her editorial work for Tía Chucha Press, and her feature publications in Poetry Magazine and Angel City Review.
Danielle Mitchell is an intersectional feminist, poet, teaching artist, and the Founding Director of The Poetry Lab. Author of Makes the Daughter-in-Law Cry (winner of the Clockwise Chapbook Prize), her work and leadership continuously build intentional space for writers to grow, create, and thrive.
August Theme: Family
$5 cover at the door | Sign-ups open when doors open.
Where: The Nest
Date: Thursday, the 27th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm)
Address: 16916 Bellflower Blvd., Bellflower, CA 90706
Website: Instagram Page
Poetry Diet Open Mic at 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
Come listen. Come speak. Come feel.
Where: The Living Room, DTLA
Date: Thursday the 27th
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 28th
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 28th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page
Book Club: We Are All Gulty Here at La Mirada Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter.
Welcome to North Falls-where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think. Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish. Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding? For adults.
Where: La Mirada Library, LACL
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 10:30 am – 11:30 am
Address: 10640 Petit Ave., Los Angeles, CA 91344
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17014256
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 28th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Afternoon Book Club: Atmosphere at Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. For adults.
Summary provided by the publisher:
“Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates. As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.”
Where: Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 4975 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16835504
Horror Book Club: Morsel at Compton Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Morsel by Carter Keane. To borrow a print copy of the book, please contact the Compton Library directly. For ages 18+
Do you find yourself attracted to the strange and unusual? Do you enjoy what others may find frightening? If so, join the Horror Book Club where each month we’ll provide you with diverse horror authors and titles to discuss with people who enjoy the same genre as you.
Lou did what the children of parents with backbreaking, poorly paying jobs are supposed to do: pulled up her bootstraps, went to college, and got an office gig with coworkers who won’t stop talking about their multilevel marketing scheme disguised as self-betterment.
When Lou accepts a property appraisal assignment in the rural hills of Ohio, she knows it’s her last chance to save her job and keep making rent. But she quickly finds herself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a sabotaged truck, her dog, and someone—or something—stalking her through the ancient Appalachian woods.
If she can’t escape the woods in time, she’ll see firsthand that her job isn’t the only thing that wants to eat her alive.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required.
Where: Compton Library, LACL
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 240 W. Compton Blvd., Compton, CA 90220
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16999213
Speculative Fiction Book Club: The Dispossessed at West Hollywood Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. For adults.
Please contact the library to get a print copy of the book. No registration required.
Where: West Hollywood Library, LACL
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16868833
Book Launch: Serena Chopra and Guests & A Catalog of Future Mercies at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Serena Chopra, in conversation with Diana Arterian and Prageeta Sharma, will discuss A Catalog of Future Mercies.
Join Serena Chopra for the Los Angeles launch of her new collection A Catalog of Future Mercies. In this luminous memoir-in-poems, Chopra explores the complexities of mercy in an immigrant family haunted by generational violence. Drawing connections between the brutalized prairie beneath suburban lawns and the brutalized body seeking reclamation through sensuality, Chopra examines what it means to be a survivor descended from both survivors and perpetrators. A lyric woven in four parts, A Catalog of Future Mercies reimagines mercy as radical embodied witnessing, a form of resilience that refuses the tyranny of forgetting. Chopra will be joined in conversation by Prageeta Sharma, and copies of the book will be available for sale and signing.
Serena Chopra is a writer, dancer, filmmaker, and performance artist. She is the recipient of an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, a Fulbright Scholar, and an alumna RedLine Resident Artist. Chopra is an associate professor of creative writing at Seattle University.
Diana Arterian’s poetry collection Agrippina the Younger (Northwestern University Press) received the 2026 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also editor and co-translator of Smoke Drifts (World Poetry Books), the selected works of Nadia Anjuman. Arterian’s first collection, Playing Monster :: Seiche, earned a starred review in Publishers Weekly. A Poetry Editor at Noemi Press and twice-finalist for the National Poetry Series, Arterian has received fellowships from Banff Centre, Millay Arts, and Yaddo. She writes the “Annotated Nightstand Column” for Lit Hub and lives in Los Angeles.
