Your Author Series: Heidi Moreno & So Many Questions at Arroyo Seco Library, LAPL
Join us as we welcome Heidi Moreno, local illustrator of the recently published So Many Questions: Abuelita Becomes a US Citizen, written by Belen Medina. Heidi will share her background as an illustrator during the program.
Where: Arroyo Seco Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 6145 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/your-author-heidi-moreno
L.A. Zine Club via Van Nuys Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Join us for Zine Club on Zoom, where members of our group meet-up in a virtual space to co-work, chat, and share inspiration for whatever projects we’re working on. Zine Club is based on the idea of gathering together to create zines, share zines we like, zines that we are working on, music to make zines to and much more. Bring pens, paper, scissors, glue sticks, magazines, and other supplies to make a zine.
Where: Van Nuys Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/la-zine-club
Pages of Pride Book Club: Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe at Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person YA/MG Event
Join us for a discussion of Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee and learn to weave a mug rug. Pages of Pride is a book club that focuses on young adult and middle-grade books featuring LGBTQIA characters. All readers in grades 6-12 are welcome.
Where: Mar Vista Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 12006 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/pages-pride-grades-6-12-0
Sun Valley Branch Book Club: H Is for Hawk via Sun Valley Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Join us for a lively book discussion. We meet online via Google Meet.
September: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald (Non-Fiction)
Where: Sun Valley Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 4:45 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/sun-valley-branch-book-club
Evening Book Clun: The Emperor of Gladness at Manhattan Beach Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a facilitated discussion of fiction and nonfiction titles. A limited number of titles are available for attendees at the library. For adults.
September’s Selection: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
One late summer evening in the town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow, who convinces him to take another path. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to transform Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community on the brink.
Where: Manhattan Beach Library, LACL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 1320 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16764126
Queer & Ally Club: The Emperor of Gladness at Chevalier’s – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join us every second Monday for conversation, reflection, and community centered around books by Queer authors and LGBTQIAA+ themes.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-09-14/queer-ally-book-club
Mystery Book Club: Local Gone Missing at Lake Los Angeles Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us as we discuss a different mystery book each month. This month’s selection is Local Gone Missing by Fiona Barton. The book is available at the circulation desk for checkout. For adults.
Where: Lake Los Angeles Library, LACL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 16921 East Avenue O #A, Palmdale, CA 93591
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16993635
YA for Adults Book Club: The Gilded Ones at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us as we discuss The Gilded Ones by author Namina Forna.
Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.
But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.
Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.
Namina Forna is the New York Times bestselling author of The Gilded Ones series. She has a MFA in film and TV production from USC School of Cinematic Arts and a BA from Spelman College. Namina now works as a screenwriter in LA and loves telling stories with fierce female leads. Visit her on twitter at @NaminaForna and on Instagram at @namina.forna.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-09-14/ya-adults-book-club-gilded-ones
Robertson Readers Book Club: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue at Robertson Branch Library, LAPL
Join us on the second Monday of every month for an engaging book discussion! New members are always welcome. If you would like to find out about this month’s book selection or need more information, please email us at rbrtsn@lapl.org. Books will be available for checkout at the Circulation Desk and during the meeting.
Sep. 14: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab.
Where: Robertson Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 1719 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035
Website: https://www.lapl.org/index%2Ephp/events/robertson-readers-book-club-0
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 pm – 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 14th
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!
Where: Back to the Grind, Riverside
Date: Monday the 7th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501
Website: Facebook Page
Guadelupe Rosales & East of the River: A Memoir of Los Angeles Girlhood at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
From acclaimed artist and Instagram star Guadalupe Rosales comes this moonlit memoir, a visually stunning, poignant account of growing up in ’90s Los Angeles that weaves stories with snapshots and social media moments.
Guadalupe Rosales chronicles her Boyle Heights childhood and adolescence in East LA, finding joy and danger from Commerce Center to Whittier Boulevard. Her frank, intimate prose captures the freedom and fear pulsing through that time and how sisterhood helped her survive it.
After losing loved ones to violence and struggling with drugs and depression, Rosales moved across the country to New York City. A stack of starshots from her youth became a lifeline and eventually inspired her to create two Instagram archives while she was away from home: Veteranas and Rucas celebrates ’90s LA women, while Map Pointz focuses on the party crew scene. Thanks to her, they’re thriving online communities.
Now this beloved artist—whose work hangs in the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and elsewhere—extends her project of collective memory by sharing her own story of adolescence in a treacherous time, finding herself as an artist far from home, coming to terms with her own queerness, and returning to her beloved Los Angeles transformed. Elegantly designed, the text is interspersed with photography, flyers, Rosales’s own artwork, and social media conversations.
An altar to a past era and a map to the future, this book is a reminder that memory, celebration, and community make us whole.
Guadalupe Rosales is a multidisciplinary artist and educator best known for her community-generated archival projects, “Veteranas and Rucas” and “Map Pointz,” found on social media. The archives explore ideas about how history and culture are framed and who does the framing. As a counterpoint, the archive celebrates, humanizes and reflects the positive and honest attributes of shared culture. In her studio practice, Guadalupe works with sculpture, photography, video, sound, drawing, and community based projects and collaborations, and the archive.
Where: Skylight
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-09-14/guadalupe-rosales-east-river-memoir-los-angeles-girlhood
Ticketed: Joe Rhode Presents Floating Mountains: The Art of Imagining the Impossible at Vroman’s Off-site at Castle Green – In-Person Event
Castle Green & Vroman’s present Disney Legend and Imagineer Joe Rhode to discuss his book Floating Mountains: The Art of Imagining the Impossible.
In this inspiring narrative, Imagineer, explorer, and Disney Legend Joe Rohde offers a master class in creativity on a world-spanning journey to discover the origins of personal creativity, the power and potential of enterprising groups, and the remarkable parallels between collaboration and exploring the real world.
With lessons drawn from his celebrated career and life experiences—leading projects such as Disney’s Animal Kingdom, ventures into space tourism, field expeditions to far-flung corners of the world, managing design teams, and working with corporate executives—Rohde dives deep into the nature, nurture, and practice of collaboration. He explains how to keep ideas to true to their origins while allowing for improvisation and accident to enhance, not derail, creative endeavors. And anecdotes from his storied career are accompanied by more than 50 behind-the-scenes photographs, sketches, and original artwork.
These are stories of inspiration and invention, challenge and transgression, success and failure, laced with humor, contemplation, poignancy, and even life-threatening danger. Whether your interest in creativity is personal, professional, or you just want to peek behind the curtain of a renowned creative mind, Rohde’s lessons provide a guide for connecting your creative pursuits with others and the larger world.
This is an offsite ticketed event at Castle Green with ticket options for two dates.
The program is the same both days.
– General Admission + 1 copy of Floating Mountains for September 14, 2026
– General Admission + 1 copy of Floating Mountains for September 15, 2026
Where: Vroman’s Off-site at Castle Green
Date: Monday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 99 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-14/joe-rohde
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 14th
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 15th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
La Crescenta Library Virtual Book Club: Keeper of Lost Children at La Crescenta Library, LACL – Online Event
Join us for a weekly virtual discussion of Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson.
Please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for your link to join the discussion on Zoom. For Adults.
This month we will discuss 1/5 of the book each week: See below for the breakdown of the weekly discussions.
September 15: Chapters 19 – 34: Pages 186 – 283
September 22: Chapters: 35 – 46: Pages 287 – 359
September 29: Chapters: 47 – Epilogue: Pages 360 to the end of the book
Ethel Gathers, the proud wife of an American Officer, is living in Occupied Germany in the 1950s. After discovering a local orphanage filled with the abandoned mixed-race children of German women and Black American GIs feels compelled to help find these children homes. Philadelphia born Ozzie Phillips volunteers for the recently desegregated army in 1948, eager to make his mark in the world. While serving in Manheim, Germany, he meets a local woman, Jelka, and the two embark of a relationship that will impact their lives forever. In 1965 Maryland, Sophia Clark is given an opportunity to attend a prestigious all-white boarding school and escape her heartless parents. While at the school, she discovers a secret that upends her world and sends her on a quest to unravel her own identity
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16886932
Boardwalk Bookworms: Safekeep at Venice Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us on the third Tuesday of each month for an engaging discussion of our current book selection. Copies are available for borrowing at the front desk.
September 15: Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Where: Venice Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: 501 S. Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/boardwalk-bookworms
Tuesday Afternoon Book Club: The Mountain Lion at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join the Tuesday Afternoon Book Club to discuss Jean Stafford’s The Mountain Lion and enjoy light refreshments. New members are always welcome. Books are available at the reference desk.
Where: Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 1 pm – 2 pm
Address: 2411 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/tuesday-afternoon-book-club-5
Author Talk: The Art of Fighting with Priya Parker via Virtual Program, LACL – Online Event
Join us for a paradigm-shifting, essential event as we sit down with world-renowned master facilitator Priya Parker to discuss her groundbreaking new book, The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict.
In The Art of Fighting, Priya Parker explains that we can’t form and grow effective relationships without a fight. She rejects the idea that conflict is abnormal or that good groups don’t fight. All groups change and evolve; indeed, it’s because people disagree that good groups flourish.
As she did in the now-classic The Art of Gathering, Parker draws on her far-reaching experience as a conflict facilitator, her own detailed research, and real-world examples to lay out the ways that people can identify disputes, determine how to address them, and what to do if they are insurmountable. Whether people disagree in the boardroom or the locker room, on a playground or in church, online or in person, conflict is a part of life, and understanding healthy conflict and how to harness its power is more important than ever. The Art of Fighting is a vital primer to help all of us understand how to do that.
Register today to learn how to turn everyday arguments into profound moments of connection and trust!
Where: Virtual Program, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 1 pm – 2 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16914387
Shelton Wilder, with Leah Smith, & Southern But Savage at Diesel, A Bookstore Off-site at Capitol X Irene Neuwirth at the Brentwood Country Mart – In-Person Event
Shelton Wilder, in conversation with Leah Smith, will discuss Southern But Savage.
Shelton Wilder filed for bankruptcy, got sober, cried on national television, and started a real estate career eight months pregnant with zero transactions and a 17-dollar ring light.
She is now one of the top luxury real estate agents in Los Angeles, with over a billion dollars in career sales.
Southern But Savage lives between those two sentences—it’s hilarious, heartfelt, and packed with hard-won wisdom that no real estate course or brokerage training will ever give you. Both Wilder’s story and a playbook for building a business you love in real estate or any field that rewards grit, personality and the willingness to start before you feel ready.
Shelton Wilder is the CEO of The Shelton Wilder Group, one of Los Angeles’s top luxury real estate teams. With over 1 billion dollars in career sales and 170 million dollars closed in 2025 alone, Wilder ranks among the Wall Street Journal’s top 250 agents nationwide and RealTrends’ Top 20 by Sales Volume in Los Angeles. Known for her laugh-out-loud honesty and her Positron philosophy of grounded, intentional optimism, Wilder has built a career on showing up fully and refusing to shrink.
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Clark and their two sons.
Southern But Savage is her first book.
Leah Smith is an author, marketing strategist, and real estate professional. She is the writer behind Shelton Wilder’s book Southern But Savage: Getting Real About Real Estate. Leah is also the author of two children’s books and the founder of Creative Cabana, a boutique marketing studio. She works with real estate clients from Los Angeles to Orange County and lives in Newport Beach with her husband, two daughters, and their pets, where she can usually be found with a book, a laptop, or a tennis racket nearby.
Where: Capitol X Irene Neuwirth at the Brentwood Country Mart
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 225 26th St. Ste. 38A, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-09-15/shelton-wilder-southern-savage
(Dis)ability Poetics: A Generative Writing Workshop (4 weeks) via The Poetry Lab – Online Event
Explore Disabled Poetics.
Write Into Your Own Truth.
This workshop with Sara Beth Brooks (she/they) invites you to read poems by disabled writers and craft your own writing in response. You’ll question how disability is shaped by culture, how state violence punishes disabled bodies, and what a liberated disabled future might look like. Everyone is welcome regardless of (dis)ability.
Across guided 2-hour sessions, you will:
Read poetry by disabled poets exploring embodiment, illness, survival, identity, and resistance
Study a range of voices including torrin a. greathouse, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Raymond Antrobus, Liv Mammone, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, and more.
Write into your own relationship with disability through intentional, supported prompts
Consider big questions:
Who gets to be disabled?
Who is worthy of care?
What does a disabled future look like?
This workshop blends poetry, inquiry, and community. You’ll generate new work, expand your understanding, and explore the emotional and political dimensions of disability poetics.
Sara Beth Brooks (she/they) is a queer and disabled self-taught poet and teaching artist. Their work has appeared in Squawk Back, Eunoia Review, Rogue Agent, Tiny Spoon Literary Magazine, and more. They have been supported by Seventh Wave, The Poetry Society of New York, and The Heart of It.
Sara Beth brings lived experience, artistic rigor, and a strong commitment to disability justice to every workshop they teach.
See site for costs and details.
Where: The Poetry Lab
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://www.thepoetrylab.com/courses/disability-poetics
Adult Book Club: Trejo: my life of crime and redemption and Hollywood at Baldwin Park Library, LACL- In-Person Event
Join the Adult Book Club for a discussion of our latest selection Trejo: my life of crime, redemption, and Hollywood by Danny Trejo. For Adults.
The inspirational journey of Danny Trejo’s journey from crime, prison, addiction, and loss to fame as Hollywood’s favorite bad guy with a heart of gold. He reveals how he managed the horrors of prison, rebuilt himself after finding sobriety and spirituality, and draws inspiration from the adrenaline-fueled heists of his past.
If you would like a copy of the book, please drop by Baldwin Park Library to pick up a copy or check the catalog for a digital copy.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.
Where: Baldwin Park Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 4181 Baldwin Park Blvd., Baldwin Park, CA 91706
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17090939
Naughty Novel Society Romance eBooks Club: Priest at Lawndale Library, LAPL
Explore the Romance genre and learn about all the digital resources the library has to offer with this unique book club. We will be primarily utilizing the free digital resources Libby and Hoopla with limited hard copies available. For ages 18+.
