Queer Ally Book Club at Chevalier’s – In-Person 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 12th
Time: 5 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-10-12/queer-ally-book-club
YA for Adults Book Club: If Looks Could Kill at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss If Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry.
It’s autumn 1888, and Jack the Ripper is on the run. As London police close in, he flees England for New York City seeking new victims. But a primal force of female vengeance has had enough. With serpents for hair and a fearsome gaze, an awakened Medusa is hunting for one thing: Jack.
And other dangers lurk in Manhattan’s Bowery. Salvation Army volunteers Tabitha and Pearl discover that a girl they once helped has been forced to work in a local brothel. Tabitha’s an upstate city girl with a wry humor and a thirst for adventure, while farmgirl Pearl takes everything with stone-cold seriousness. Their brittle partnership is tested as they team up with an aspiring girl reporter and a handsome Irish bartender to mount a rescue effort, only to find their fates entwine with Medusa’s and Jack’s.
Julie Berry is the New York Times bestselling author of the 2020 NCTE Walden Award and SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner Lovely War, the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize–shortlisted The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie Medal–and Edgar Award–shortlisted All the Truth That’s in Me, the Odyssey Honor The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, and the Wishes and Wellingtons trilogy. Her picture books include The Night Frolic, Happy Right Now, and Cranky Right Now. Julie holds a BS from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in communication and an MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Julie lives in western New York, where she owns Author’s Note, an independent bookstore.
Where: Cellar Door Books & Coffee
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-12/ya-adults-book-club-if-looks-could-kill
A Slice of Literary Orange Series: Author Min Jin Lee & American Hagwon at La Habra City Hall – In-Person Event
This series featuring keynote speakers throughout the year at various venues across the county, with no cost for attendees. These events take place at OC library locations or with the support of community partners.
FREE: First Come, First Seated.
Author Min Jin Lee will discuss her new novel, American Hagwon.
Min Jin Lee is the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award, runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a New York Times “100 Best Books of the Century.” She serves as the New York State Author Laureate from 2025 through 2027. She is the 2024 recipient of The Fitzgerald Prize for Literary Excellence. Lee has received the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Bucheon Diaspora Literary Award, and the Samsung Happiness for Tomorrow Award for Creativity from South Korea. Lee is an inductee of the New York Foundation for the Arts Hall of Fame and the New York State Writers Hall of Fame.
Limited complimentary books available, while supplies last. Admission does not guarantee a free copy. Books are available for purchase, courtesy of Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore. No registration required. Early arrival suggested.
For more information, call (714) 566-3072 or email ocpl.programs@occr.oc.gov
Where: La Habra City Hall
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 110 E. La Habra Blvd., La Habra, CA 90631
Website: https://libraries.oc.gov/page/slice-literary-orange
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 12th
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 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 3575 University Ave. Riverside, CA 92501
Website: Facebook Page
Lyndsay Faye, with Leslie Klinger, & Raven: A Novel at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Lyndsay Faye, in conversation with Leslie Klinger, will present and discuss Raven: A Novel.
An orphaned young woman in antebellum Maryland is pulled into a maelstrom of passion, pain, and occult power in this Gothic homage to the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe.
I died a fortnight ago this coming Thursday. It was a terrifically unpleasant experience—being murdered, I mean to say.
Raven Helen Allan has always been haunted by witchcraft. Since the death of her beloved mother, she has soothed herself by speaking words into spells—a proclivity enhanced by time spent with her aunt’s library of occult books. She also finds a self-destructive solace in transmuting the pain in her heart onto her flesh.
After an itinerant childhood spent first with her mother’s traveling theater troupe and then being passed around from relative to relative, Raven is relieved to finally settle down with Aunt Berenice in her Baltimore townhouse—even if her aunt spends most evenings in a laudanum haze. There she finds a long-sought sense of belonging with the family of enslaved workers in her aunt’s household, especially the brilliantly odd youngest daughter Pym. Raven’s infatuation with her friend only grows more intimate as the girls become women together. But when the household is threatened with financial ruin, Raven must set out to earn her own living.