Prageeta Sharma is the author of six collections of poetry; her most recent collection is Onement Won, out from Wave Books. She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Creative Writing, and Artistic and Aesthetic Practices, a recent recipient of the 2025 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and is currently the Henry G. Lee ’37 professor of English at Pomona College.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 5:30 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Black Lit Book Club: Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert: A Novel at Cellar Door Bookstore – Online Event
Participants will discuss Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert: A Novel by Bob the Drag Queen.
From RuPaul’s Drag Race winner, Traitors contestant, and host of HBO’s We’re Here comes an inventive, wondrous novel about American hero Harriet Tubman that remixes history into a fresh, dynamic novel about love, freedom, salvation, and hip-hop.
In an age of miracles where our greatest heroes from history have magically, unexplainably returned to shake us out of our confusion and hate, Harriet Tubman is back, and she has a lot to say.
Harriet Tubman and four of the enslaved persons she led to freedom want to tell their story in a unique way. Harriet wants to create a hip-hop album and live show about her life, and she needs a songwriter to help her.
She calls upon Darnell, a once successful hip-hop producer who was topping the charts before being outed on a BET talk show. Darnell has no idea what to expect when he steps into the studio with Harriet, only that they have a short period of time to write a legendary album she can take on the road. Over the course of their time together, they not only create music that will take the country by storm, but confront the horrors of both their pasts, and learn to find a way to a better future.
Original, evocative, and historic, Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a landmark achievement that will burrow deep into our hearts (and ears).
Bob the Drag Queen is a television host, actor, activist, and the season eight winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Find Bob at BobTheDragQueen.com, on TikTok and Instagram @BobTheDragQueen.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 473 E. Alessandro Blvd., Suite B, Riverside, CA 92508
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-08-28/black-lit-book-club-harriet-tubman-live-concert
Gabrielle Tana and Katerina Tana, with Matt Tyrnauer, & Dan Tana’s: Everybody Came to Tana’s: An American Dream Come True at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Gabrielle Tana and Katerina Tana, in conversation with Matt Tyrnauer, will discussDan Tana’s: Everybody Came to Tana’s: An American Dream Come True.
The Remarkable True Story of Dan Tana.
Serbian Immigrant, soccer star, legendary Hollywood restaurateur, Dan Tana called himself the luckiest man alive, and lived as if it were true.
Born in wartime Yugoslavia, Dan survived bombings, displacement, and the long shadows of World War II before fleeing as a teenage soccer prodigy in search of a future. What followed reads like a modern American myth: a refugee who became a European football star, an actor, a film producer, an unlikely companion of Frank Sinatra, James Dean and other Hollywood immortals, and the founder of one of Hollywood’s most beloved institutions.
When Dan Tana’s opened in 1964, it became more than a restaurant. It became a second home. Lew Wasserman, Fred Astaire, and John Wayne were regulars. Jack Nicholson, Linda Ronstadt, and Barbra Streisand passed through its red booths. Bobby Fischer was snuck in, Wilt Chamberlain towered over the room, Harry Dean Stanton basically lived at the bar, and generations of artists, athletes, and legends gathered not for spectacle—but for belonging. George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joni Mitchell, Magic Johnson—the names span eras, but the feeling never changed.
Told in Dan’s warm, unassuming voice, Everybody Came to Tana’s is as much about people as it is about fame. It’s a story of friendship, loyalty, resilience, and gratitude. Of a man who crossed continents, survived history, and built a life that welcomed the world.
At once an immigrant’s journey, a love letter to Hollywood, a devotion to sport, and a portrait of a singular “lucky” life, Everybody Came to Tana’s captures a spirit that cannot be replicated—only remembered and enjoyed.
This program will be moderated by filmmaker, Matt Tyrnauer.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Friday, the 28th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-08-28/gabrielle-tana-katarina-tana
LA Book Event: Rae Carson & Monster, Monarch, Maiden at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
To celebrate Monster, Monarch, Maiden we’re hosting an LA book event with author Rae Carson on Friday, August 328h at 7 pm.
Moderated by book content creator Dahlia De La Vega, Rae will discuss her YA romantasy with authors Marie Lu and Melissa de la Cruz. A book signing with the authors will follow.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Friday the 28th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA, 90232
Website: https://therippedbodice.com/event/2026-08-28/rae-carson-la-event-monster-monarch-maiden
Banned Books Club: Their Eyes Were Watching God at Underdog Bookstore –- In-Person 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 August pick is: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
The epic tale of Janie Crawford, whose quest for identity takes her on a journey during which she learns what love is, experiences life’s joys and sorrows, and comes home to herself in peace.