September’s Pick: Priest by Sierra Simone. Available on Libby and Hoopla in eAudiobook and eBook format. Limited copies available at the library.
Refreshments will be served.
Where: Lawndale Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 14615 Burin Ave., Lawndale, CA 90260
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17035339
Book Club: Rain of Gold at Pico Rivera Library, LACL – In-Person Event
For Hispanic Heritage Month, the Pico Rivera Library Book Club will be discussing Victor Villaseñor’s bestselling book, Rain of Gold. For adults.
This book chronicles the true-life saga of his parents’ families, tracing their journeys from the Mexican Revolution to the American Southwest, focusing on themes of love, family, destiny, and the immigrant experience in the United States.
Where: Pico Rivera Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 9001 Mines Ave., Pico Rivera, CA 90660
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17035172
Classic Detectives Book Club: Cats Don’t Need Coffins at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us as we discuss Cats Don’t Need Coffins (The Rachel Murdock Mysteries) by Dolores Hitchens.
Elderly cat fancier Rachel Murdock, “an appealing Jessica Fletcher antecedent” (Publishers Weekly), tackles a puzzling case in this cozy mystery from a master of domestic suspense.
When sisters Rachel and Jennifer Murdock receive a letter from Miriam Hamilton, the daughter of the man who, decades earlier, swindled their father, inviting them to her luxurious home and offering financial amends, the sisters accept and head off with their beloved cat, Samantha, in tow. Shortly after they arrive, they meet their host—or rather, her body. Miriam has been murdered in her bed, and two things become clear: their invitation came with strings attached, and around the many corners of Miriam’s capacious home, strange things are afoot.
There is no shortage of possible motives for Miriam’s murder, given her ruthless business practices and greedy nature. The appearance and subsequent disappearance of a bloodstained doll, which Miriam’s two grown stepchildren from previous marriages seem to know more about than they want to let on, raises Rachel’s suspicion, but the involvement of the local sheriff investigating the case is what ultimately throws Rachel for a loop. No matter—together with the reluctant Jennifer and curious kitty Samanatha, amateur sleuth Rachel is going to make sense of this befuddling case, even if things aren’t what they seem.
A delightful Golden Age cozy from a master of mid-century domestic suspense, Cats Don’t Need Coffins engages playfully with genre conventions to entertaining and often humorous effect. It is the seventh novel in Hitchens’ long-running Rachel Murdock series (originally published under the name D.B. Olsen), which can be read in any order.
Dolores Hitchens (1907–1973) was a highly prolific mystery author who wrote under multiple pseudonyms and in a range of styles. A large number of her books were published under the D. B. Olsen moniker (under which her “Cat” series was originally published), but she is perhaps best remembered today for her later novel, Fool’s Gold, published under her own name, which was adapted as Bande à part by Jean-Luc Godard.
Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 80 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-09-15/classic-detectives-book-club-cats-dont-need-coffins
Emerson Garden Book Club: Twist: A Novel at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Join us to discuss Twist: A Novel by Colm McCann.
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.
Fennell’s journey brings him to the west coast of Africa, where he uncovers a story about the raw human labor behind the dazzling veneer of the technological world. He meets a fellow Irishman, John Conway, the chief of mission on a cable repair ship. The mysterious Conway is a skilled engineer and a freediver capable of reaching extraordinary depths. He is also in love with a South African actress, Zanele, who must leave to go on her own literary adventure to London.
When the ship is sent up the coast to repair a series of major underwater breaks, both men learn that the very cables they seek to fix carry the news that may cause their lives to unravel. At sea, they are forced to confront the most elemental questions of life, love, absence, belonging, and the perils of our severed connections. Can we, in our fractured world, reweave ourselves out of the thin, broken threads of our pasts? Can the ruptured things awaken us from our despair?
Resoundingly simple and turbulent at the same time, Twist is a meditation on the nature of narrative and truth from one of the great storytellers of our times.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: Instagram Page
Book Club Tuesdays: The Glass Hotel at Hollydale Library LACL – In-Person Event
Join us this month for a facilitated discussion of The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel. Copies of the current title are available to check-out at the customer service desk while supplies last. For Adults.
Where: Hollydale Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 12000 Garfield Ave., South Gate, CA 90280
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17172459
The 3rd Tuesday Book Club: Night Watch at Playa Vista Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for a lively discussion of Night Watch by Jayne Anne Phillips. All are welcome!
Where: Playa Vista Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 6400 Play Vista Dr., Los Angeles, 90094
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/3rd-tuesday-book-club-2
Sol Smith, & The ADHDer’s Guide to Self-Discovery at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Sol Smith will present and discuss The ADHDer’s Guide to Self-Discovery: Thriving with Your High Energy.
From the author of the bestselling Autistic’s Guide to Self-Discovery comes a neuro-affirming guide for those living with or only now recognizing their ADHD, helping them to acknowledge their strengths, embrace their identity, and define success on their own terms.
Millions of adults with ADHD have spent their lives feeling scattered, inconsistent, or “not disciplined enough.” This isn’t because they lack ability or willpower, but because they live in systems that were not designed for the way their brains work. In The ADHDer’s Guide to Self-Discovery, neurodivergent life coach Sol Smith outlines the latest science and research to offer an empathetic and validating exploration of ADHD as a meaningful way of experiencing the world rather than a deficit to overcome.
By reframing ADHD not as a disorder to be managed or optimized away but as a nervous system fundamentally mismatched with modern systems of work, education, and productivity, Smith speaks to adult ADHDers who are exhausted by self-improvement narratives and productivity culture. He helps readers understand why traditional approaches have failed them and how to stop fighting themselves. Instead of offering hacks or routines, the book focuses on identity, helping readers reclaim agency without shame and build lives that work with their brains instead of against them.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St. Ste. 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Original Book Club: Sunburn at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Our longest running book club! We read mostly contemporary fiction with the occasional non-fic thrown in. To join our mailing list, please email events@villagewell.com.
This September’s pick is Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth.
For fans of Normal People, a queer, coming-of-age debut of impossible first love, first loss, and first heartbreak…
It’s the early 1990’s in the small town of Crossmore, Ireland, and Lucy knows what she’s expected to do. Fall in love with the son of the farmer next door, marry him, pray for children, and never, under any circumstances reveal the truth–that she doesn’t think marriage or motherhood or staying in Crossmore is for her. That the reason she knows this, is because of her close friend, Susannah.
For years, Lucy buries her obsession, until one summer, right before graduation, when her friendship with Susannah escalates. Now, Lucy will do anything to keep their secret safe. Their relationship is both the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to her–Lucy loves Susannah, but every day, it feels like Crossmore, Lucy’s mother, and their social mores are closing in. And when Susannah decides she no longer wants to hide, Lucy must make a devastating choice.
Tender and heartbreaking, Sunburn portrays the realities of growing up in a small rural town–from the long, hot summers, to the pressures of a conservative, traditional community where everyone knows each other’s business. It’ll leave you aching for your own first love.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Rachel Brodsky, with Mikael Wood, & Lessons and Lace at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Rachel Brodsky, in conversation with Mikael Wood, will discuss Lessons and Lace: Everything I Know about Dreams Heartbreak, and Magic I Learned from Stevie Nicks.
Written by music journalist Rachel Brodsky and illustrated with gorgeous full-color line drawings, Lessons & Lace draws on Stevie’s remarkable story and notable quotes to inspire life-changing lessons, delivered with a unique style of truth-telling that’s both down to earth and filled with other-worldly vision.
Today, Stevie Nicks is rock’s own Patron Saint of Lessons Learned, but in order to reach this point she had to endure a world that underestimated, misunderstood, dismissed, and mocked her. She battled sexist narratives, helped popularize a struggling mid-level rock band, became a successful solo act, and beat addiction, all while staying connected to her creativity, authenticity, and mysticism. Now, she is a universally beloved icon and mentor, but she didn’t get here without a lot of hard looks in the mirror.
Including years’ worth of archival interviews and insights from people in Stevie’s world, this is a tribute to a woman, style icon, prolific writer, and unapologetic romantic who chases happiness and values the space to honestly and authentically be herself. Through Stevie’s life and lessons, you’ll feel encouraged to embrace your own wild (and perhaps witchy) heart.
Mikael Wood is pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, CA 90069
North Figueroa Book Club: The Wall at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss The Wall by author Marlon Haushofer.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Nicole Levin, with Sierra Katow, & Diary of a Mad Girl at Skylight Books – In-Person Event
Nicole Levin, in conversation with Sierra Katow, will discuss Diary of a Mad Girl: Me vs. The Oil Industry vs. My Nonprofit Job.
Joelle, a thirty-something climate organizer living in Los Angeles, thinks she has it all: a hot musician boyfriend, a nonprofit job fighting the oil industry, and a parasocial relationship with her Adeline, an online yoga instructor. But something is off… the collapse of society, maybe? Yes, that. Through illustrated diary entries, poetry, and psilocybin-induced trips to parallel universes, Joelle explores what it means to fight for climate justice when all signs point to dying alone.
Nicole Levin is an artist and environmental organizer living in Los Feliz. Raised in Fairfield, California, Levin studied environmental science at Harvard, and her work reflects contemporary social anxieties in a conscious, poignant voice—with a hearty portion of Jewish humor.
Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Harvard Crimson, and she has written for The Harvard Lampoon as well as the television series Lethal Weapon. Professionally, Levin previously worked at Sierra Club helping lead campaigns to phase out urban oil drilling in Los Angeles.
Most recently, she has devoted her time to completing an all-white 1,000-piece puzzle. She lives in Southern California with the love of her life, Nina.
Sierra Katow is an LA-born, raised, and based stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. Her debut comedy special, Funt, is currently streaming on Amazon Prime, and her acting credits include HBO Max’s The Sex Lives of College Girls and Netflix’s The G Word with Adam Conover. She currently writes for the new CBS sitcom Eternally Yours and has previously written for Beavis and Butt-Head, Exploding Kittens, and more.
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Kaitlin Reilly, with Monica Surivage, & Look What You Did at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Kaitlin Reilly, in conversation with Monica Surivage, will discuss Look What You Did.
After the tragic death of golden boy Will Ashford, everyone in town is in mourning. Or almost everyone. Seventeen-year-old Mackenzie couldn’t be more relieved. Because she knows Will’s veneer of perfection hid something dark and dangerous. It was a truth she learned one night at the Ashford house and swore never to tell.
But her plan is threatened when she starts receiving texts from an unknown number. Someone knows the secret Mackenzie has tried so hard to hide—and they are determined to reveal it.
When Mackenzie’s former best friend is found dead, she is convinced the anonymous texter is connected to her murder, and she will stop at nothing to find them. But doing so will mean confronting the trauma she’s fought so hard to suppress and exposing the dark secrets her town has tried to keep buried—or risk being the next girl dead.
Kaitlin Reilly is an author, screenwriter and journalist living in Los Angeles.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-15/kaitlin-reilly
Tuesday Night Café: The Annual LGBTQ+ Show at Tuesday Night Project – In-Person Event
EVERY YEAR WE HAVE AN LGBTQ+ NIGHT AND THIS IS IT. A lot of our shows are accidentally super queer, this one is intentionally super queer. Come enjoy some art, meet some people, get your leather boots shined, eat some ube pastries, etc. etc.
@audreykuo Audrey Kuo (@audreykuo) is an interdisciplinary artist, abolitionist, coach, and mischief enthusiast working toward collective liberation. Audrey supports individuals and communities in connecting with their values and purpose, through the lenses of disability justice, transformative justice, healing and somatics, and the power of storytelling. Their work is shaped by their identity as a disabled trans person in the Taiwanese, Chinese, and queer diasporas.
As an abolitionist with big theater kid energy, Audrey believes that the work of liberation asks us not just to dismantle systems of oppression, but to offer compelling, joyful, just, and tangible alternatives. They lean on play, improv, and time travel as exploratory spaces to imagine beyond our current realities and engage in collective dreaming. Audrey resides on unceded Tongva lands and shares their home with a 10-year-old sourdough starter, Fezzik, and two cats, Jean Grey, and Dr. Hank McCoy.
Church Lieu is a Los Angeles-based writer, performing artist, and experience designer. Lieu began their creative journey as a child actor. They are best known for voicing Lou in the animated series Lou and Lou: Safety Patrol (2006) and appearing in Special Agent Oso (2009). As a writer and poet, they perform at community open mics and artistic events like LA’s Tuesday Night Café.
Jennifer Ann Arismendy (@jenniferannmusic) is a queer/pan/gender fluid musician. Makin mistakes on piano since the 1990s.
Kenton Chen (@itskenton) is a singer, songwriter, and actor based in Los Angeles. He is best known for his roles in NBC’s Perfect Harmony and HBO’s Room 104.
puja singh aka puja (@mxpujasingh) (they/he) is a queer nonbinary indie alt pop artist (singer, songwriter, producer, multi-instrumentalist) based in Los Angeles, ca. pulling from a wide range of influences from pop, house, techno and alternative to trip hop, Indian classical, hyperpop, folk and the list goes on. they make music about exploring nature, getting to know yourself, healing, the spirit world, death and the interconnectedness of everything.
DJ
@initial_rhi
VENDORS
@lionleatherandboots
@ubeforubae
Where: Union Center for the Arts
Date: Tuesday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10:30 pm
Address: 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012
Website: Instagram Page
Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert & Guest Moncho Alvarado, Plus Open Reading – Online Zoom Event
Each Tuesday The Virtual Cobalt Poets series includes an open reading plus a featured reader. Sign up for the open reading when you join with Zoom. Hosted by poet Rick Lupert.
Cobalt publishes a digital broadside for their featured reader which you can download as a PDF. They hope you’ll consider tipping via PayPal or Venmo during the reading to compensate the featured poet for their reading.