Taking a job as a paid companion, Raven arrives at the crumbling Moldavia Manor. Her charge is a delicate young invalid named Lenore Legrand who haunts the Gothic structure like a phantom. Living with them is Lenore’s devoted older cousin Trevanion, who shares Raven’s interest in the occult and devotes his days to searching ancient texts for an Elixir of Life that might cure his cousin. Raven finds herself inexorably drawn to both cousins as well as to the secrets hidden in the shadows of Moldavia Manor. Will she find the answers she seeks in Trevanion’s alchemical texts? What is the meaning of glowing green light emitted from the tower windows? And is Raven truly narrating this story from beyond the grave—if so, who murdered her?
Gothic and atmospheric, Raven is an aching tale of loss, freedom, death, and resurrection by the celebrated author of Jane Steele and Dust and Shadow.
Lyndsay Faye is the internationally bestselling author of eight critically acclaimed novels and two short story collections. She has been published in fifteen languages, nominated for two Edgar Awards, and received an American Library Association award for Best Historical Novel. A notable writer of Sherlock Holmes pastiches including Dust and Shadow and Observations by Gaslight, she also particularly enjoys upending classical literature, as in Jane Steele, which transforms Jane Eyre into a feminist serial killer. A true New Yorker in the sense that she was born elsewhere, Faye lives in Queens with her husband Nicholas and her cat Prufrock.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-10-12/lyndsay-faye-conversation-leslie-klinger-discusses-signs-raven
April Ryan, with Bresha Webb, & Notes on a Backlash: When a Black Woman Goes Viral at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
April Ryan, in conversation with Bresha Webb, will discuss Notes on a Backlash: When a Black Woman Goes Viral.
Notes on a Blacklash is veteran White House reporter April Ryan’s gripping, soul-baring look at what happens when the world suddenly turns its full attention on you. This isn’t just the story of one viral moment with President Trump. It’s about the avalanche that follows: the scrutiny, the emotional and physical toll, and the way your identity can become fuel for headlines and hashtags.
At its core, this book explores visibility—its price, its power, and the fight to reclaim your story when millions are watching. What does it mean to go viral when your hair is politicized, your voice is policed, and your very existence is treated as a threat? Sometimes, this is what it feels like when the spotlight finds you: uninvited, unrelenting, and impossible to ignore.
April Ryan has a unique vantage point as the only Black female reporter covering urban issues from the White House—a position she has held since the Clinton era. April can be seen almost daily on CNN as a political analyst and is the Washington, DC, Bureau Chief for The Grio. She has been featured in Essence, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Elle magazine, and other top publications, has served on the board of the prestigious White House Correspondents Association, and is an esteemed member of the National Press Club. April is the author of the award-winning book, The Presidency in Black and White, and At Mama’s Knee: Mothers and Race in Black and White. She lives in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Bresha Webb is a versatile actress, comedian, writer, and director whose career spans television, film, voiceover, and stand-up comedy. Most recently, she appeared in HBO Max’s Emmy-winning series Hacks and will next star in Amazon’s upcoming Barbershop series opposite Jermaine Fowler and Ego Nwodim for Prime. A seasoned comedian, Webb has performed throughout the Los Angeles stand-up scene, appeared on BET’s Comic View, and collaborated with Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat Productions. This August, she headlines her own installment of Hulu’s LOL! Live comedy special series.
RSVP
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: Eventbrite Page
William T. Vollman & A Table for Fortune at Skylight – In-Person Event
William T. Vollman will present and discuss A Table for Fortune, which depicts the last half-century of American politics, war, and life in this four-part, 3,000+ page novel that is at once a family drama, bildungsroman, and national epic.
Volumes 1 and 2 gather from the half-forgotten annals of the near-past––Stasi documents, Iraqi newspaper articles, presidential radio addresses––to form a vivid and mesmeric saga centered on Elliott Stevens, or DAVE, a CIA analyst whose glee at winning the Cold War is matched only by the dread that culminates in the nightmares of September eleventh and the resulting War on Terror. The hero of Volumes 3 and 4 is Matthew Stevens, Elliott’s son, whose efforts to escape his parents and divine the fate of his life result in homelessness, addiction, and perhaps even happiness.
Spanning from 1968 to 2019, these volumes comb together––with Vollmann’s generous wit and Olympian prose––a staggeringly well-researched, definitive history of American post-war foreign policy with a deft, moving chronicle of a family’s descent into resentment and gloom. Elliott and Matthew Stevens are “passengers within a divine bullet,” which, like Gogol’s troika before it, overtakes all flying to its nation’s end. This boxed set, with all four volumes in hardcover, allows the book to be read as intended: as one towering novel, the magnum opus of one of the giants of literature.