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: Friday, the 28th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 312 S. Myrtle Ave., Monrovia, CA 91016
Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/banned-books-club-august
Yance Wyatt & The Watersmith at Vroman’s –- In-Person Event
Yance Wyatt will present and discuss The Watersmith.
When hard-drinking handyman Jack Calloway discovers an old moonshine still behind the Smoky Mountain cabin he plans to flip, his teenage son dares him to get it running. Jack accepts— until his wife, Jolene, tries to sabotage the first batch and is horribly burned in the process. Wracked with guilt, Jack sends their son away and moves Jolene into the cabin to recover while he tries to sober up.
Doctors diagnose Jolene with a rare post-traumatic dementia that responds only to scent— smell being the strongest trigger of memory. Desperate to help, Jack begins distilling essential oils from her favorite flowers, searching for the one that might bring her back.
When a fleeting moment of clarity during a visit from their son slips away again, Jack grows frantic— willing to distill anything in his grasp to reach her. A haunting, tender tale of love, regret, and the volatile bonds between parents and children, The Watersmith is a story of oil and water, memory and mercy— and how far one man will go to bring his family home.
Yance Wyatt is from Nashville, Tennessee, or thereabouts. He studied fiction at the University of Southern California, where he now teaches writing. His stories have appeared in dozens of nationally circulated literary journals and received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. He lives with his wife and son in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The Watersmith is his first novel.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday, the 28th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-08-28/yance-wyatt-discusses
Pages on Stages: CLI Honors Tommy Domino at Sims Library of Poetry –- In-Person Event
Join us for a night of poetry, music & community honoring Tommy Domino—a beloved poet, professor, mentor, and champion of LA’s literary community.
🎤 Pages on Stages: Tommy Domino Honors 🎤
Students, alumni, neighbors, poets, CLIQUÉ family and friends—this one is for Tommy!
Join us for a special night honoring Tommy Domino alias “Big Six”—poet, professor, mentor, and community staple who has spent years showing up for writers and pouring into our literary communities.
Featuring poetry, stories, music, and plenty of love as we celebrate the work, impact, and presence of someone who has given so much to our community. Come help us fill the room for someone who has filled so many rooms for us.
Tommy Domino, aka “Big Six,” is a poet, educator, author, producer, and longtime fixture in Southern California’s literary community. He has been a member of the Stillwater Writers Collective since 2012 and Watts Writers Workshop II since 2018, and has taught Community Literature Initiative’s Long Beach Poetry Cohort since 2020, earning CLI Teacher of the Year in 2022.
His debut collection, Switches, Hot Wheel Tracks & Extension Cords, was published by World Stage Press in 2018, followed by Closer in the Rearview in 2025. His work has taken him from the House of Blues and Melrose Trading Post’s Juneteenth Celebration to Slanguage on Urban Soul TV and the documentary Brand New Day, nominated at the 2023 Glendale International Film Festival.
Tommy was the 2025 Beach City Writers Conference keynote speaker and continues to build spaces for poetry throughout Long Beach. He hosts The Griot Café open mic at Shades of Afrika, curates a monthly jazz and spoken-word series at BLU Art & Wellness Center and serves as Co-Executive Producer of the Long Beach Poetry Slam: Clash of the Titans II.
Where: Sims Library of Poetry
Date: Friday, the 28th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 2702 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: Eventbrite Page
Pride Poets: Abundance at The Village at Ed Gould Plaza, Davidson/Valentini Theatre –- In-Person LGBTQIA+ Event
This year, Pride Poets wrote poems for over 1,000 community members at WeHo Pride, Trans Pride, Beverly Hills Pride, Huntington Gardens, and more. This event brings together a tapestry of poems as members of Pride Poets look back to share and reflect on their experiences, creating a snapshot of what Pride means in this difficult season for queer folks. Through the performance, a new poem will be written, incorporating the poems shared and the voices of the audience.
Focus: Performances and reflections from the collective poetry project looking back at regional Pride events
This project made possible thanks to a grant from the City of West Hollywood.
Co-Presented by Brian Sonia-Wallace & Los Angeles LGBT Center
See site for ticket info.