Moncho Alvarado is a sister in residence in air, a Cihuayollotl trans Xicanx poet, translator, visual artist, and educator. She is the author of Greyhound Americans (Saturnalia Books 2022), which was the winner of the 2020 Saturnalia Book Prize, selected by Diane Seuss.
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday, the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: Cobalt 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 16th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Book Club: We Do Not Part at Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join us for a lively discussion of the 2025 novel We Do Not Part by Han Kang.
If you are unable to attend in person, please email grnhls@lapl.org for a Zoom invite.
Where: Granada Hills Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 1:30 pm – 3 pm
Address: 10640 Petit Ave., Granada Hills, CA 91344
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/book-club-we-do-not-part
Book Club for Adults: The Island of Doctor Moreau at San Gabriel Library LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for book club as we discuss The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells. Copies of this title are available at the Information Desk. Program refreshments graciously provided by the Friends of the San Gabriel Library. For Adults – Ages 18+.
In one of H. G. Wells’ most celebrated works, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick finds himself alone on an island with the mad scientist Doctor Moreau. When he hears strange cries echoing through the forest, he discovers that the island is inhabited by bizarre human-hybrid creatures. Prendick must escape the island before he becomes the scientist’s next victim.
Where: San Gabriel Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 500 S. Del Mar Ave., San Gabriel, CA 91776
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16955625
Good Trouble Reading Group: Selections From Letter to a Stranger at Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
For our next Good Trouble Reading Group, we’ll be discussing a selection of essays from Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, edited by Colleen Kinder.
Essayist and photographer Colleen Kinder sent an email to writers everywhere with a writing prompt: write a letter to someone from a past encounter who still haunts you, someone you never got to know. The responses poured in, from writers including Elizabeth Kolbert, Pico Iyer, Lauren Groff, Gregory Pardlo, Faith Adiele, Maggie Shipstead, Lia Purpura, and many others, all written in the second person to a “you” who had an impact or made an impression on their lives. Organized by topics like Symmetry, Mystery, Gratitude, Wonder, Remorse and Farewell, the result is this unique and poignant collection. There is a letter to a first responder after a storm, a letter to a gambler met while on jury duty, letters to a waiter in Istanbul, a taxi driver in Paris, and dozens of others, illustrating how something as simple as a stranger’s glance, shared smile, or a question posed can change one’s life.
Email eden@lapl.org to read the selection online and for the Zoom link to attend.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/good-trouble-reading-group-selections-letter-stranger
Book Club for Adults: On a Night of a Thousand Stars at San Fernando Library, LACL – In-Person Event
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we’re reading On a Night of a Thousand Stars by Andrea Yaryura Clark. Copies of the current title are available at the Information Desk. New members are always welcome! For adults
New York, 1998. Santiago Larrea, a wealthy Argentine diplomat, is holding court alongside his wife, Lila, and their daughter, Paloma, at their annual summer polo match. All seems perfect in the Larreas’ world—until an unexpected party guest shakes his usually unflappable demeanor. The woman’s cryptic comments spark Paloma’s curiosity about her father’s past. When the family travels to Buenos Aires for Santiago’s UN ambassadorial appointment, Paloma is determined to learn more about his life in the years leading up to the military dictatorship of 1976. With the help of a local university student, Franco Bonetti, an activist member of H.I.J.O.S.—a group whose members are the children of the desaparecidos, or the “disappeared,” men and women who were forcibly disappeared by the state during Argentina’s “Dirty War”—Paloma unleashes a chain of events that not only leads her to question her family and her identity, but also puts her life in danger.
Where: San Fernando Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 217 N. Maclay Ave., San Fernando, CA 91340
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17014795
Writers’ Workshop: How to Start Writing Your Book at Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Learn to overcome writer’s block, structure your outline, and start writing your next story with author, writing coach, and editor Jasmyne Boswell. For adults.
Attendance is limited and advance registration is required.
Where: Culver City Julian Dixon Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 4975 Overland Ave., Culver City, CA 90230
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16967686
Sci Fi Story Club: Mieville + Guha via Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – Online Zoom Event
Join us on Zoom for the next gathering of the Sci Fi Story Club. We’ll be discussing two stories about space elevators: “The Rope Is The World” by China Mieville and “Elevator Era” by Soham Guta.
Once purely speculative but now inching closer to reality, space elevators may someday be a way of traveling to outer space without the use of rockets. One end of a massive cable would be tethered to earth, the other would be attached to an orbital counterweight; the centrifugal force of earth’s spin would keep it extended and stationary, so that elevators could travel up and down the cable to a space station at the top. In “The Rope is the World” China Mieville imagines a future in which earth’s equator is studded with corporate-branded spokes reaching out to interconnected space stations – but life on the rope grows bleak as they fall into disrepair and the power goes out. In Soham Guha’s “Elevator Era”, the trillionaire builder of India’s space elevators invites two of the last working terracotta artists, a father and son, up to his opulent offworld city to decorate a room with tiles. They soar up the massive cable high above an earth ruined by environmental devastation and squalor, where their encounter with their benefactor will lead to an unexpected reckoning over inequality and injustice.
Email eden@lapl.org for the reading selection and for the Zoom link to attend.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/sci-fi-story-club-mieville-guha
Creative Writing Workshop at Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Explore creative writing in a fun, supportive environment! Each session will include some combination of writing exercises, readings, discussion, and opportunities for sharing and feedback. Suggested homework will also be provided to keep you writing between sessions.
Writers are welcome to bring up to 500 words (about 2 typed, double-spaced pages) to read aloud each session. Open to adults and teens ages 16+.
Email katie.wright@lapl.org with any questions.
Where: Sherman Oaks Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 14245 Moorpark St., Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/creative-writing-workshop-9
Los Feliz Writers: Shut Up and Write in Los Feliz at Bar Alcove & Bakery – 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 pm – 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: Bar Alcove & Bakery
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 6:45 pm – 8 pm
Address: 929 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: Instagram Page
Ticketed Event: Josh Silver, with Gary Janetti, & Fruit Fly at Book Soup Off-site at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles – In-Person Event
Josh Silver, in conversation with Gary Janetti, will discuss Fruit Fly.
“A seething, hilarious, and wildly shrewd takedown of modern identity culture.”
—Caro Claire Burke, author of Yesteryear
Go gay. Go sad. Go dark.
A washed-up author will stop at nothing to claw her way back to relevancy—even if it means appropriating a young gay man’s tragic story.
Mallory Maddox is buried under seven years of writer’s block. With her status as a literary sensation fizzling, she’ll do anything she can to resurrect her career. Inspiration needs to strike—and fast.
Enter Leo. He’s a struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival. He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.
Mallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. The world needs Leo’s story right now, and Mallory believes she deserves to tell it. Really, it’s her story—she’s the one who wrote it, after all. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide how far she will go to pen the perfect story.
A razor-sharp satirical thriller, Fruit Fly will appeal to fans of R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface and Yomi Adegoke’s The List.
Josh Silver trained as an actor at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and went on to perform in the West End and on Broadway. After deciding to change careers, Josh worked with teenagers as a mental health nurse. He is the critically acclaimed author of YA titles Happy Head, Dead Happy, and Erase Me, which recently won the 2026 YA Book Prize. Josh’s much anticipated adult debut Fruit Fly was released on August 4, 2026 in the U.S. and Canada.
Gary Janetti is the bestselling author of We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay, Start Without Me, and Do You Mind If I Cancel? and writer and producer of Family Guy, Will & Grace, Vicious, and The Prince. He lives in New York and Los Angeles.
This is a ticketed event through Eventbrite and will take place at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, located at 540 S. Commonwealth Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90020
Tickets are only available through Book Soup’s Eventbrite page. If you buy a ticket from a third party, it is not a valid ticket.
Your ticket includes a copy of Fruit Fly, to be handed out at check-in. A public book signing will follow the conversation.
Check-in begins at 6 pm and the show begins promptly at 7 pm.
Where: First Congregational Church of Los Angeles
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 540 S. Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90020
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-09-16/ticketed-event-josh-silver
The Romance Supper Club: Bonfire & Bliss Bookstore by Britanee Nicole at The Fleuria’s Romance Supper Club – In-Person Event
Welcome to a brand new dinner book club hosted by The Flueria!
Our September pick is Bonfire & Bliss Bookstore by Britanee Nicole. Join us for dinner among friends even if you don’t end up finishing the book!
Come join us for dinner and a yap sesh! Our book pick this month is the perfect read to kick off the -ber months, it’s cozy and spicy and the fmc owns a bookshop. Honestly what more could you want?
Get tickets at the link in our bio 💕
Where: The Fleuria
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 23437 S. Western Ave., Torrance, CA
Website: Instagram Page
Book Launch: Antonia Jade King & Beyoncé: One of One at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Join us for the launch of Antonia Jade King’s Beyoncé— One of One!
Reserve your spot at website!
A poet, scholar, and dedicated member of the BeyHive, Antonia King offers a distinct blend of cultural theory and personal insights to write an accessible analysis of Beyoncé’s influence separated into 4 distinct acts:
Beyoncé’s rise to fame
How she redefined Blackness in pop culture
The power of her music
Her life as a performer
With a deep appreciation for Beyoncé’s oeuvre and a commitment to highlighting the power of Black, Brown, and queer voices, King brings a unique perspective to this examination of Beyoncé’s impact and growing legacy.
Guests are invited to dress according to their favorite Beyoncé era and bring pen and paper to write a letter of affirmation to yourself, or Beyoncé inspired by the artist’s lyrics.
This is not a Beyoncé biography. This is a love letter to a musician whose songs star in our first dances, our workout playlists, and our justice movements. A celebration of a woman who, in a pop world so often seen as shallow, brings dimension through themes of confidence, feminism, Blackness, and queerness. Beyoncé—One of One urges readers to move beyond Beyoncé’s iconic image to recognize the far-reaching cultural and societal impact of her artistry.
Antonia Jade King is a dedicated member of Beyoncé’s BeyHive and a doctoral candidate in the humanities department at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a published poet with Bad Betty Press. Her PhD research focuses on the cultural and historical significance of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Her work has been praised for its depth of analysis and its ability to shed new light on well-known cultural artefacts. Antonia also teaches on Martin Luther King Jr, the Civil Rights Movement, and Malcolm X at Royal Holloway University of London.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, C A 90042
Claire Dougherty, with Sofia Majstorovic and Mary Clark, & Guilt, Fear & Superstition at Poetic Research Bureau – In=Person Event
Claire Dougherty, with additional readings by Sofia Majstorovic and Mary Clark, will present the launch of Guilt, Fear, & Superstition, on Food presss.
Part daybook, part grimoire, Claire Dougherty’s debut Guilt, Fear, and Superstition is a mystifying blend of daily practice with a poetics on the edge of human thought. These poems witness a supremely lucid daily consciousness, and are equally entranced with weaving through: the art economy, human blood, poet as practitioner, family life, a mysterious pair of missing sandals, and of course the sunny gates of California. Through a series of looping sonnets, sequences, and poems of true sustain, Dougherty offers us a brilliant collection of “Just black and white / Poems without nuance about what is going on / And what I am thinking about each day.”
Claire Dougherty’s chapbook Sonnets From Lent was published by Copenhagen in 2025. Her debut poetry collection, Guilt, Fear, and Superstition will be published by Food, and The Claire Bitch Project, a series of booklets, will be published by Theaphora. She edits RECLINER. She is from Stockton, California and is based in Los Angeles.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2220 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90057
Website: Event Page
Joshua Frank, with Sonali Kolhatkar, & Bad Energy at Skylight – In-Person Event
Joshua Frank, in conversation with Sonali Kolhatkar, will discuss Bad Energy: The AI Hucksters, Rogue Lithium Extractors, and Wind Industrialists Who Are Selling Off Our Future.
Green energy and renewables are heralded as the only way to mitigate our ever-worsening ecological crisis. But that’s not the whole story.
In Bad Energy, award-winning journalist Joshua Frank argues that the green energy transition is driven not by an effort to save the planet but by profit incentives. We must stop burning fossil fuels if we have any hope of saving the planet, but the significant, haphazard expansion of green energy in recent years—from large solar projects to wind energy to mining for renewables—has destroyed communities and ecosystems. And worse, renewables simply cannot match our ever-expanding demand for energy, driven in no small part by the rapid proliferation of data centers in the world’s wealthiest nations.
Taking readers from copper mines in Montana and Bolivia to wind farms in Wyoming to the geopolitical battle over deep-sea mining in the South Pacific, Poeti offers a stark assessment of the costs of the rush for renewables and the demand for endless growth. As Frank makes clear, we cannot consume our way out of climate chaos. What we need instead is rejection of the capitalist interests driving planetary collapse and a radical vision for a truly sustainable future.
Joshua Frank is an award-winning California-based journalist and coeditor of the political magazine CounterPunch. He is the author of Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America and a coauthor of several books, including The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. His work regularly appears in TomDispatch, The Nation, Earth Island Journal, and other outlets.
Sonali Kolhatkar is an award-winning multimedia journalist and host of Rising Up With Sonali, a weekly television and radio program that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica Radio stations and affiliates around the United States. She is the author of the new book, Breaking Ice: Community Defense Against State Terror & MAGA Fascisms (Seven Stories Press).
Where: Skylight Books
Date: Wednesday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-09-16/joshua-frank-w-sonali-kolhatkar-bad-energy
Anansi Writers Workshop at The World Stage – In-Person Event
The Anansi Writers Workshop was founded in 1990 by Kamau Daáood, Akilah Oliver, Nafis Nabawi and Anthony Lyons. In 1993, Michael Datcher initiated the development of a three-part format for the workshop. Our tradition of a community workshop began in the late 1960s at the Watts Writers’ Workshop, where World Stage co-founder Kamau Daáood started his writing career. Hosted by Jessica Gallion aka “Yellawoman.”
- 7:30 pm – 8:30 pm — Formal workshop;
- 8:30 pm – 9:00 pm — TBA.