William T. Vollmann is the author of twelve novels, including Europe Central, which won the National Book Award. He has also written four collections of stories, including The Rainbow Stories and The Atlas, which won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a memoir, and ten works of nonfiction, including Rising Up and Rising Down and Imperial, both of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, Granta, and many other publications. He lives in Sacramento, California.
RSVP
Where: Skylight
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-10-12/william-t-vollmann-table-fortune
Joey Clift, with Ally Beardsley and Illustrator Julie Fiveash, & We’ve Been Here the Whole Time!: A Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Joey Clift, in conversation with Ally Beardsley and illustrator Julie Fiveash, will discuss and sign We’ve Been Here the Whole Time!: A Peabody and Emmy-nominated Native comedian Joey Clift takes you on a journey to discover the largest population you don’t know in his hilarious debut for fans of Michael Harriot, Mo Rocca, and Phoebe Robinson.
Foreword by Shane Hawk, writer and co-editor of Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology!
Put away the construction paper: This contraband book is here to teach you everything your high school refused to teach about Native American history, people, and culture. From misunderstood figures like Pocahontas, to sports mascots, to the Land Back movement, to how cool Lily Gladstone is, this hilarious NDN-approved guide is the first of its kind—illustrated in an irreverent, textbook-meets-notebook style by DinÃ(c) artist Julie Fiveash. Share with your loved ones and transform your boring Thanksgiving into a big “You’re Welcome” dance party!
Joey Clift (Cowlitz tribe) walks you through a wide range of information that will answer provocative questions and debunk Americans’ wildest assumptions Not So Sacred Guide to All Things Native America.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-10-12/joey-clift
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 12th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Zoom Online Event (see site)
Website: Beyond Baroque Event Page
Author Talk: David Epstein & Inside the Box via Virtual Program, LACL – Online Event
Join us for an inspiring virtual conversation with bestselling author David Epstein as we explore his latest book, Inside the Box, and redefine how to approach our greatest challenges!
Join us for an inspiring virtual conversation with bestselling author David Epstein as we explore his latest book, Inside the Box, and redefine how to approach our greatest challenges!
We are constantly told to “think outside the box” to innovate, solve complex problems, and reach our goals. But what if the secret to true breakthrough creativity and peak performance actually lie in working within our limitations? In Inside the Box, David Epstein draws on science, research, and fascinating real-world case studies to demonstrate how constraints, boundaries, and structure can become powerful catalysts for ingenuity and mastery. Epstein challenges traditional ideas about skill acquisition, focus, and problem-solving, revealing how top performers and innovators across industries turn rigid limits into unmatched strengths.
David Epstein is the author of three New York Times bestsellers—The Sports Gene, Range, and most recently Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. He was previously an investigative reporter at ProPublica, and before that a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. Prior to becoming a writer, he was living in a tent in the Arctic training to become an environmental scientist. Like many of the characters in Range, he has had a winding career path.
Where: Virtual Program, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17536169
Virtual Book Club: Whistler via La Crescenta Library, LACL – Online Event
Join us in October as we discuss Whistler by Ann Patchett Tuesdays, October 13, 20, and 27. Please contact Marta Wiggins at mwiggins@library.lacounty.gov for your link to join the discussion. For Adults.
The Virtual Book Club meets weekly and discusses section of the book each week. In October we will not meet on Tuesday, October 6 and will begin discussion of the book on Tuesday, October 13.
Tuesday, October 13 — Chapters 1 & 2 — Pages 1 – 141
Tuesday, October 20 — Chapters 3 & 4 — Pages 142 – 233
Tuesday, October 27 — Chapters 5 – 7 — Pages 234 to the end of the book.
When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.
Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything. From the Publisher
Where: La Crescenta Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17327533
Agoura Readers Book Club: The Briar Club at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us to discuss The Briar Club by Kate Quinn. Copies available at Customer Service. For adults.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct,. Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17327586
Poetry Open Mic via at Westwood Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
Share a poem you wrote or a poem you love. You are also welcome to just listen and enjoy.
To receive a Zoom link, contact wwood@lapl.org
Where: Westwood Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 6th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/poetry-open-mic
Book Discussion for Adults: The Great Divide at Sorenson Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Please join us to read and discuss the fiction book The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez. For Adults.
A novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, following the intersecting lives of the local families fighting to protect their homeland, the West Indian laborers recruited to dig the waterway, and the white Americans who gained profit and glory for themselves.
Pick up a copy for checkout at the Customer Service Desk today, also available on Libby and Hoopla.
Where: Sorenson Library, LACL
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6934 Broadway Ave., Whittier, CA 90606
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17055946
World Cultures Reading Circle Book Discussion at Westchester-Loyola Village Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Please join us to discuss A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. New members are welcome.
Where: Westchester-Loyola Village Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm
Address: 7114 W. Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/world-cultures-reading-circle-book-discussion-5
Silver Lake Book Club: The Director at Silver Lake Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Please join us to discuss The Director by Daniel Kehlmann.
The Silver Lake Book Club meets to discuss books 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 13th
Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 2411 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90039
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/silver-lake-book-club-5
Luna Open Mic Premiere! at Moonstone & Mist Bookstore/BlendzUp Acai & Coffee Bar – In-Person Event
Please join us for the launch of Luna Open Mic and Featured Poets to be offered by La Poet Society every 2nd Tuesday of the month.
Hosted by Egyptian Princess, featured guests include:
Ricardo Means Ybarra is an L.A. mestizo and the first Poet Laureate of Malibu (serving from 2017 to 2019). He has authored multiple books, including poetry collections and novels such as Radical Beauty (2019), Quilt (2025), Brotherhood of Dolphins, and A Framing Job.
Jolynn Freed Regan N/A
Frankie Hernandez is a published writer and television producer who has been part of the Los Angeles literary scene for 25 years.
Candace Margarita is a queer Nuyorican and Boricua artist, performer, writer, and spoken word poet. She performs as one half of the poetic comedy improv duo, The Poesers. The Prototype Show & Open Mic, which is a monthly experimental poetry event. She released a poetry zine collection of battle cries titled R O A R through A Pocketful of Poesy and Barnes & Noble Press. She is also working on her debut poetry and prose book, The Antidote.
Where: Moonstone & Mist Bookshop at BlendzUp Acai & Coffee Bar
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 1913 S. Catalina Ave., Redondo Beach, CA 90277
Website: Instagram Page
Activism Book Club: Not Too Late at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us for the newest addition to the Village Well Book Club family, the Activism Book Club!
Each month, we’ll dive into a book that informs and directs us about the state of the world, and how we can put what we learn into practice. We’ll have guest speakers, workshops, volunteer activities, and discussions of how we can positively impact the community. We’re looking forward to building a community that’s more connected around our collective well-being.
Our selection for discussion is Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. Edited by Rebecca Solnit & Thelma Young Lutunatabua.
An energizing case for hope about the climate, from Rebecca Solnit (“the voice of the resistance”—New York Times), climate activist Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and a chorus of voices calling on us to rise to the moment.
Not Too Late is the book for anyone who is despondent, defeatist, or unsure about climate change and seeking answers. As the contributors to this volume make clear, the future will be decided by whether we act in the present—and we must act to counter institutional inertia, fossil fuel interests, and political obduracy.
These dispatches from the climate movement around the world feature the voices of organizers like Guam-based lawyer and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists like Dr. Jacquelyn Gill and Dr. Edward Carr; poets like Marshall Islands activist Kathy Jetnil-Kijner; and longtime organizers like The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz. Guided by Rebecca Solnit’s typical clear-eyed wisdom and enriched by photographs and quotes, Not Too Late leads readers from discouragement to possibilities, from climate despair to climate hope.
Reserve your seat at website link!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
ALOUD Reading Series: John Green, with Julia Whelan, & Hollywood, Ending at LFLA at Saban Theater – In-Person Event
Join us to welcome literary phenom John Green, who returns to examine the attraction and toll of celebrity culture with his first-ever novel written for adults, Hollywood, Ending! Informed by years of proximity to celebrity through film adaptations and his own online stardom, Green’s latest is a meditation on how fame can change your life in exciting but terrifying ways.
With trademark tenderness and wit, Green’s anticipated return comes nine years after Turtles All the Way Down, at a time when content competes for our attention and people everywhere vie to break into stardom.
Its timing is no mistake—and ALOUD is excited to invite you to hear more from John live on stage.