Where: The Village at Ed Gould Plaza
Date: Friday, the 28th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://dolosangeles.com/events/2026/8/28/pride-poets-abundance-tickets
56th Annual Chicano Moratorium at East Los Angeles College – In-Person Event
Join Los Angeles Poet Society and others at the Annual Chicano Moratorium at East Los Angeles College on Sunday August 29th.
Celebrating 56 years since August 1970 of anti-war and Chicano civil rights action.
There will be speakers & poetry, vendors, food/refreshments, and danzante.
Mariana Franco @nopal_flower and Hope Cerna will be offering typewritten poems! @hope_cerna
Mariana Franco is a Latinx author, poet and many other titles from Pacoima, CA. Promoting body positivity and sensual womaness as @nakedpoet & as @nopal_flower. her poetic free verse fights against xenophobic-racist barriers. She is part of a large group of Los Angelean poets in an anthology titled, Coiled Serpent: Poets Arising from the Cultural Quakes & Shifts of Los Angeles printed by Tía Chucha Press & in anthology/historical document from the Los Angeles Poet Society titled Los Angeles Poets for Justice: A Document for the People. Her first Chapbook Heart of Fire and her first full length poetry book Family & Other Problems are available. Additionally, she is an editor, photographer, an event curator/community organizer under the business name Prickly Pear Productions & Services @pricklypearproductions4
Hope Cerna wants to write everything. She is the author of A Sentimental Garden (Daxson Publishing).
Come check it out, support our work, and make sure to sign up for our email list.
See site for parking info & more.
Where: East Los Angeles College, Quad
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 10 am – 4 pm
Address: 1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, CA 91754
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: Saturday the 29th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Book Club for Middle Grade Readers: The Frindle Files via Central Library, LAPL – Online MG Event
Middle-grade readers in grades 4-7 are invited to join our fun monthly book discussions. This month, we will be reading The Frindle Files by Andrew Clements.
Please email Ms. Gail at gkim@lapl.org for the Zoom login information.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 10 am – 10:30 am
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/book-club-middle-grade-readers-frindle-files-andrew-clements-0
Linda Liu & I Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms at Vroman’s – In-Person Kids Event
Join us to hear Linda Liu present I Guess I’ll go Eat Worms.
Yup! You read that right…WORMS!
Only thing for an outcast to eat.
But what if wet, gooey, chewy worms could be a way to meet someone new? What if there’s somebody out there who wallows in worms just as much as you do? Well, for an ugly duckling and a black sheep, there may just be a cure for their loneliness…
And you know the cure can only be one thing: worms—I mean, friendship.
In this hilarious remix of the classic nursery rhyme, Linda Liu breathes new life into the importance of connection—with a book that demands to be sung!
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 11 am
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-08-29/linda-liu
Author Event: Eric Nusbaum & Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The Echo Park Historical Society and the Friends of Elysian Park are excited to present author Eric Nusbaum discussing his award-winning 2020 book Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between.
Nusbaum’s deeply researched book illuminates a crucial era of local history, telling the full story of how Dodger Stadium came to be built in Elysian Park, which goes far beyond baseball. The hills around what is now the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican-American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project—but when the political climate shifted, the city’s public housing initiative was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O’Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who wanted to move the team to the West Coast. But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood’s families—including one, the Aréchigas, who refused to yield their home. The ensuing confrontation captivated the nation—and the divisive outcome still echoes through Los Angeles today.
Eric Nusbaum has written and edited for Sports Illustrated, ESPN, and VICE. From 2023 to 2026, he was the editor in chief of the Seattle Met. His work has been featured in the Best American Sports Writing anthology and won accolades, including the SABR Seymour Medal for best baseball book.
Where: Edendale Branch Library,LAPL
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 12 pm – 1 pm
Address: 2011 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Author Event: Rebekah Weatherspoon & Summer Official at Barnes & Noble, Costa Mesa – In-Person Event
Rebekah Weatherspoon will be signing Summer Official and handing out some swaggy swag at the new Barnes & Noble in South Coast Plaza.
Where: Barnes & Noble, South Coast Plaza
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 333 Bear St., Suite 340, Costa Mesa, CA
Website: Instagram Page
Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Special Event: Four Feathers Press 2025-2026 ONLINE EDITION POETRY AWARDS– Online Zoom Event
Join us online for Four Feathers Press 2025-2026 ONLINE EDITION POETRY AWARDS.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Online
Date: Saturday, the 29th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: Online SAP Zoom Event
Website: https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
The Open Mic Exhibit: The Photography of D. Hideo Murayama at Glass & Quill Gallery – In-Person Event
Join D. Hideo Murayama to view his project called Poets at Work, which is finally going to be done in real life, not the virtual life of Insta.