- 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 16th
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: Freestyle – While You Wait
Where: Art Parlor
Date: Wednesday the 16th
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 16th
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 Tomi Simmons at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Host Ben Trigg guest poet Tomi Simmons to share her work
Tomi Simmons is a Las Vegas-born spoken word artist and community builder whose work transforms poetry into a vessel for healing, hope, and human connection. Rooted in the vibrant downtown Las Vegas poetry scene, she has cultivated a voice that invites audiences into spaces of vulnerability, resilience, and restoration. Now based in Orange County, California, she is the founder of the OC Poetry Slam, where she continues to foster a thriving creative community and champion the power of spoken word to inspire change.
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday, the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/1685986602680495
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: Thursday the 17th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Mystery Book Discussion: Ash as Dark as Night at Palms-Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for an engaging discussion about whodunnits, thrillers, and crime fiction. We meet on the third Thursday of the month at 1:30 p.m. Copies are available at the reference desk and as e-books.
Participants will discuss Ash as Dark as Night by Gary Phillips.
Where: Palms – Rancho Park Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: 2920 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/mystery-book-discussion-2
Book Club for Adults: The House on Mango Street at Chet Holifield Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Whether you like historical fiction, sci-fi, romance, or memoirs, this book club reads it all. This month, join us for a discussion of The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros. Pick up a copy at the information desk today! For adults
Where: Chet Holifield Library, LACL
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1060 S Greenwood Ave, Montebello, CA 90640
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17207243
Book Launch: Yotam Ben Horin & Haifa City Hardcore at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Join us for the launch of Yotam Ben Horin’s Haifa City Hardcore, with moderator Marko DeSantis.
Reserve your spot at website!
Haifa City Hardcore is a coming-of-age memoir forged in distortion, displacement, and defiance.
Growing up between Brooklyn and Haifa, Yotam Ben Horin never quite belonged. Too American for Israel, too Israeli for America, too sensitive for the world he inherited, he found his language not in classrooms or synagogues but in the raw urgency of punk and hardcore music. From his first exposure to Nirvana and the Pixies to the DIY underground of 1990s Haifa, music became both refuge and weapon-a way to survive grief, alienation, and the quiet violence of growing up amid cultural fracture.
Set against the backdrop of Israel’s overlooked punk scene, Haifa City Hardcore chronicles the birth of bands, friendships, betrayals, and first shows played to half-empty rooms and hostile crowds. It is the story of a kid discovering straight edge, writing songs instead of explanations, and learning-slowly, painfully-how to stand onstage and exist without apology. As bands form and dissolve, and as the pull toward escape grows stronger, Ben Horin captures the fragile moment when adolescence hardens into identity.
At once intimate and kinetic, Haifa City Hardcore is not just a music memoir but a meditation on becoming: how art saves us, how scenes shape us, and how a voice-once found-refuses to stay silent.
Yotam Ben Horin is a musician, songwriter, and writer best known as the longtime frontman of the influential punk band Useless ID. Born in Israel and raised between Haifa and the United States, he came of age in the 1990s hardcore punk underground, where DIY ethics, touring, and community shaped both his voice and worldview. Over the past three decades, he has released numerous records, toured internationally, and collaborated with artists across the global punk scene. Haifa City Hardcore is his first book. He currently lives between Israel, Italy, and the United States.
Marko DeSantis is a music professional best known as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the band Sugarcult, with whom he toured worldwide and sold over a million records since launching out of Santa Barbara, CA in 2001. Prior to Sugarcult, Marko played in alternative/pop punk bands such as The Ataris, Swingin Utters and Nerf Herder. Additionally, Marko composes music for film/TV, does regular DJ gigs & has two ongoing side-project bands: Bad Astronaut, and The Playing Favorites.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Adaptation Book Club: Blackklansman (2018), Film Screening at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Film: BlackKklansman (2018), dir. Spike Lee. Have Ron Stallworth’s book Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime read before this film screening. The discussion on the book and the film will be the week after on September 24th at 6:00 pm!
The extraordinary true story and basis for the Academy Award winning film BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver.
When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community.
A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory.
Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the “white” Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself.
Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.
Ron Stallworth is a highly decorated, law enforcement veteran, who worked undercover narcotics, vice, criminal intelligence and organized crime beats in four states. As the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, Ron overcame fierce racial hostility to achieve a long and distinguished career in law enforcement. He is the author of the memoir Black Klansman.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Girls Write Night at Good Girl Books – In-Person Event
Join us for a guided writing workshop led by Robin Finn!
This is a gathering where women come together to write, connect, and get inspired.
Link in bio to purchase your ticket!
Where: Good Girl Books
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 12444 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90066
Website: Instagram Page
Bel Canto Book Club: The Consequences at Bel Canto Books, Retro Row – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss The Consequences: Stories, by author Manuel Muñoz, from Graywolf Press, that explores the lives of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers in California’s Central Valley.
Where: Bel Canto Books, Retro Row
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 2106 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://belcantobooks.net/events
Dr. Lauren Hartman and Dr. Eve Glazier Present: Freeing Children and Young Adults from Shame at Diesel A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Dr. Lauren Hartman and Dr. Eve Glazier will discuss and sign Freeing Children and Young Adults from Shame, Scales, and Stigma: A Practical Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Clinicians.
Join adolescent medicine specialist Dr. Lauren Hartman and Dr. Eve Glazier, internist and President of the UCLA Faculty Practice Group, for a thoughtful conversation on a compassionate, evidence-based approach to weight and wellness.
Freeing Children and Young Adults from Shame, Scales, and Stigma gives parents, educators, and clinicians exactly what they need: real conversations, proven scripts, and actionable strategies for navigating sensitive discussions about bodies, food, and health, all grounded in medical expertise. Rooted in both scientific research and real-world clinical practice, the book is designed to be accessible and efficient. Clearly organized sections, concise summaries, and ready-to-use resources make it easy to find guidance for your specific context, whether you’re a parent at the dinner table, a teacher in the classroom, or a clinician in the exam room. It also offers concrete strategies for repair when conversations haven’t gone as intended. This book will leave you feeling confident and prepared to have these sensitive conversations in a way that prioritizes health without perpetuating stigma or harm.
Dr. Lauren Hartman is a double board-certified pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist with nearly 20 years of experience, specifically in the field of eating disorders. She has held numerous leadership positions at the local and national level. She currently serves on the Eating Disorder Committee for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine (SAHM) and maintains a private practice, Aspen Grove Adolescent & Young Adult Medicine, in Berkeley, CA.
Dr. Eve Glazier serves as the President of the UCLA Health Faculty Practice Group, a role she has held since August 2017. Prior to serving as FPG President, she was the Medical Director for the UCLA Health Entertainment Industry Medical Group. She is a clinical professor for the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a graduate of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. In addition to her leadership roles, she is the current host of UCLA Health’s Medically Speaking podcast. Links for the Medically Speaking podcast can be found below.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite 33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Harbor Lights Poetry Night with Keayva Mitchell at Arena Theatre, Harbor College – In-Person Event
This is your chance to write and share the magic of your voice, captivate an audience, and become part of the poet community. Attendees will be given a poetry book.
Keayva Mitchell (they/she) is a Black queer CODA living in Long Beach, CA. Their work appears in Wherewithal Lit, and they have been featured n the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Currently an MFA candidate in poetry at UC Irvine, you can find them talking with their hands and doing everything everywhere.
Where: Arena Theatre, TDS 107
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: Arena Theatre, TDS 107, Harbor College
Website: Event Page
Ticketed Event: Jeff Garlin & Best Seat in the House at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Actor Jeff Garlin will sign his memoir Best Seat in the House: Moments No One Asked Me to Capture,,,But I Did It Anyway.
An inside look at comedy’s biggest stars through candid never-before-seen photographs with hilarious personal stories that capture the heart of life on and offstage.
Beloved for his iconic roles including Jeff Greene on HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm and Murray Goldberg on ABC’s The Goldbergs and for his decades on the stand-up stage, Garlin is known for his humor, heart, and magnetic presence. Less known is his passion for photography and his gift for capturing the unscripted moments that define life behind the curtain.
For years, Garlin has quietly documented backstage life and private gatherings with comedy’s biggest stars and Hollywood’s most familiar faces. Now, for the first time, he’s gathered his best work alongside personal anecdotes—captured in conversation with podcast host Sam Fragoso—that reveal the humor and tenderness of Garlin’s closest friends, collaborators, and mentors.
Featuring iconic images from the Curb Your Enthusiasm series finale and portraits of luminaries including Larry David, Mel Brooks, Brad Pitt, Jerry Seinfeld, Bob Odenkirk, Christie Brinkley, Carl Reiner, Sarah Silverman, Jerrod Carmichael, and many more, this book is a love letter to comedy and its creators. Each image reflects the wit, warmth, and spontaneity that define Garlin’s voice—onstage, onscreen, and now behind camera.
This is a ticketed in-store event through Eventbrite. You must have an Eventbrite ticket to be in the book signing only. Tickets purchased through a third party will not be considered valid.
No memorabilia. Please leave it at home.
Photos from the line are okay.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-09-17/ticketed-event-jeff-garlin
Skylight At Barnsdall: Emily St. John Mandell, with Rachel Khong, & Exit Party at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre – In-Person Event
Emily St. John Mandell, in conversation with Rachel Khong, will discuss Exit Party: A Novel. The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.
Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.
As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.
Emily St. John Mandel is the author of six novels, most recently Sea of Tranquility, which has been translated into 25 languages and was selected by President Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2022. Her previous novels include The Glass Hotel, which was also on Obama’s list, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and has been translated into 26 languages; and Station Eleven, which was a finalist for a National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, won the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award among other honors, has been translated into 36 languages, and aired as a limited series on HBO Max. She lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction. Real Americans, her second novel, was a New York Times bestseller. In 2018, Khong founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. With friends, she teaches creative writing as The Dream Side. She lives in Los Angeles.
Where: Barnsdall Gallery Theatre
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 4814 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-09-17/barnsdall-emily-st-john-mandel-w-rachel-khong-exit-party
Ticketed: Dolph Lundgren, with Scott Mantz, & Fights Wroth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle at Vroman’s Off-site at Pasadena Presbyterian Church – In-Person Event
Dolph Lundgren, in conversation with Scott Mantz, will discuss his memoir Fights Wroth Fighting: Finding Strength in Struggle.
Best known for his role as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, Lundgren skyrocketed to fame in the 1980s and has since built a remarkable career spanning over a hundred films—including producing, writing, and directing multiple projects. But beyond the on-screen battles lies a far more compelling story: the real-life fights Lundgren has faced behind the scenes.
In this deeply personal account, Lundgren opens up about his upbringing in Sweden, his rise from a chemical engineering student to a martial arts champion, and his eventual transformation into an international movie star. He explores the pressures of fame, the emotional and physical toll of life in a cutthroat industry, and his private struggles. Now, as he faces his most difficult challenge yet—a fight against cancer—Lundgren reflects on the cost of survival and what it truly means to keep going.
More than just a Hollywood memoir, Fights Worth Fighting is a guide to resilience. Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful, it blends life lessons with personal storytelling, offering practical insights on discipline, reinvention, and the importance of mental and emotional strength.
Lundgren’s story arrives at a time when audiences crave authenticity. This isn’t just the tale of a movie star—it’s a call to arms for anyone struggling with their own battles. Candid, inspiring, and unexpectedly vulnerable, Fights Worth Fighting shows us that real strength isn’t just about winning—it’s about continuing the fight when no one’s watching.
NOTE: See site for event guidelines.
Where: Pasadena Presbyterian Church (with Vroman’s)
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 585 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: Eventbrite Page
All Women’s Open Mic at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Village Well is providing a platform for female poets, musicians, storytellers, and comedians. While all are welcome to attend, this is an event that aims to amplify women’s voices only.
Acts are limited to 3-5 minutes in length. Sign-ups begin at 6:30 pm and conclude at 7:00 pm.
Also, please note that not all material may be considered “family-friendly” so please use discretion when deciding whether or not to bring children.
Reserve your seat by clicking link at website!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: 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: Friday the 18th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Weekly PJ Storytime at Once Upon a Time Bookstore – In-Person Kids Event
Friday morning fun with books!
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.
Open to all ages. Free to attend.
There is a large FREE parking lot off Florencita Dr. as well as metered parking along Honolulu Ave. and Montrose Ave. Meter hours start at 10 am.
Make sure to check out our full calendar of special story times here.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 9:30 am – 3 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page
Bilingual Storytime at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Bilingual Storytime! Exposing your children to multiple languages is highly beneficial for their learning and development, and what better way to do it than through this fun activity where we will read a wonderful story in both English and Spanish.
¡Hora de cuentos bilingüe! Exponer a tus hjijos a varios idiomas es de gran beneficio para su aprendizaje y desarrollo, y qué mejor que hacerlo en esta divertida actividad en donde leeremos un maravilloso cuento en inglés y en español.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Signing & Launch: Kwame Onwuachi, with Ava DuVerney, & All Hours: Crazy Good Food for Whanever – A Cookbook at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Join Rep Club for a signing and moderated conversation celebrating All Hours: Crazy Good Food For Whanever – A Cookbook with author and James Beard Award-winning chef Kwame Onwuachi moderated by Ava DuVernay. The 7 pm conversation will feature special guest moderator Ava DuVernay.
Kwame Onwuachi is a James Beard Award–winning chef, restaurateur, and author. He has been named a Food & Wine Best New Chef, an Esquire Chef of the Year, a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes, and one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of 2025. He is the author of the memoir Notes from a Young Black Chef and the cookbook My America, has twice hosted the James Beard Awards, and regularly appears on TV shows such as Top Chef, Chef’s Table, Billions, and Somebody Feed Phil.
Raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana, Onwuachi’s culinary journey began in his mother’s modest Bronx apartment. He trained at the Culinary Institute of America in New York City and, by the age of thirty had opened five restaurants, including the groundbreaking Afro-Caribbean eatery Kith/Kin in Washington, DC. Today, Onwuachi has restaurants across the country, in New York, DC, Miami, and Las Vegas. His restaurant Tatiana was named the number one restaurant in New York by The New York Times two years in a row, and his DC restaurant, Dōgon, earned a spot as one of North America’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay is an Academy Award nominee and winner of Emmy, BAFTA, Sundance, Image and Peabody Awards. Her films include Selma, 13th, Middle of Nowhere, A Wrinkle in Time and Origin. She has created seven television series, including the acclaimed When They See Us and history-making Queen Sugar. Founder of the narrative change collective ARRAY, DuVernay holds honorary doctorates from Yale University and Morehouse College, along with the Great Americans Medal from the Smithsonian Institution. Following multiple terms on the boards of the Sundance Institute and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she currently serves on American Film Institute Advisory Board in her third term.
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 5 pm signing & 7 pm ticketed talk
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: Eventbrite Page
Mystery Book Club: The House in the Pines at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person & Online Zoom Hybrid Event
Participants will discuss The House in the Pines by author Ana Reyes.
Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend’s sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed.
Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they’d been spending time with all summer.
Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can’t account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer—the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.
At her mother’s house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father’s book that didn’t stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank’s cabin…
Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.
Ana Reyes is the New York Times bestselling author of Reese’s Book Club pick The House in the Pines. She has an MFA from Louisiana State University and teaches creative writing. She lives with her husband in Easthampton, Massachusetts.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-09-18/mystery-book-club-house-pines
Diego Rivera: His Story by Herbert Siguenza at Whittier Central Library – In-Person Event
Join us at the Whittier Public Library for an unforgettable evening of live theater! Acclaimed playwright, actor, and performer Herbert Siguenza of Culture Clash brings the legendary Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to life in Diego Rivera: His Story, an evocative one-person play co-written by and starring Siguenza. Set in the aftermath of Frida Kahlo’s funeral, the play finds Rivera alone in his studio, reflecting on love, loss, art, and mortality.
Free tickets will be available at both libraries. Central Library (562) 567-9900 and Whittwood Branch Library (562) 567-9950.
Experience the life and legacy of one of Mexico’s most influential artists through this powerful theatrical performance.
Where: Whittier Central Library
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 7344 Washington Ave., Whittier, CA 90602
Website: Event Page
David Duchovny, with Jerry Stahl, & About Time: Poem, Live at Harmony Gold with Book Soup – In-Person Event
David Duchovny, in conversation with Jerry Stahl, will discuss About Tiem: Poems.
David Duchovny’s debut book of poetry covers a range of intimate themes, in particular his relationship with his father, who looms large throughout the work. Here, Duchovny’s typically clever wordplay distills to an emotionally impactful portrayal of what the author holds most dear. His approach to poetry is beautifully encapsulated in his introduction: Poetry is not useful. And that is exactly why we need it. It reminds us of two important things: our ultimate lack of agency (unpopular to say, I know) and our inability to say anything plain, our inability to capture what it means to be human with the imperfect tool of words; we come face-to-face with our shadow selves, for in the end we will all die and be forgotten, and come away with nothing, nothing in the way of utility anyway, no talking points, no bullet points, no propaganda, no resolutions, no policy, no knowledge. If anything, maybe we remember a few lines, something like a pop song from the collective unconscious, something like wisdom. You see, I wanted to say it plain, but out comes that torrent of modifiers and adjustments, denials, double negatives, shading, stabs at wit, backpedaling, playing at capturing the lightning. Maybe this time. Maybe that’s what a poem is—that glorious feeling of maybe this time I’ll get it right. If that’s the case, it seems a worthy enterprise to me.
Where: Harmony Gold
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 7655 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-09-18/book-soup-presents-david-duchovny
Elizabeth Metzger, with Natalie Shapero and Callie Siskel, & The Going Is Forever: Poems at Skylight – In-Person Event
Elizabeth Metzger, in conversation with Natalie Shapero and Callie Siskel, will discuss The Going Is Foreve: Poems.
Elizabeth Metzger’s third collection traces both holding on and letting go, tracking the non-linear journeys we take and the daily distances we cross for intimacy. Braiding a dissolving marriage, a son’s medical crisis, and the death of a father, the speaker reconceives loss as transformation and longing as ongoing love, exploring the multiplicity of the self in proximity to others. How do we relate to what we cannot know about those we love? How can we separate from one another without embodying parts of ourselves we haven’t met yet?
The present revives the past, and every ending becomes a devotion to new beginnings as Metzger transforms ordinary domestic ruptures into intimate portals of pleasure and pain. A degenerative disease spurs a creative awakening. A trip to the farmer’s market invites questions of monogamy. An overgrown yard yields a crisis of faith. These poems fall in love with the absences that define us, retracing our chosen roads while following those less traveled and beckoning unlived lives.
Celebrating the ordinary and extraordinary changes we undergo together, this collection explores our most surprising fantasies and deep spiritual yearnings. An honest, intricate, and breathtaking distillation of love’s true nature, reminds us that our closest relationships contain endless mysteries, and that there is never just one version of a life.
Elizabeth Metzger is the author of The Going Is Forever and Lying In, as well as The Spirit Papers, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry. She has published two chapbooks, Bed and The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. Her poems have recently appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Review, TLS, and Poetry. She is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books and teaches poetry at 92NY and Columbia University.
Callie Siskel is the author of Arctic Revival, winner of the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. Her poems appear in the Atlantic, Kenyon Review, Yale Review, and Paris Review. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, she holds a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.
Natalie Shapero’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: Skylight
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Claire Dougherty & Guilt, Fear, and Superstition at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Claire Dougherty, joined by readers Molly Bendall and Carina Capp, will present her debut poetry collection Guilt, Fear, and Superstition.
Claire Dougherty’s chapbook Sonnets From Lent was published by Copenhagen in 2025. Her debut poetry collection, Guilt, Fear, and Superstition will be published by Food, and The Claire Bitch Project, a series of booklets, will be published by Theaphora. She edits RECLINER. She is from Stockton, California and is based in Los Angeles.
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events/6184620260918
Author Talk: Alix Dick and Antero Garcia & The Cost of Being Undocumented at Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore
Alix Dick and Antero Garcia will present The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Women’s Reckoning with America’s Inhumane Math.
The authors will discuss and sign copies of the recently published paperback edition of The Cost of Being Undocumented: One Woman’s Reckoning with America’s Inhumane Math. They will be sharing details from the book as well as their processes of writing and researching. This conversation will invite attendees to think about their own possibilities as storytellers and writers as well.
When Alix Dick’s family found themselves in the crosshairs of cartel violence in Sinaloa, Mexico, she and her siblings were forced to flee to the US. Many of the scenes that she shares are difficult and unforgettable: escaping from a relationship in which her partner threatened to report her to immigration; getting root canals done in an underground dental clinic. But there are moments of triumph, too: founding her own nonprofit; working on films that tell important stories; and working with her co-author Dr. Garcia to tell her story in a framework that lays bare the realities of structural oppression.
As Alix and Antero tally the costs of undocumented life, they present a final bill of what is owed to the immigrant community. In this way, their book flips the traditional narrative about the economics of immigration on its head.
Where: Tia Chucha‘s Centro Cultural & Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 12677 Glenoaks Blvd., Sylmar CA 91342
Website: Instagram Page
Open Mic Night at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person Event
Let’s showcase and celebrate the creative talents of our local community, including poetry, music, and more!
While walk-in sign-ups are welcome on the night, if you’d like to be listed as a featured performer and guarantee your spot, you can apply at website.
Suggested donation $5-20 or donate a gently used book by an LGBTQIA+, BIPOC or Disabled author.
Where: Underdog Bookstore
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 312 South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, CA, 91016
Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/open-mic-august-8bg33
Beyond Spanish: Poetry in Basque, Catalan, Galician, & Spanish: Lourdes Orueta, Josu Baque, Jordi Solsona, Juan Lago, William Archila and Liz Camfiord at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
A multilingual poetry reading in regional languages of Spain translated to English
Beyond Baroque presents a reading of poetry in Spain’s official languages and their translations into English. Join us for an evening celebrating the rich tapestry of Spain’s linguistic and poetic traditions. Hear poems in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, and Basque–each paired with their English translations. Readings by: Lourdes Orueta, Josu Baque, Jordi Solsona, Juan Lago, William Archila and Liz Camfiord.
Presented in collaboration with The Education Office of the Consulate General of Spain.
Lourdes Orueta N/A
Josu Baque (commonly known as Josu Baque) is an academic professional, educator, and cultural promoter who is widely recognized for presenting and reciting Basque poetry at prominent multilingual literary events in the United States.
Jordi Solsona, Assistant Professor. CSUSB, Ph.D. Education. Universitat de Lleida. Spain. College of Education, Psychology and Social Work. Ed.D. Pepperdine University. Graduate School of Education and Psychology. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. ICT Instructor. Barcelona.Dual Immersion Teacher. Glendale. California.
Juan Lago, Spanish-born pianist, has attained numerous prizes in the foremost piano competitions in Spain. Furthermore, he has been awarded at the XXIII Concorso Internazionale “Valsesia-Musica” in Varallo, Italy; the XX “Cidade de Ferrol” Piano Competition, Spain; the IX Premio Internazionale Pianistico “A. Scriabin” in Grosseto, Italy; and the VI “Compositores de España” International Competition of Las Rozas de Madrid, Spain.
William Archila is the winner of the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry for his collection S is For. His first collection The Art of Exile was awarded the International Latino Book Award, an Emerging Writer Fellowship Award from the Writer’s Center and was selected for The Fifth Annual Debut Poets Round Up” in Poets & Writers. The Gravedigger’s Archaeology, Archila’s second book, received the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. His new collection Canícula/Dog Days is a bilingual selection of his first two books of poetry, The Art of Exile and The Gravedigger’s Archaeology.
Liz Camford N/A
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Friday the 18th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: 681 N. Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Graphic Novel Book Club: Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemala Genocide via Bel Canto Bookstore – Online Zoom Event
Participants will discuss Silenced Voices: Reclaiming Memories from the Guatemala Genocide by author Pablo Leon.
In this moving intergenerational tale perfect for fans of Messy Roots and Illegal, Eisner-nominated creator Pablo Leon combines historical research of the Dos Erres Massacre with his own experiences as a Guatemalan immigrant to depict a powerful story of family, sacrifice, survival, and hope.
Where: Bel Canto Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10 am
Address: Online Event
Website: Withfriends Event Page
Spring Arts Tower Takeover – September at The Last Bookstore, DTLA – In-Person Event
Join us for LA’s first and only vertical community market! The Spring Arts Tower Takeover is a one-of-a-kind pop-up market featuring hundreds of vendors in all 12 floors of our historic downtown building.
Tickets guarantee entry for one person to the entire event, all the way up to the top of the Spring Arts Tower. Tickets are sold in two-hour increments to be mindful of the building’s capacity. Please note the time slot on your ticket when making your purchase.
Advance tickets also come with a coupon to the Last Bookstore that can be redeemed at the checkout counter on the day of the event! $10 tickets include a $6 coupon / $5 tickets include a $3 coupon.
Ticketed: see website
Where: The Last Bookstore, DTLA
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10 am – 5 pm
Address: 453 S. Spring St., Ground Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90013
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 19th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Women Who Submit: Submit 1 Event at Fab Girl Café – In-Person & Online Zoom Hybrid Event
Women Who Submit (WWS) hosts our 13th annual SUBMIT 1 Submission Drive, with Jasmine Vallejo-Love. This marks the one day a year we encourage women and nonbinary writers across the globe to submit to tier one journals as one community.
As an act of solidarity, SUBMIT 1 dares to connect marginalized writers to top tier editors and publishers, widening the spectrum of voices reaching audiences and influencing arts and culture across the world. And you can be a part of the movement!
Join us for an in-person meet up at Fan Girl Cafe from 10 am – 1 pm Pacific and an online meetup from 10 am – 2 pm Pacific /1 pm – 5 pm Eastern.
Link in bio to register!
Where: Fan Girl Café
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10 am – 1 pm
Address: 8157 Santa Monca Blvd., Suite A, West Hollywood, CA 90046
Website: Instagram Page
Fall in Love with Poetry: Week 3 of 4 of Poetry Workshop with Kim Dower at West Hollywood Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a poetry workshop with former West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Kim Dower. For adults.
This September, sharpen your poet’s eye! Former West Hollywood City Poet Laureate (2016-2018) Kim Dower offers a fun, immersive three-hour workshop designed for anyone from poetry beginners to published poets. Awaken your senses, read works by a diverse group of poets, practice fever writing, and take home pieces and ideas you can develop into finished poems. Sponsored by the Friends of the West Hollywood Library.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. This will be used to save your spot in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees. This is the third of a four-program series that will be held on September 5, 12, 19, and 26. Each program date has its own event page. Please register individually for all of the dates you would like to attend.
Where: West Hollywood Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10:30 am – 1:30 pm
Address: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16827600
Storytime & Art Party: Benson Shum and Korey Watari & Mike Wu at Children’s Book World – In-Person Event
Illustrator & author Benson Shum, a CBW favorite, launches his newest picture book, Small Pets, a collaboration with beloved children’s book author, Cynthia Rylant.
Benson is joined by his friends, Korey Watari & Mike Wu, husband & wife creators of new picture book, Kimi the BALLerina. It will be a story and art-filled morning of miniature pets, tutus, and free throws!
Preorder their featured new books for signing at the event or shipping anywhere in the U.S.
Benson Shum is an award-winning children’s book author and illustrator whose books for young readers include Anzu the Great Kaiju, Little Seed, Cindy & Panda, Small Pets, and many more. Benson is also an animation supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Benson now lives in sunny southern California. Connect with him online at BensonShum.com.
In Small Pets: Say hello to many cute, cuddly, very small pets in this adorable picture book from Newbery Medal winner, Cynthia Rylant, and illustrator Benson Shum. In one happy neighborhood, there live many cute and cuddly pets of diminutive size. There are the parakeets, Zelda and Marty; rabbit parents Fluff and Puff with all their baby bunnies; two little mice named Tomato and Potato; and, last but not least, corgis Cookie, Biscuit, and Muffin! Though each animal friend may be small, they’re sure to get a big aww out of readers of all ages with their infectious charm.