John Green is the award-winning, #1 bestselling author of books including Looking for Alaska, The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down, The Anthropocene Reviewed, and Everything Is Tuberculosis. With his brother, Hank, John has co-created many online video projects, including Vlogbrothers and the educational channel Crash Course. John‘s books have won many prizes, including an Audie Award, an Edgar Award, the Michael L. Printz Medal, and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. John lives with his family in Indianapolis. You can visit him online at johngreenbooks.com.
Julia Whelan is known for her award-winning work Once And Again, leads in the TV movies Fifteen and Pregnant and The Secret Life Of Zoey, and numerous guests starring roles on television shows. Dubbed “The Meryl Streep of Audiobooks” Whelan is an author, screenwriter, lifelong actor, and acclaimed audiobook narrator of over 800 titles. Her debut novel, the international bestseller My Oxford Year, was released as a Netflix film. She is also the voice for longform journalism, the founder of Audiobrary, and a Grammy-nominated audiobook director.
Reserve your seat at website link!
Where: Saban Theater
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Website: https://lfla.org/event/hollywood-ending-john-green/
Dual Author Event: A Conversation with Nita Noveno & Mia Alvar: Mud on the Moon and In the Country at Bel Canto Books Off-site at Ambitious Ales – In-Person Event
Join us for a conversation with Nita Noveno and Mia Alvar, who will discuss and sign Mud on the Moon and In the Country, respectively.
Nita Noveno will present and discuss Mud on the Moon and Mia Alvar will present and discuss In the Country.
Nita Noveno is the recipient of the 2024 Women’s Prose Prize from Red Hen Press for her hybrid memoir Mud on the Moon, published in August 2026. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a moving blend of autobiography and imagination” and “an auspicious first outing.” A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Program at The New School, her creative nonfiction and hybrid work has appeared in MĀNOA, Hippocampus, The Margins, and elsewhere. She teaches creative nonfiction, composition, and literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and is the founder, curator, and host emeritus of Sunday Salon, a long-running reading series in New York City. The child of immigrant parents from the Philippines, she grew up in the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska and now lives in Queens, NY.
Mia Alvar’s collection of short stories, In the Country, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction, the University of Rochester’s Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award.
Mia has been a writer in residence at the Corporation of Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Blue Mountain Center for the Arts. She has received fellowships from the Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and Sirenland Writers’ Conferences. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, One Story, The Missouri Review, the Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She has taught at Columbia University, the Center for Fiction in New York, and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers.
Born in the Philippines and raised in Bahrain and the United States, Mia graduated from Harvard College and the School of the Arts at Columbia University. She lives in California.
Where: Bel Canto Books at Ambitious Ales
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 4019 Atlantic Ave., Long Beach, CA 90807
Website: withfriends page
Emily Yahr, with Sarah Rodman, & Taylor Swift: The Debut Years at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Emily Yahr, in conversation with Sarah Rodman, will discuss and sign Taylor Swift: The Debut Years.
Meet Taylor, 2003. She’s a teen who came to Nashville with blisters on her fingers from learning to play a 12-string guitar. In every room she enters, she’s the youngest person (by decades) and often the only woman. And if anyone asked if she could see herself becoming the biggest superstar on the planet, her answer probably would have been yes.
Writing alongside industry veterans after school, Taylor Swift’s songwriting ability set her apart. But her origins are more complex than a teen tapping into a new generation of country music fans. It’s a story of taking risks, like walking away from powerhouse label RCA to strike out with an unknown, unfunded new label, and of trusting her instincts when no one else did.
Washington Post reporter Emily Yahr pulls back the curtain on the country music industry—from executives who said yes to Taylor (and those who regret saying no), to collaborators like Scott Borchetta, Nathan Chapman, and Liz Rose, to Nashville itself. Intimate and immersive, Yahr takes us to iconic locations like Music Row and The Bluebird Cafe, as well as to Hendersonville High and the Swifts’ own lakefront house.