He’s documented several open mics like Tuesday Nights at the Cafe, Griot Cafe, Muse on Fire, Anansi Writers Workshop, various Community Literature Initiative readings, and some readings like the LA River reading.
Initially, his motivation was to let people use some pictures in order to create posts, and Canva stuff. Mainly Community Literature Initiative poets. He enjoys shooting photos, and it became a part of his way in general. He would read at open mics, and shoot open mics and post the pictures.
Some of the stuff on the Internet is AI, and there is no soul. When he documents readings, he is looking for a flash of individuality, and a sense of spirit. Sometimes it takes 100 shots to get maybe 2 remotely good.
Please come by to check out the work so far. View this show as a progress report.
He will be printing what he has of PJ Harris, S Pearl, and maybe the Watts Prophets, and intends to have an in memorium wall at this show.
Where: Glass & Quill Gallery
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 4 pm Open Mic (Doors at 3 pm)
Address: 2614 W. Florence Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90043
Website: Instagram Page
Award-Winning Author/Autor Premiado Victor Villaseñor (1) in English: Reading and Signing at Fairhaven Memorial Park – In-Person Event
Come meet the celebrated author Victor Villaseñor present Gathering Star Dust, for a special READING AND BOOK SIGNING event! ¡Venga a conocer al célebre autor de Juntando Chispitas de las Estrellas en un evento especial de LECTURA y FIRMA DE LIBROS!
In partnership with @fairhavenmemorialpark’s Art Walk 3 pm – 6 pm.
RSVP
Where: Fairhaven Memorial Park
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1702 Fairhaven Ave., Santa Ana, CA 92705
Falconink Presents 2 Novellas: Hard Bell and Wild Game: Open Season at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Join us for a special evening in celebration of FalconINK’s first two novellas!
Featuring appearances by Derek Kage, Eddie Burke, co-author Ben Rush, and some of your favorite Falcon men!
About Hard Ball by Riley Parks:
Mateo Ruiz takes baseball seriously. He has to. It’s the game that got him out of a small, dead-end town and into professional baseball. Now, entering his second season in the minor leagues, he’s closer than ever to earning a permanent place on the team.
Then Chase Whitaker arrives at Spring Training.
Top prospects aren’t expected to stay in the minors for long. They’re expected to leapfrog everyone in front of them. And since both men play shortstop, Mateo knows exactly what Chase represents: competition. Mateo wants to hate him. He really does. But Chase is talented, charming, maddeningly confident, and impossible to ignore.
As their rivalry gives way to a secret romance, Mateo finds himself risking the future he’s spent years building. With roster decisions looming and feelings growing harder to deny, both men must decide whether the life they’ve always wanted is worth losing each other.
Set beneath Arizona’s endless skies, Hard Ball is a steamy sports romance about ambition, desire, and what happens when the person standing between you and your dream becomes the one person you can’t walk away from.
About Wild Game: Open Season by Riley Parks & Ben Rush
Derek Kage’s life appears perfect from the outside. He’s got a successful career and a powerful wife. His future finally feels secure. But, a chance encounter with Adrian, a rugged construction worker with an electric swagger, awakens desires Derek has spent years trying to ignore. What begins as a forbidden attraction quickly becomes an all-consuming romance, stirring feelings of passion and longing that have been dormant for some time.
As their connection deepens, Derek finds himself torn between the life he built and the man who makes him feel alive. With every stolen night and line crossed, the stakes grow higher, forcing him to confront what he wants and what he’s willing to lose. Blisteringly erotic and emotional, Wild Game: Open Season is a story about temptation and the dangerous choice of safety over desire.
Wild Game: Open Season is a completely original prequel to NakedSword’s multi-award-winning erotic feature Wild Game.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Saturday, the 29th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-08-29/falconink-presents-hard-ball-and-wild-game-open-season
Poetry Open Mic: Pam Concepcion, James Mondares & Samantha Rios at Holy Grounds Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us for Keepers Open Mic at Holy Grounds Coffee to hear three featured poets and an Open Mic.