Korey Watari & Mike Wu: Husband-and-wife team Korey Watari and Mike Wu live in Los Angeles with their two lively daughters. Their first picture book together, I Am Able to Shine, was a Bill Martin Jr. Picture Book Award honoree.
Korey Watari is a sansei, or third-generation Japanese American, born and raised in Los Angeles. She played basketball for a Japanese American league; graduated from the University of California, Riverside; and studied at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Learn more at http://www.koreywatari.com or follow her on Instagram at @tinyteru.
Mike Wu is the author and illustrator of the acclaimed bestselling Ellie series, the first picture book of which was named one of NPR’s best books of the year. He is also a former Pixar artist and has worked on films including The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Toy Story 3, Coco, and Soul. His illustrations have been hailed as “reminiscent of classics like Harry the Dirty Dog and Curious George.” Visit him at http://www.theartofmikewu.com or on Instagram at @wudog23.
In Kimi the BALLerina readers can join Kimi as she pirouettes onto the basketball court in this relatable story inspired by author Korey Watari’s experiences and illustrated by her husband, Mike Wu, former Pixar artist and creator of the Ellie series. Kimi just wants to focus on ballet, but she knows her dad really wants her to join the basketball team. Trying new things makes Kimi feel small, quiet, and uneasy. So, her dad makes her a deal: If she gives basketball a try, he might just trade his sneakers for ballet slippers. And what happens when Kimi takes some of her ballet skills over to basketball? Find out in this heartfelt story that’s perfect for dancers and sports lovers alike, or anyone who’s had to try something new.
Where: Children’s Book World
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 10:30 am – 1:30 pm
Address: 10580 ½ W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90064
Book Club: The Jungle at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Read the book and join our lively discussion!
September 19: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/book-club-9
What Remains: Erasure as Resistance and Reclamation: A generative workshop with Elina Katrin at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
This generative workshop invites you to inhabit the contradictory truths, exploring the craft of erasure alongside the liberation or fear the form can evoke. Through official documents, pharmaceutical labels, correspondence in fractured heritage languages, and self-erasure in response to political pressures, we’ll learn and practice strategies for finding agency and breath within the redacted and the revealed.
Elina Katrin is a Syrian Russian immigrant writer. She’s the author of Overwintered (Trio House Press, 2027) and a poetry chapbook If My House Has a Voice (Newfound, 2023). Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Shō Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A recipient of scholarships and fellowships from Lambda Literary, Vermont Studio Center, and Periplus, she works and organizes with Mizna as an Assistant Editor. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and currently lives in Los Angeles, CA, with a dream and her cardigan.
NOTE: RSVP and cost info at site.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am – 1 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Table Reading: Presented by Fred Rogers Dewey Legacy Project at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
Join us for a session of careful, attentive live reading and interpretation of “What is Authority” by Hannah Arendt and The School of Public Life by the late Fred Dewey. Table Reading sessions are hosted at Beyond Baroque, led by Renée Petropoulos and the Fred Rogers Dewey Legacy Project (FRDLP).
Historically, these sessions presented texts from the work of Hannah Arendt, but the FRDLP is celebrating Dewey’s work by reviving this series with one of his own texts, The School of Public Life. This project involves participants reading aloud around a table and interpreting the text as each pulls meaning from it. The activity is a public interpretation of ideas, read together without “expertise,” but with mind and heart. Following Dewey’s commitment to her work, this series will include readings of Hannah Arendt as we move through the months.
NOTE: Details at site.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am – 2 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Storytime: Rosie and Her Garden of Pests by Dr. Lauren Stutman at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us every Saturday for a storytime among the cozy shelves at Village Well!
This Saturday, September 19th, Dr. Lauren Stutman will read her book Rosie and her Garden of Pests to kids and parents and then open a discussion about anxiety and tools to deal with it.
Rosie is plagued by PESTs—Pesky Empty Scary Thoughts—that plant seeds of fear and worry in her mind. When those thoughts grow into a dark forest, Rosie must learn, with the help of a glowing fairy, how to plant healthier thoughts and find her way back to herself. A heartfelt and imaginative story that helps children understand anxiety, emotional resilience, and the power of their inner voice.
Dr. Lauren Stutman is the founder and Clinical Director of CARE-LA, a multidisciplinary mental health practice dedicated to helping children, adolescents, and families thrive. She founded CARE-LA out of a deep passion for supporting young people struggling with anxiety, OCD, and related challenges.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Caroline L. Perry and Sydney Hanson & I Am Not Grumpy! (Critter Complaints) – In-Person Event
Caroline L. Perry and Sydney Hanson will read from and sign I Am Not Grumpy! (Critter Complaints),
In the vein of Grumpy Monkey and Unicorns are the Worst!, this laugh-out-loud picture book from the creators of I Am Not Happy! gives voice to a black rain frog who swears she’s not grumpy—despite what her expression may suggest!
With a cozy burrow, puddles to play in, and a never-ending buffet of juicy bugs, this black rain frog is the happiest amphibian in the land…so why does everyone think she’s grumpy? Sure, she may have a permanent pout that you might call a serious case of “Resting Frog Face,” but this sulky squeaker is as content as can be. Don’t you believe her?
The cheerful little frog teaches her animal neighbors to not judge a critter by its cover in this hilarious and heartwarming story.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 11 am
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-19/perry-hanson
Banned Books Celebration With Silver Lake Youth Reading Club at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for an early celebration of Banned Books Week (October 4 to October 10, 2026) in a special collaboration with Silver Lake Youth Reading Club!
Teens ages 11-19 (still in high school if 19) will get to hear from award-winning children’s and young adult author, journalist, and television screenwriter, Paula Yoo, who will discuss her work as an advocate against censorship as well as her experience writing about critical moments in American history and civil rights.
This will be followed by a guided art activity where participants will get to pick a banned book of their choice that will be donated to a Free Little Library in areas most impacted by book bans. Each book will include an original art print inspired by the freedom to read.
Where: Siver Lake Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Tim: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: 2411 Glendale Blvd., Silver Lake, CA 90039
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/banned-books-celebration-silver-lake-youth-reading-club
Myriam Gurba & Poppy State Workshop – In-Person Event
Join Myriam Gurba for a reading, interactive storytelling and narrative garden workshop. California native seeds will be shared!
During this workshop, Myriam Gurba will read from her botanical memoir Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings. Then, she will facilitate interactive story-telling, inviting everyone present to participate in the creation of a narrative garden. California native seeds will be distributed to those who attend.
Myriam Gurba is the author of critically acclaimed genre-bending memoir, Mean; an incisive collection of essays and cultural criticism titled, Creep: Accusations and Confessions; and most recently, Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings, a botanical memoir rooted in blending personal history with California’s native plant history. Her work has received numerous honors including the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and a Lambda Literary Award and has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox and The Paris Review. She is one of the leading voices of Dignidad Literaria, a literary movement that demands for marginalized literary voices to be platformed and resist erasure.
Come enjoy an inspiring afternoon of plants, storytelling, and community with the unduplicable, Myriam Gurba!
This programming is free to the community. Free parking is available and limited. Materials will be provided.
Recommended ages: 16-adult.
For further inquiries please email us at rap-campodecahuenga@lacity.org
Where: Contact website link above.
Date: Saturday the 19th
Tim: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: TBA
Website: Eventbrite Page
Sisters in Crime Los Angeles Panel: True Crime and Nonfiction Authors at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us as we welcome Sisters in Crime Los Angeles authors, Anne Soon Choi, Christina Hoag, and Sheila Lowe, as they discuss their recent releases, followed by a Q&A with the audience. For ages 18 and up.
Copies of the authors’ books are available to checkout through the library.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17189280
Poetry Reading featuring Riot of Roses Authors at Whittier Central Library – In-Person Event
Join us at the Whittier Public Library for stimulating, thought-provoking poetry readings from the poets of Riot of Roses Publishing House, founded by South Whittier local, Brenda Vaca.
Riot of Roses Publishing House is Xicana-owned and was founded to amplify the stories of historically silenced voices and narratives.
Taking to the library stage are Jesenia Chavez, Dr. Angélica M. Yañez, Pam Concepcion and Brenda Vaca, Each will be reading selected works for an afternoon of poetry and prose.
Pam Concepcion is a poet and multimedia artist from Metro Manila, Philippines. Being an immigrant, she is always drifting between two conflicting worlds: whether it’s here & home, day-job & real job, online & offline, somehow she’s in two places at once. Like The Beatles’ song you can find her here, there & everywhere.
Jesenia Chavez is a Chicana writer from Southeast Los Angeles, a public school teacher, and author of two poetry collections, This Poem Might Save You (me) and the forthcoming Pocha Prayerbook. Find more at jeseniachavez.com.
Dr. Angélica M. Yañez is an Indigenous Chicana poet and educator from California’s Central Coast and the author of My God Is Brown. She is an associate professor of Chicana/x and Ethnic Studies and the founder of The Ancestral Teachings Institute in San Diego.
Brenda Vaca is a Xicana poet, public speaker, preacher, author, and independent publisher. She is the founder of Riot of Roses Publishing House and the author of Riot of Roses: Poems and Odes y Oraciones (y unas pocas maldiciones). She is a South Whittier local. Learn more at www.riotofrosespublishinghouse.com
Where: Whittier Central Library
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 1 pm – 2 pm
Address: 7344 Washington Ave., Whittier, CA 90602
Website: Event Page
Poetry Writing Studio at Malibu Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join Malibu Poet Laureate Charlotte Ward for a generative poetry writing studio where we will cycle with each other’s energies, discuss poems to stimulate our imaginations & write original poems from prompts or personal impetus. For adults.
We’ll explore, express, and celebrate all forms of energy.
This studio environment provided by the City of Malibu is designed for everyone, regardless of experience. Come prepared with pen, notepad, and fervor. Led by Malibu Poet Laureate Charlotte Ward.
Where: Malibu Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 1:30 pm – 4 pm
Address: 23519 West Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17014953
Hoopla Book Club: Most Ardently Yours at Hermosa Beach Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a lively conversation about Most Ardently Yours by Freya Sampson. Copies are available to check out on hoopla. For adults.
Where: Hermosa Beach Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 550 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16912623
Zibby Owens, with Lori Gottlieb, & Between Chapters at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us to hear author and podcast host Zibby Owens in conversation with psychotherapist, columnist, and author Lori Gottlieb. Together, they will explore Owens’ new memoir, Between Chapters, discussing a decade of reinvention, relationships, and unexpected new beginnings, all with plenty of humor. After the conversation, stay for a book signing and reception hosted by the Friends of Westwood Library.
RSVP at website link.
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Tim: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 1246 Glendon Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90024
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/zibby-owens-between-chapters-conversation-lori-gottlieb
Documentary Screening & Discussion: The Figures with director Nadia Szold and poet Geoffrey Young. Moderated by Johanna Drucker at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
A lively portrait of poet, publisher and artist Geoffrey Young, The Figures traverses the studios of artists & writers in his orbit as they dive into a freewheeling volley on the art making practice, lineages and the essence of time & language itself. The Figures began as a small literary press, but it continually charted new territory, championing one of the most influential movements in latter 20th century literature—“language poetry.” And The Geoffrey Young Gallery always shined a light on young artists just breaking onto the scene.
Following the screening of the film in The Wanda Coleman Theater, scholar Johanna Drucker will be moderating a Q&A with the documentary film’s director Nadia Szold and poet, Geoffrey Young.
Geoffrey Young edited and published The Figures for 30 years, and now teaches a class at University at Albany in Art Criticism. For the last 15 years he has curated shows at his contemporary art gallery in Great Barrington, MA. He is the author of the following books of poetry: Pockets of Wheat, Cerulean Embankments, Lights Out, and Fickle Sonnets. Born in Los Angeles, he has lived in the east since 1982.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm (Doors at 1:30 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: Eventbrite Page
Graphic Novel Signing: Kara Bodegón-Hikino & Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa at Once Upon a Time – In-Person Event
Graphic novelist Kara Bodegón-Hikino will be visiting from the Philippines to share her fun new graphic novel, Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa. Kara will share about the story and some art and then be available to sign books. For a special treat, attendees will also get a taste from local Filipina-owned ice cream store, Perlas. Best for ages 8+.
If you can’t make it to the event, you can order signed books in advance at website.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page
Alina Chau & Monkey King: Uproar in Heaven at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Alina Chau will present and discuss Monkey King: Uproar in Heaven
Drawing from classic Chinese adventure Journey to the West, Alina Chau’s bright new adaptation centers on the Monkey King’s wild beginnings and brings one of mythology’s most unforgettable troublemakers to life in a whole new way.
Sun Wukong wasn’t born in the usual way—he hatched from an egg atop Hua Guo Mountain, full of big dreams and an even bigger attitude. With a shape-shifting staff, a cloud he can ride like lightning, and an unstoppable belief in himself, Wukong isn’t just another monkey…he’s the Monkey King.
When word of his wild powers reaches the Heavenly Realm, the gods try to keep him close to prevent any chaos. But Wukong didn’t come all this way to play by someone else’s rules. And when he decides to shake things up, the skies themselves might not be ready for the storm he’s about to unleash. Can one monkey’s mischief really cause an uproar in heaven?
Combining Alina’s sumptuous, dreamy art with a faithful, respectful adaptation of a favorite mythical tale, Uproar in Heaven still manages to be as much fun as a barrel full of monkeys.
Alina Chau is an award-winning filmmaker and artist. Her credits include the Emmy Award-winning Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, and numerous best-selling games. She illustrated The Nian Monster, which received the 2018 APALA Picture Book Honor. Her creative vision is strongly influenced by her Chinese-Indonesian upbringing. As a child, she was always fascinated by her grandmother’s stories, colorful sarongs, and delicate wooden sculptures brought from Southeast Asia. The aroma of Indonesian food still brings back loving memories of sitting next to Grandma and drawing while Grandma prepared spices from scratch.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-19/alina-chau
From Draft to Book: Shaping a Manuscript at West Hollywood Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Do you have a novel, memoir, poetry collection, essay collection, or other book-length project but aren’t sure how it becomes a book? Join award-winning writer José Enrique Medina for an all-genre workshop on shaping a manuscript. For adults.