Taylor Swift: The Debut Years tells the definitive origin story of today’s biggest star, with never-before-published interviews. Taylor’s decade in Nashville shaped her as a musician and ultimately changed country music itself long after she left the genre.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Gerry Rich & Chasing Hollywood at Chevalier’s – In-Person Event
Celebrate the launch of Gerry Rich’s book: Chasing Hollywood: A Marketing Chief’s Lessons on Breaking Through, part memoir, part industry history, and part field guide. If you’ve been to movies in the last three decades, you were likely motivated to go thanks to a Rich marketing campaign. His campaigns include some of the most recognizable films and franchises of our time—James Bond, Iron Man, Mission: Impossible, Mean Girls—and the book takes readers behind the scenes of how those movies found their audiences.
Joining Rich is marathon swimmer Diana Nyad. She is the only person to have swum from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage, a feat she completed on her fifth attempt. Her story was told in the Netflix film NYAD, which earned Oscar nominations for both of its stars, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster. She is also a journalist, broadcaster, author, and we are proud to say neighbor! Nyad, a longtime friend of Rich, will share her insights into how a movie gets made and more importantly how to make sure people find out about it in this world of media saturation.
Gerry Rich has held senior marketing roles at Columbia Pictures, Miramax, MGM, Paramount, and MGM/United Artists. Ad Age named him one of America’s Top 100 Marketers. Chasing Hollywood is his first book, published by HarperCollins Leadership.
This is a book about persistence. Alongside the stories are hard-won lessons on creativity, resilience, and breaking through in an industry where nearly everyone is competing for the same finite attention.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Author Event: Min Jin Lee, with Guests, & American Hagwon at Diesel, A Bookstore Off-site at First Congregational Church – In-Person Event
Min Jin Lee, in conversation with Lee Isaac Chung and Jamie Chung, will discuss her new novel, American Hagwon.
The National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko returns with a breathtaking contemporary epic: a masterpiece by turns sweeping and intimate, that reckons with ambition and moderation, lust and loyalty, personal dreams and familial duty.
In schools and churches, hotel rooms and nail salons, law firms and fried-fish shops; in cramped, dingy apartments and luxury, gated communities, the men, women, and children in American Hagwon struggle to find satisfaction and meaning in a world that seems to grow less forgiving with each passing year. Once comfortably middle class in Korea, John and Helen Koh and their three children—Bo, DH, and Mido—find their lives upended, first by a shocking betrayal by John’s oldest friend, then by the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Desperately striving to regain their footing, they leave Seoul for Sydney and eventually settle in Southern California—where new vistas of opportunity open up for the children as their parents, strangers in a strange land, must adjust to a new life in which their experience and education mean little, and they set their sights on whatever it takes to provide for their children’s futures. The Kohs, their friends, relatives, and even their foes move in and out of each other’s lives as they navigate new courses across the years, always nursing the almost all-consuming faith that education will lead the next generation to success and security.
In American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee has crafted an unforgettable, panoramic novel where the smallest of gestures can have enormous repercussions, where the bonds of family and of memory twist and fray but rarely break, and where willful self-sacrifice—for the benefit of loved ones and even strangers—is a kind of prayer.
Lee Isaac Chung is a writer and director who grew up in Lincoln, Arkansas, on a small farm in the Ozark Mountains. His first feature film was the Rwandan family drama Munyurangabo, which premiered at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to great acclaim. His other feature films are Lucky Life, Abigail Harm, and I Have Seen My Last Born. His most recent film, Minari, won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.
Jamie Chung is an actress, mother of twins, entrepreneur and philanthropist. In film, she won the Special Jury Award at SXSW for her performance in the film Eden and is known for her roles in The Hangover II & III, Sin City 2, Oscar winning Big Hero 6 and more. In television, Jamie received praise for her role as “Ji-Ah” in HBO’s Lovecraft Country and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. Jamie’s most recent work includes Matt Reeves’ Batman: Caped Crusader for Amazon, Spyglass film Reunion, Fox’s Accused, NBC’s The Hunting Party, Fox’s Murder in a Small Town, hosting Dexter: Resurrection’s after shows for Paramount and was recently in film Stone Cold Fox. Soon you’ll be able to see Jamie in season 2 of HBO’s I Love LA opposite Rachel Sennott.
RSVP; Ticketed
Where: Diesel Off-site at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite 33., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-10-13/min-jin-lee-american-hagwon
Adult Book Group: Theo of Golden at Once Upon a Time, Montrose – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Join our discussion of Allen Levi’s Theo of Golden: A Novel.
Whether you loved it, hated it, or haven’t finished it, we want to see you at our Adult Book Club that has been going strong for 40+ years at America’s Oldest Children’s Bookstore!