Pam Concepcion is an interdisciplinary poet, multimedia artist, and host of the Avenue 50 Studio monthly poetry series La Palabra in Los Angeles, originally from Metro Manila, Philippines. Her debut coming-of-age poetry and visual art collection, Unbecoming, was published by Riot of Roses Publishing.
James Mondares is a writer, poet, and student journalist for Roundup Newsletter. He is also a Get Lit player and performer.
Samantha Rios, Former Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate, writes with a voice that resonates deeply across generations. Her poetry—shaped by personal experience and rich with vulnerability—has moved audiences nationwide, from the Brave New Voices stage in Washington D.C. to over 4 million viewers on TikTok. With each piece, she captures the raw beauty of adolescence, offering honesty, warmth, and a sincerity that stays with you.
Where: Holy Grounds Coffee
Date: Saturday, the 29th
Time: 5 pm – 8 pm
Address: 5371 Alhambra Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90032
Website: Instagram Page
ZZyZx WriterZ 15th Anniversary Celebration at Music Garden LA – In-Person Event
Join ZZyZx WriterZ 15th Anniversary, which is officially on the Play Music on the Porch Day 2026 Map!!!
ALARMAZ N/A
Las Motitas is a live music act and performance group active in local showcase scenes, frequently sharing event updates, show flyers, and RSVPs through their official Las Motitas Instagram profile.
Iris De Anda is a Guanaca Tapatia poet, speaker & musician who has been featured with KPFK & KPFA Pacifica Radio, organized with Academy of American Poets, performed at Los Angeles Latino Book Festival, Feria del Libro Tijuana, Casa de las Americas in Havana, Cuba and is named one of Today’s Revolutionary Women of Color. Author of Codeswitch: Fires from Mi Corazon and Roots of Redemption: You have No Right to Remain Silent. http://www.lawriterunderground.com
Robby Ravenwood is a multitalented singer, songwriter, comedian, and in-demand emcee. He performs cabaret shows with the Funhouse Porcupines.
The Poets Band N/A
@musicgardenla @zzyzxwriterz @the_poets_band_music_socal @robbyravenwood @las_motitas @lawriterunderground @alarmazmusic @playmusicontheporch #zzyzxfamilia #zzyzxsundaze #LocalmusicLA #poetrycommunitylosangeles #openmicsLA
Where: Music Garden LA
Date: Saturday, the 29th
Time: 5 pm – 8 pm
Address: 5133 York Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: Instagram Page
Poetry After Dark at Black Cat Fables Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us at Black Cat Fables for Poetry After Dark: an evening focused on healing, mental health, and growth. This poetry event is hosted by Kimberly Mora and Silk & Sugar Co and features several talented local writers and published authors. For more information about your hosts and performers, please see accompanying photos.
Berenice Sandoval is a social justice advocate, healer, and colonial disrupter, who creates powerful educational content that connects history to the present and equips communities with tools to resist harm and reclaim their voices.
Brian Dunlap is a native Angeleno capturing the city’s stories hidden in plain sight. He’s the author of the chapbook Concrete Paradise (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and an award winning author currently working on his first full-length collection titled American Reckoning. He is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Los Angeles Literature, an independent, online magazine covering the Greater Los Angeles literary community.
Ian @habanasa is a San Diego based multidisciplinary creative, including poet, author, storyteller, and tarot practitioner, whose work explores healing, self-remembrance, shadow, and becoming. He is the author of Made to Play.
K. Andrew Turner is a queer m/m writer with hEDS and AuDHD. His works include The Heretic and the Broken Man (fiction, Lazuli Press) and Gymlationship (poetry, Arroyo Seco Press). Discover more at kandrewturner.com.
Kimberly Mora is a published poet and author of two poetry collections, Pass the Light and Healing Asked Me to Return Tomorrow. Her writing combines themes of faith, healing, mental wellness, and personal growth.
Natalie Rodriguez (she, her, ella) is a mother, writer, and poet from South Los Angeles. She self-published her debut collection, Moments of Silence this year. She works with youth in the educational sector and seeks to establish a collective to focus on youth development and diversion services.
Samantha Sao is a poet and event curator who facilitates Silk & Sugar Co. and Southeast Asian Poetry Collective. Her debut collection silk is a composition of intimate poems, with topics of love, heartbreak. rebirth, grief, and more. She is working on her second book, centered on cultural roots and navigating the world as a first-generation American.