This workshop introduces practical strategies for organizing, sequencing, and revising individual pieces into a cohesive manuscript. While examples may draw from poetry, the techniques apply equally to novels, memoirs, essay collections, short story collections, and hybrid writing. Bring a work in progress. By the end of the session, you’ll leave with a clearer vision for your manuscript and concrete next steps toward a finished book. Sponsored by the Friends of the West Hollywood Library.
José Enrique Medina is a poet, playwright, and novelist. His poetry chapbook Haunt Me won the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize. His verse novel Only the Dead Let Me Talk This Much won the 2026 Lambda Literary J. Michael Samuel Prize, and he was selected for the 2026 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. His work has appeared in USA Today Hispanic Living Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Best Microfiction 2019, and elsewhere. A Cornell University graduate and VONA fellow, he is the founder of the Chickens & Poetry Residency for Writers. Connect with him on Instagram @MedinaWrites.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. This will be used to save your spot in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.
Where: West Hollywood Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 2:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 625 N. San Vicente Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/16869909
Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Michelle Smith + Poets Published In Turtle Island Poetry – Online Zoom Event
Join us online for a reading by featured poet Michelle Smith and poets published in Four Feathers Press’ Turtle Island Poetry #9 (September 2026 issue).
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Online
Date: Saturday, the 19th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: Online SAP Zoom Event
Website: https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
15th Frogtown Art Walk (formerly the Elysian Valley Arts Collective): A self-guided tour that takes you into studios, workshops and a series of pop-up galleries hosted by businesses in Elysian Valley – In-Person Event
What’s happening in 2026
Frogtown Art Walk (formerly the Elysian Valley Arts Collective) Is thrilled to bring back the Frogtown Artwalk. This free, biennial event is a self-guided tour that takes you into studios, workshops and a series of pop-up galleries hosted by businesses in Elysian valley.
The 2026 Frogtown Artwalk will stretch from Fletcher Drive in the north all the way south to Bauer Pottery. Free pedi-cabs ferried visitors up and down the river path to the various venues.
Visitors can see the work of over 70 artists, either in their studios located in Elysian Valley (AKA Frogtown) or in pop-up exhibitions hosted by local businesses. The Artwalk is a great opportunity to check in on favorite artists from prior art walks or to discover new ones. Browse our artist profiles to get a sense of the art that was on display and available to purchase.
In addition to art, several stages throughout the art walk will have live music and dance. Vendors and food trucks will sell their wares, and, as always, we will have tables full of community organizations available to answer all your questions.
Where: Frogtown Bike Path (self-guided tour)
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 4 pm – 10 pm
Address: Along the LA River Bike Path in Frogtown
Website: https://www.frogtownarts.com/artwalk-24
Sci-Fi Fantasy Book Club: Dungeon Crawler Carl at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinnaman.
You know what’s worse than breaking up with your girlfriend? Being stuck with her prize-winning show cat. And you know what’s worse than that? An alien invasion, the destruction of all man-made structures on Earth, and the systematic exploitation of all the survivors for a sadistic intergalactic game show. That’s what.
Join Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, as they try to survive the end of the world—or just get to the next level—in a video game–like, trap-filled fantasy dungeon. A dungeon that’s actually the set of a reality television show with countless viewers across the galaxy. Exploding goblins. Magical potions. Deadly, drug-dealing llamas. This ain’t your ordinary game show.
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the Dungeon. Survival is optional. Keeping the viewers entertained is not.
Matt Dinniman is a writer, artist, and musician (well, he’s a bass player) from Gig Harbor, WA. He is the author of several books, including the bestselling Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-09-19/sci-fi-fantasy-book-club-dungeon-crawler-carl
Local Author Mixer at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Our Local Author Mixer is back! Free Event at 6 pm. We have an incredible lineup of authors for this summer‘s mixer! Join us live in the store to hear readings from these authors and celebrate their books for a special book signing and community networking and fun. We have everything you need from adventure, crime, poetry and romance, self- love , autobiographies and more. Let’s celebrate these authors, listen to their inspiration stories, and have fun!
Participants include:
Livia Martinez will present Our Last Fall.
Charmaine Tucker will present I Refuse to Settle.
Lorraine Devon Wilkie will present Chick Singer.
Camille Cabrera will present Death and Duct Tape.
Lavinia Spaulding will present The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 13.
Darleene Koldenhoven will present Put Your Dress Down and Sing.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: Instagram Page
Gabriel San Roman, with Anthony Pignataro, & Days of Dissent at Page Against the Machine – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Gabriel San Roman, in conversation with Anthony Pignataro, discuss Days of Dissent: Revolts, Strikes, and Rebel Histories.
The rebellious history that has reshaped the United States and the world includes uprisings of enslaved Africans and abolitionists confronting the scourge of slavery, brave Black youth challenging Jim Crow segregation, Indigenous peoples resisting colonial America’s encroachments, Mexican women organizing labor strikes in the Southwest, antiwar protesters marching for peace, and much more.
With poetic fervor, Gabriel San Román’s Day o Dissent delves into the strikes and forgotten martyrs of the labor movement to expose the fetid underbelly of exploitation. In a subverted “this day in history” format and rising from his “Subversive Historian” commentaries on Pacifica Radio, a story is told for every day of the year with poignant vignettes about protests—no matter how big or small.
These inspiring stories span centuries and recount the everyday bravery of people organizing for a world free of hate and exploitation. And they are powerfully delivered at this crucial juncture in America when history from below faces relentless attacks and erasure from above. Daysof Dissent is essential reading for workers, students, activists, or anyone frustrated by the status quo, and is a clarion call to read, remember, and rebel!
Gabriel San Román is an award-winning journalist and author. He has investigated political corruption as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, written long-form histories for the OC Weekly, and voiced the “Subversive Historian” radio series on Pacifica Radio. He is also the author of Venceremos: Victor Jara and the New Chilean Song Movement (PM Press). In 2026, CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California honored him with a Ruben Salazar award. He lives in Orange County with his wife, daughter, and their house cat.
Anthony Pignataro has been a writer and journalist for nearly three decades. Today he works as an editor at the local news co-op Long Beach Watchdog. He is the author of numerous books including Maui Daze, a novel about a particularly rough day at a struggling newspaper on Maui, Remembering Lahaina, a memoir of the 12 years he worked as a journalist on Maui, and Stealing Cars with the Pros, a collection of his journalism.
The event is free and open to the public, no tickets or reservations required.
Where: Page Against the Machine
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 2714 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://www.facebook.com/events/1757683278766982
Flowersong Press Launch: Anger Is a Gift Anthology Reading Event at Sons and Daughters Books – In-Person Event
Join us to hear contributors read from Anger Is A Gift: An Anthology of Resistance and Response Poems to the 2024 Election, edited by Adrian Ernesto Cepeda & Edward Vidaurre of Flowersong Press.
Rochelle Newman-Carrasco @nuevohombre writes and performs story, memoir, spoken word, and poetry. She has an MFA from Antioch, Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Lilith, Off Assignment, The Independent, Gnashing Teeth Publishing’s Insurrection Anthology and many others. She lives in Panama and Los Angeles with her husband, cat and dog.
Where: Sons and Daughters Books
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 7817 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046
Website: Instagram Page
History Book Launch: Sacred Betrayal by Aliza Luft at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us for the launch of Aliza Luft’s new book Sacred Betrayal: How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust. Luft will be in conversation with historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein.
As deportations began in Vichy France, Jewish leaders turned to the Catholic Church for protection. Bishops offered private sympathy and public silence, and thousands staked their lives on the difference.
In Sacred Betrayal (Harvard University Press), UCLA sociologist Aliza Luft draws on archives in four countries and three languages to reconstruct the meetings, letters, and quiet negotiations that shaped who fled, who stayed, and who survived. What emerges is a history of how genocide advances through misplaced trust and incremental compromise as much as through violence. It is also a portrait of French Jewish leaders who refused Vichy’s terms, insisting they were citizens of the Republic rather than members of a separate race.
RSVP at website link!
Aliza Luft is Associate Professor of Sociology at UCLA, studying how identities and ideologies shape violence, resistance, and nonparticipation in war and genocide. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals as well as media such The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. She directs UCLA’s Bedari Kindness Institute and has worked with USAID, the United Nations, and genocide-prevention organizations.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director of the Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and holds the Viterbi Family Chair in Mediterranean Jewish Studies at UCLA. She is the author or editor of many books, including Extraterritorial Dreams: European Citizenship, Sephardi Jews, and the Ottoman Twentieth Century and Plumes: Ostrich Feathers, Jews, and a Lost World of Global Commerce. The recipient of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, two National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and two National Jewish Book Awards, Stein lives with her family in Santa Monica, CA.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
OC Poetry SLAM at Artists Village Café, Santa Ana – In-Person Event
Join us for the OC Poetry Slam!
$10 Tickets on Eventbrite!
Where: Artists Village Café
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 10 pm
Address: 125 N. Broadway D, Santa Ana, CA 92701
Website: Instagram Page
A Night of Boricua Poetry: A Bilingual Poetry Reading: Paola Capó-García, Margarita Pintado, Guillermo Rebollo Gil at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person Event
In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month, join us for a night of bilingual poetry in English and Spanish with Puerto Rican poets Guillermo Rebollo Gil, author of To learn to describe the animal, Paola Capó-García, author of CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME, and Margarita Pintado, author of Ojo en el Cielo/Eye in Heat. The poets will be reading new and selected work in The Wanda Coleman Theater.
Guillermo Rebollo Gil is a writer, sociologist, translator, and attorney. He is the author of To learn to describe the animal (Gasher, 2025). His publications include poetry in AGNI, BOMB, Fence, Poetry Northwest, The Hopkins Review and elsewhere; literary criticism in Cleveland Review of Books, On the Seawall, The Smart Set, Tiny Molecules, and Annulet. In 2020, the Spanish publisher Ediciones Liliputienses published an anthology of his poetry under the title Informe de Logros: poemas 2000-2019. Es el papá de Lucas Imar y Elián Iré.
Paola Capó-García is a poet and educator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She is the author of CLAP FOR ME THAT’S NOT ME (2018), selected by D.A. Powell as the winner of Rescue Press’ 2017 Black Box Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Volta, The Texas Review, Puerto Rico en mi corazón, Latino Book Review, jubilat, Poetry Society of America, poets.org, and others. In 2020 she served as a mentor for Latinx in Publishing’s inaugural Writers Mentorship Program, and in 2021 she was awarded Teachers & Writers Magazine’s Bechtel Prize for an article detailing her experience teaching creative writing virtually during the pandemic. As a journalist her work has appeared in BOMB, Variety, Remezcla, and ELLE, among others.
Margarita Pintado is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Una muchacha que se parece a mí/ A Girl Who Looks Like Me, winner of the 2015 Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Poetry Prize; Ojo en celo/ Eye in Heat, winner of the 2023 Ambroggio Prize (The Academy of American Poets and the University of Arizona Press); and La isla se achica/The Island Shrinks (forthcoming), winner of the 2025 Institute of Puerto Rican Culture Poetry Prize. She is a 2022 Letras Boricuas Fellow (Mellon Foundation.) Her essays on Cuban and Puerto Rican literature and culture have appeared in La Habana Elegante, Incubadora, Rialta Magazine, Revista Cruce, The Puerto Rican Review and El País, among others. Pintado Burgos earned her PhD in Spanish from Emory University and is a professor of literature and creative writing in San Diego, California. She directs the poetry website Distropika.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm (Doors at 6:30 pm)
Address: 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Queer Book Club: The Duke at Bel Canto Bookstore’s Logan’s Lovely Library – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss The Duke, a sapphic Regency romance by Anna Cowan.
Where: Bel Canto Books, Retro Row
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 2106 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: https://belcantobooks.net/events
Obsidian Tongues: Features & Open Mic at Galleria Yasmin, Pomona – In-Person Event
The pueblo. The poets. The community.
Obsidian Tongues is a space for raw words and free expression. No polishing. No permission. Bring the poems that carry scars, resistance, love, rage, memory, and truth. Come as you are. Say what needs to be said. This event is held every 3rd Saturday of the month.
This month, we are honored to share the mic with Lorna Dee Cervantes and m.
Lorna Dee Cervantes is a XícanIndX (Chumash/Purépecha) poet, activist, publisher, and educator raised in San José’s Barrio Horseshoe. Founding Editor/Publisher of MANGO Publications, she is the author of the American Book Award-winning Emplumada and six books of poetry. Cervantes has received two NEA Fellowships, two Pushcart Prizes, and numerous other honors. For over 50 years, she has carried her poetry across campuses, venues, communities, and countries. Her newest collection, FIRE: Poems Against Pandemic, is forthcoming from El Martillo Press in 2026.
m is a Two-Spirit poet (@yocoyani33), artist, and healing practitioner of Indigenous Mexican, Spanish, and Syrian ancestry, walking sacred paths of curanderismo, poetry, and art. Their community work has stretched across Diné lands, Syrian refugee communities in Istanbul, farms, schools, healing spaces, and communities throughout Turtle Island. Their poetry and journalism have appeared in Hyperallergic, Columbia Journal, LA Art News, Filmmaker Magazine, and the ILL Poetry Anthology. Their work is rooted in community, healing, culture, and sacred Indigenous land.
Where: Galleria Yasmin
Date: Saturday the 19th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 250 W. 2nd St., Pomona, CA 91766
Website: Instagram Page
2026 OC Children’s Book Festival at Orange Coast College Costa Mesa – In-Person Event
Meet authors, explore books, and enjoy stories, entertainment, and family fun.
Free admission • Free parking
Meet this year’s headliners and special guest performer, then explore the authors, illustrators, exhibitors, and food trucks joining the festival.