Sofía Aguilar is an award-winning Chicana writer, editor, teaching artist, community organizer, and library professional. Her work has appeared in numerous publications. She is the author of amor, the award-winning Queer Latine Heroes, and several poetry chapbooks. She’s at work on her debut full-length collection and a novel.
Tickets: $5 in advance; $8 at the door
Spaces are limited so RSVP now to secure your seat!
Where: Black Cat Fables Bookstore
Date: Saturday, the 29th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 415 S. Myrtle Ave., Monrovia, CA 90042
Sumarr Reading Series: Raffi Joe Wartanian, Sandra Doller, Claire Stanford & Natalie Shapiro at Poetic Research Bureau – In-Person Event
Sumarr is a seasonal reading series curated and hosted by Diana Arterian.
Raffi Joe Wartanian is a writer, musician, and educator who teaches writing at UCLA and currently serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate in the City of Glendale, California. He is a 2025-2026 Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets to support poetry programming with communities impacted by the January 2025 Eaton Fire, and an արդ եւս | in view Grantee with the Gulbenkian Foundation to cultivate a Western Armenian poetry community at the intersection of language and folk music. His essays have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, University of Texas Press, Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, Lapham’s Quarterly, Outside Magazine, and elsewhere; and his poetry has appeared with Academy of American Poets, Washington Writers’ Publishing House, Fowler Museum at UCLA, El Martillo Press, No Dear Magazine, Altadena Poetry Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Los Angeles County Arts & Culture, and beyond. A multi-instrumentalist, composer, lyricist, and singer-songwriter, Raffi has performed internationally and released two full-length albums of original music.
Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry, prose, translation, and the in-between from the most valiant and precarious small presses—Les Figues, Ahsahta, Subito, and Sidebrow Books. She has published chapbooks with above/ground, Éditions Eclipse, CutBank, and Essay Press, and her newest book of poems, Not Now Now, is out now from Rescue Press. Her work appears frequently in magazines such as Fence, Harp & Altar, Mantis, and Action Spectacle. Doller is the founder of an international literary arts journal and independent press called “1913,” where she remains l’éditrice-in-chief publishing poetry, poetics, prose and else by emerging and established writers.
Claire Stanford is the author of the novel Happy for You (Viking, 2022), which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and awarded the 2023 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Rumpus, Third Coast, Redivider, and Tin House Flash Fridays, among other publications; her nonfiction has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Lit, The Millions, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The American Scholar. Her work has received fellowships and grants from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts & Sciences. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in English from UCLA. Born and raised in Berkeley, she currently lives in Los Angeles, where she is an assistant professor of creative writing at Loyola Marymount University.
Natalie Shapiro’s latest book is Stay Dead (2025), published in the U.S. by Copper Canyon Press and in the U.K. by Out-Spoken Press. Stay Dead was longlisted for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is the author of the previous poetry collections Popular Longing (2021), Hard Child (2017), and No Object (2013), and she has performed at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Saturday the 29th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
Website: Instagram Page
Read Like a Writer: Permission to Write with Rasheed Newson at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Join Permission To Write at Rep Club for a book-club-meets-writers-group with There’s Only One Sin In Hollywood author Rasheed Newson
Read Like a Writer invites participants to slow down and study how Black authors build their books — examining structure, voice, point of view, and form, not just theme and feeling.
Rasheed Newson is the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, which was selected as a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. He is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. He co-developed Bel-Air and worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Newson is a 2025–26 American Library in Paris Visiting Fellow. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.
Ashley M. Coleman is the author of Good Morning, Love (Simon & Schuster, 2022) and a music industry executive with over a decade of experience. Her work has appeared in Essence, The Cut, Apartment Therapy, and GRAMMY.com. A Torch Literary Arts and Kimbilio fellow, she founded Permission to Write, a community for Black writers.
FREE ticket with book purchase through Rep Club – (duh) for 10% off with code: BOOKCLUB10
$10 GA ticket (book purchased elsewhere)
Where: Rep Club
Date: Sunday the 29th
Time: 10 am – 11:30 am
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-08-23/hanna-andersson-presents-bedtime-stories-w-jon-klassen
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: Sunday the 30th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Storytime: Andrea Campos & ‘Tis the Season for Tamales at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Kids Event
Join us for a storytime with Andrea Campos, illustrator of the new bilingual picture book ‘Tis the Season for Tamales!
When it’s time to celebrate, friends and family gather to make tamales. So deck the halls! C’mon get jolly! Tama-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!
Tis the season for tamales! Led by a singing, strumming, drumming band of tamales, young readers are invited to join in the fun holiday tradition of making tamales while singing along to the tune of, “Deck the Halls.” From New York Times bestselling illustrator of Con Pollo, this adorable bilingual book is a delightful introduction to tamales, togetherness, and the joy of food. Qué rico!
Andrea Campos is a New York Times bestselling illustrator and visual artist based in Los Angeles who specializes in creating expressive and upbeat work. Her playful-with-purpose style has led her to work on a variety of projects including marketing campaigns, books, toys, and Con Pollo, a bilingual children’s book co-authored by Jennifer Lopez and Jimmy Fallon.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Burning Issues Book Club: Ruin Their Crops on the Ground via Bel Canto Bookstore – Online Zoom Event
Join our Burning Issues Book Club online to discuss Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch, by author Andrea Freeman.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History
Winner of the James Beard Media Award in Food Issues and Advocacy
The first and definitive history of the use of food in United States law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control, a Fast Food Nation for the Black Lives Matter era.
In 1779, to subjugate Indigenous nations, George Washington ordered his troops to “ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more.” Destroying harvests is just one way that the United States has used food as a political tool. Trying to prevent enslaved people from rising up, enslavers restricted their consumption, providing only enough to fuel labor. Since the Great Depression, school lunches have served as dumping grounds for unwanted agricultural surpluses.
From frybread to government cheese, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground draws on over fifteen years of research to argue that U.S. food law and policy have created and maintained racial and social inequality. In an epic, sweeping account, Andrea Freeman, who pioneered the term “food oppression,” moves from colonization to slavery to the Americanization of immigrant food culture, to the commodities supplied to Native reservations, to milk as a symbol of white supremacy. She traces the long-standing alliance between the government and food industries that have produced gaping racial health disparities, and she shows how these practices continue to this day, through the marketing of unhealthy goods that target marginalized communities, causing diabetes, high blood pressure, and premature death.
Ruin Their Crops on the Ground is a groundbreaking addition to the history and politics of food. It will permanently upend the notion that we freely and equally choose what we put on our plates.
Where: Bel Canto Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 12 pm – 1 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: Withfriends Page
Award-Winning Author/Autor Premiado Victor Villaseñor (2) in Spanish: Reading and Signing at LibroMobile – In-Person Event
Come meet the celebrated author Victor Villaseñor present Gathering Star Dust, for a special READING AND BOOK SIGNING event! ¡Venga a conocer al célebre autor de Juntando Chispitas de las Estrellas en un evento especial de LECTURA y FIRMA DE LIBROS!
In partnership with @fairhavenmemorialpark’s Art Walk 3 pm – 6 pm.
RSVP
Where: LibroMobile
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 3 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St. #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Earthseed Symposium: A Speculative Fiction Book Club at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Participants in Earthseed Symposium: A Speculative Fiction Book Club will discuss A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1) by author Becky Chambers
A story for seekers of small comforts.
It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.
One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.
But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot.
Becky Chambers’ new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Neurodive Open Mic at Free Spirited Lounge – In-Person Event
Join us at this month’s Neurodive Open Mic featuring spectacular saxophonist B. Able (@b.ableofficial), at Free Spirited (@free.spirited.lounge) on Sunday, August 30th at 6 pm!
Neurodive Open Mic is for Neurodivergent artists of all forms.
As always, hosted by @mr.chai_tea! Free Spirited is also hosting a vintage/luau themed meetup the same evening, so bring your dapper leis and pocket squares!
Where: Free Spirited Lounge
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 5 pm – 7 pm
Address: 3020 W. Main St., Alhambra, CA 97807
Website: Instagram Page
LA Book Event: M.K. Lobb & The Dark in Her Veins at The Ripped Bodice – In-Person Event
To celebrate The Dark in Her Veins, we’re hosting an LA book event with author M.K. Lobb on Sunday, August 30th at 7 pm. She’ll discuss her romantic fantasy with Meg Smitherman. A book signing will follow.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 30th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 3806 Main St., Culver City, CA, 90232
Website: https://therippedbodice.com/event/2026-08-30/mk-lobb-la-event-dark-her-veins
Los Angeles Literature 