Headliners:
Rachel Ignotofsky is a New York Times Best Selling author and illustrator, based in California. She grew up in New Jersey on a healthy diet of Star Trek and pudding and graduated from Tyler School of Art in 2011 with a BFA in Graphic Design. Rachel believes when you take the time to organize complex information—and then take the next step to make it beautiful with art—you can reach even the most reluctant learner. With her first book Women in Science (2016), Rachel used her art to celebrate the women who changed the world with their discoveries and inventions. This book was on the NY Times Best seller list for over 90 weeks. Her most recent book is Dinosaurs: Exploring Prehistoric Life and Geological Time.
Melissa Villaseñor is an Author, Comedian & Artist born in Whittier, California. She is the author of Cat and Lola: School Picture Day.
Jesús Trejo is an American writer, comedian, and producer. He has released two stand-up specials, Stay At Home Son (2020) and Practicing (2023). He has acted on Mr. Iglesias and This Fool, for which he was also a writer. He hosts and produces the web series Tacos Con Todo and the PBS series Roots of Comedy. He is the author of Mamá’s Magnificent Dancing Plantitas (Minerva, 2024).
Special Guest Performer:
StoryTeller
KidTime StoryTime is YouTube’s most-watched reading channel for kids!
StoryTeller and her puppet family celebrate literacy by reading children’s books with zany humor, spontaneous singing, high energy, and love.
StoryTeller is a published children’s book author, a three-time Emmy Award winner, and now a YouTube sensation whose mission is to inspire kids to read and work hard for their dreams.
See full schedule and details at website links.
Where: Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 10 am – 3 pm (times and stage may vary)
Address: 2701 Fairview Rd., Costa Mesa CA 92626
Website: https://www.kidsbookfestival.com/
Pan Dulce y Poesia Writing Workshops with Diosa X, at The Goddess Mercado Bazaar – In-Person Event
Join facilitator Diosa X. every 3rd Sunday of the month for mornings of poetry prompts and pan dulce.
Bring your cafecito and your desire to write. FREE Event!
Sept 20, Oct 18, Nov 22, Dec 20.
Where: The Goddess Mercado Bazaar
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 424 W. Whittier Blvd., Montebello, CA 90640
Website: Instagram Page
Audiobook + Long Beach Pop up @ 2nd & PCH with La Fleuria – In-Person Event
Join a casual Audiobook + Long Beach Pop up @ 2nd & PCH with La Fleuria.
Where: La Fleuria Beach Pop-Up
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 11 am – 6 pm
Address: 6480 Pacific Coast Hwy., Long Beach, CA
Website: Instagram Page
Typewriter Poets On Demand with L.A. Poet Society at Melrose Trading Post – In-Person Event
Poets with L.A. Poet Society participate in providing typewritten poetry on demand for customers each Sunday at Melrose Trading Post.
No cover. Donations appreciated.
Where: Melrose Trading Post
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 11 am – 5 pm (times and stage may vary)
Address: 7850 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90046
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: Sunday the 20th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Better Future Book Club: LImitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth by author Ingrid Robeyns.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 1 pm – 3 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Storytime with Kara Bodegón-Hikino at Bel Canto Books, KUBO LB – In-Person Event
Bel Canto Books is delighted to host a conversation & presentation with Kara Bodegón-Hikino, author and illustrator of SQUALO & MAGE VS. THE RAGE OF THE BAKUNAWA.
Kara Bodegón-Hikino is a Filipino cartoon illustrator, author, and semiretired music journalist. She grew up hoping to become a marine biologist to study sharks but ended up in the music industry, where she wrote for publications like Billboard, Bandwagon Asia, and PULP Magazine. She also worked from backstage to the photo pit at concerts and designed album covers and merch for some pretty cool bands and artists. These days, she sells stickers and little trinkets as KARAKUGAKI at local art markets and conventions. Squalo & Mage vs. the Rage of the Bakunawa is her first graphic novel.
Participating pop-up vendors:
KARAKUGAKI – Created by author-illustrator Kara Bodegon-Hikino, KARAKUGAKI brings SHARKtastic fun to your everyday dillydallying with silly stickers, washi tape, and trinkets inspired by emo music, mental health shenanigans, and Filipino humor.
Poetry Von Chelle – Poetry Von Chelle is an intuitive on-the-spot typewriter poet, a unique art form that blends the timeless craft of poetry writing with the spontaneity of a live performance. With a vintage typewriter, Yvonne takes literary snapshots of heartfelt human connection and crafts it into words of wonder and wisdom.
Where: Bel Canto Books, KUBO
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 4 pm
Address: 976 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: Withfriends Event Page
Middle Grade Book Club: Maizy Chen’s Last Chance at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person MG Event
Join us for the newest Village Well book club, the Middle Grade Book Club! RSVP for your spot at website link!
Once a month, we’ll meet and explore some of the best middle-grade books out there. We’ll chat about the characters, themes, favorite scenes, and whatever else happens to interest us about the chosen title. There’s never pressure to participate in the discussion. All meetings conclude with either a writing activity or craft. We’d like you to read the book before the meeting, but if you didn’t get to finish, please still come by (although we’re gonna spoil the ending!).
Our selection for August is The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris.
Local author Heather Alexander is our discussion leader, and she has written more than 90 books for kids. Her nonfiction has been recognized as Amazon Best Book, National Science Teachers Association Best STEM Book, Parent’s Choice Award selections and the winner of the June Franklin Naylor Award. She was the editor of R.L. Stine’s mega-popular, bestselling Goosebumps and Fear Street series, among many, many others.
Twelve year-old Maizy discovers her family’s Chinese restaurant is full of secrets in this irresistible novel that celebrates food, fortune, and family.
Welcome to the Golden Palace!
Maizy has never been to Last Chance, Minnesota…until now. Her mom’s plan is just to stay for a couple weeks, until her grandfather gets better. But plans change, and as Maizy spends more time at Last Chance and at the Golden Palace—the restaurant that’s been in her family for generations—she makes some discoveries. For instance:
You can tell a LOT about someone by the way they order food.
People can surprise you. Sometimes in good ways, sometimes in disappointing ways.
And the Golden Palace has secrets…
But the more Maizy discovers, the more questions she has. Like, why are her mom and her grandmother always fighting? Who are the people in the photographs on the office wall? And when she discovers that a beloved family treasure has gone missing—and someone has left a racist note—Maizy decides it’s time to find the answers.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Book Launch: Kelly Lytle Hernandez, with Jean Guerrero, & Racist By Design at The Wende Museum – In-Person Event
Kelly Lytle Hernández launches her new book Racist by Design in conversation with Los Angeles Times columnist Jean Guerrero.
The book traces the American immigration system from its origins to the way it works today. Most accounts begin with the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late nineteenth century. Lytle Hernández starts a full century earlier, with the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, which prompted both the country’s first immigration bans and its first refugee resettlement program. She shows how eugenicists and Jim Crow segregationists built much of the current system as expressly whites only, and how Congress amended that system during the Civil Rights Movement while leaving many of its rules intact. She calls the book “an act of sabotage,” a blueprint published so the system can be dismantled.
Village Well Books & Coffee will sell copies on site. A reception with wine and light bites follows the conversation in the garden.
Seating for this free program is first come, first served. Reserve your tickets at https://wendemuseum.org/event/racist-by-design/
Kelly Lytle Hernández is the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA and a MacArthur Fellow. She is the author of Racist by Design, Bad Mexicans, and other award-winning books on race, immigration, policing, and incarceration. She lives in Los Angeles.
Jean Guerrero is a columnist at the Los Angeles Times and the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda. She previously covered the U.S.-Mexico border as an investigative journalist for KPBS and the PBS News Hour affiliate in San Diego. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Vanity Fair. She lives in Los Angeles.
Where: Wende Museum
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 10808 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90230
Website: https://villagewell.com/events/6143520260920
Bucket List Book Club: The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maughan via Cellar Door Bookstore – Online Zoom Event
Participants will discuss The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maughan.
Larry Darrell is a young American in search of the absolute. The progress of this spiritual odyssey involves him with some of Maugham’s most brilliant characters—his fiancée Isabel, whose choice between love and wealth have lifelong repercussions, and Elliot Templeton, her uncle, a classic expatriate American snob. The most ambitious of Maugham’s novels, this is also one in which Maugham himself plays a considerable part as he wanders in and out of the story, to observe his characters struggling with their fates.
W. Somerset Maugham was one of the twentieth century’s most popular novelists as well as a celebrated playwright, critic, and short story writer. He was born in Paris but grew up in England and served as a secret agent for the British during World War I. He wrote many novels, including the classics Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ale, Christmas Holiday, The Moon and Sixpence, Theatre, and Up at the Villa.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-09-20/bucket-list-book-club-razors-edge
Ticketed: Vroman’s Presents: Penn Cole, with Heidi Cole McAdams & Burn of the Everflame (The Kindred’s Curse Saga #4) at Arcadia Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event
Now in a collectible hardcover edition featuring gorgeous full-color endpapers, a foiled and embossed jacket, and an exclusively designed hardcover case.
The highly anticipated never-before-published final book in the Kindred’s Curse Saga, a slow-burn, epic romantasy series following one woman who must risk everything to save her family—and all of mortalkind.
War has overtaken Emarion. In the north, Ophiucae and his army of bloodthirsty mortals seek to eradicate all Descended from the continent. In the south, the Guardians of the Everflame lie in wait, plotting a rebellion generations overdue.
In Lumnos, Realm of Light and Shadow, the Crowns are gathering. Caught between two deadly foes, they must form an unlikely alliance to save their people.
But the Crowns have a secret—and a heart without its mate will burn the world down to fulfill its fate.
Hatred reigns. Hope seems lost. With the future in darkness, can a flame emerge to bring the light?
This is a ticketed event at Arcadia Performing Arts Center, located at 188 Campus Drive, Arcadia, CA, 91007.
Tickets will include one entry and one signed copy of Burn of the Everflame, to be handed out at check-in. There will not be a public book signing for this program.
Dress to impress! We encourage attendees to wear red or black.
Questions? email promo@vro
Where: Vroman’s at Arcadia Performing Arts Center
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 188 Campus Drive, Arcadia, CA 91007
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-09-20/penn-cole
Book Launch: Ha-Lin Liu & Far from the Model Minority, with Marcos Zaomora-Sanchez and Kystin Bruan, at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Ha-Lin Liu, In conversation with Marcos Zaomora-Sanchez and Kystin Bruan, will discuss Far From the Model Minority: Face, Class, and Transnational Chinese Families.
Far from the Model Minority centers the voices of five undocumented and mixed-status Chinese immigrant families in New York City and their sending communities in Fuzhou, China. Challenging dominant narratives about Chinese Americans and the model-minority myth, these families have experienced multigenerational exclusion from educational pathways and developed mobility strategies focused on attaining “face.”
In China, low social standing led them to prioritize immigration and remittance work over education, as overseas success became the primary way to garner face. Yet in the United States, undocumented status and poverty created new barriers to their and their children’s acculturation, and the intersection of undocumented life and the culture of remittances often undermined the intended face gain for families back home and reinforced social stagnation. Based on four years of ethnographic research, Jia-Lin Liu’s work explores how these transnational families respond to enduring structural exclusions by reimagining achievement and dignity across borders.
Jia-Lin Liu, PhD, MSW, (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at California State University, Los Angeles. Her research focuses on immigration, social class, and transnational family life, with particular attention to Chinese and Asian American communities. She is the author of Far From the Model Minority: Face, Class, and Transnational Chinese Families (University of California Press, 2026), an ethnographic study of undocumented and mixed-status Chinese immigrant families in New York City and their relatives in China that examines how the Chinese cultural concept of face shapes their experiences across borders. Prior to academia, Jia-Lin worked as a bilingual social worker with immigrant families in Brooklyn, New York.
Krystin Bruan (she/her) is a Filipina American content producer whose areas of focus include indigenous philanthropy and feminist diasporic theology. An accidental entrepreneur in Madrid, she went on to open restaurants in Shanghai and organize NYC philanthropists around radical generosity. Her greatest honor was spending a decade as a family caretaker before moving to Pasadena, deepening her interest in migration, intergenerational responsibility, and cultural memory. She is pursuing her MDiv at Fuller Theological Seminary and a Filipino American history project focused on faith stories and often-unseen figures who’ve sustained and protected communities.
Profe Marcos Zamora-Sánchez, LCSW (they/them) is a Faculty Lecturer in their fifth year of teaching, with the privilege of currently facilitating courses in Grief & Loss, Diversity, and Practicum Seminar. Grounded in abolitionist and transformative justice frameworks, profe strives to create collaborative learning spaces where students critically examine systems, deepen self-awareness, and develop the skills to engage in ethical, community-centered social work practice. They enjoy long walks/jogs, traveling, and tortas de chilaquiles.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 4 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Baby Got Bacchus: Poetry Open Mic at Baby Battista at Nico’s Wine Shop – In-Person Event
Mason Granger hosts Baby Got Bacchus: Poetry Open Mic at Baby Battista at Nico’s Wine Shop, Atwater Village.
Every 3rd Sunday! It’s free and chill and fun. Bring a poem, bring a friend, bring a thirst for wine or one of their non-alcoholic options.
Where: Baby Battista at Nico’s Wine Shop
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 3111 Glendale Blvd., Ste. 2, Atwater Village, CA 90039
Website: Instagram Page
Focus on Craft Book Club: World’s OKest Oracle at The Ripped Bodice, LA – In-Person Event
Focus on Craft book club meets at 7:15 pm on the third Sunday in the main store! It focuses on examining popular romance novels from a writer’s viewpoint. Everyone is welcome; you don’t have to be a writer!
No membership is necessary, but RSVP is required.
September book: World’s Okayest Oracle (Reluctantly) Seeks Demon by Olivia Dade.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 20th
Time: 7:15 pm – 8:15 pm
Address: 3806 Main Street, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://therippedbodice.com/event/2026-09-20/focus-craft-book-club-sept-2026
Los Angeles Literature 