One spring morning, a stranger named Theo arrives in the small Southern city of Golden. He doesn’t explain much about where he came from or why he’s there—but when he visits the local coffeehouse, where pencil portraits of the people of Golden hang on the walls, he begins purchasing them, one at a time, and giving each portrait to the person depicted. In exchange, he asks only for the person’s story. And so, portrait by portrait, person by person, secrets are revealed, regrets are shared, and ordinary lives are profoundly altered.
A story of giving and receiving, of seeing and being seen, Theo of Golden is an unforgettable novel about the power of generosity, the importance of connection, and the quiet miracles that happen when we choose kindness and wonder.
Allen Levi—attorney, judge, singer/songwriter, author—lives on and cares for family acreage near a small town in middle Georgia. Theo of Golden is his first novel.
NOTE: Free to attend.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Tuesday, the 13th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page
Mystery Book Club at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
Meets every other month, generally on the second Tuesday at 7:00 pm.
We read new release mysteries. Book selection is done by email voting prior to each meeting so that the following month’s book will be available at the preceding month’s meeting.
Facilitated by Bobby Mccue
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-10-13/mystery-book-club
Brian Evenson, with Nghiem Tran, & Phantom Limb at Skylight – In-Person Event
Brian Evenson, in conversation with Nghiem Tran, will present and discuss Phantom Limb.
Master of literary horror Brian Evenson returns with a long-awaited follow-up to his 2016 novel, Last Days.
After destroying the headquarters of an underground amputation cult, a burned and battered Kline finds himself in a holding cell. When he enlists the help of an ex-cop to commute his prison sentence, Kline inadvertently tangles with a schism of the very cult he sought to destroy. Can Kline investigate the sect’s ritualistic murder spree without getting lured into their ranks?
Frigid and precise, Phantom Limb interrogates our notions of wholeness, fate, and the lengths we are willing to go to connect with a higher power.
Brian Evenson has won the World Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. He is also the recipient of three O. Henry Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize. He lives in LA.
Nghiem Tran was born in Vietnam and raised in Kansas. He received his BA from Vassar College and his MFA from Syracuse University. A Kundiman Fellow, his poetry has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Offing, Hyphen Magazine, and The Margins. His debut novella, We’re Safe When We’re Alone (Coffee House Press) was one of NPR’s Books We Love 2023.
RSVP
Where: Skylight
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-10-13/brian-evenson-w-nghiem-tran-phantom-limb
Roddy Bottom, with John Early, & The Royal We at Stories Books & Café – In-Person Event
Roddy Bottom, in conversation with John Early, will present The Royal We: A Memoir (*paperback edition) from Akashic Books.
Roddy Bottom is a musician, writer, creator, and actor based in New York City. He started the band Faith No More in San Francisco in the early 1980s and toured the world, selling millions of records. In 1992, he came out of the closet and blew open the spectrum of what being gay in the world of rock music meant. That same year he also formed the critically acclaimed band Imperial Teen, cited as the original pioneers of alternative queer rock. Bottum moved to New York City in 2010 and has performed and created records with Crickets, Nastie Band, and Man on Man, a band with his partner, Joey Holman. He is developing his Sasquatch opera project into a musical in New York City, where he continues to live.
John Early is an American comedian, actor, and director.
RSVP
Where: Stories Books & Café
Date: Tuesday the 13th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1716 W. Sunset Blvd Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://storiesla.com/events/6052220261013
Virtual Cobalt Series & Open Mic: Rick Lupert & Guest Rachel McKibbens, plus Open Reading – Online Zoom Event
Cobalt Poets Reading & Open Mic and host Rick Lupert will welcome guest Rachel McKibbens, plus an Open Reading online.
Rachel McKibbens is a Chicana writer and two-time New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow. She is the author of three full length-books of poetry, blud (Copper Canyon, 2017), Into The Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press, 2013), and Pink Elephant (Small Doggies Press) as well as the chapbook Mammoth (Organic Weapon Arts).
Where: Cobalt Poets – Online Zoom Event
Date: Tuesday, the 13th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Address: Online event (see site)
Website: Cobalt Event Page
LiveTalks LA Presents: An Evening with David Byrne & Sleeping Beauties at Robert Frost Auditorium – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
David Byrne will present and discuss Sleeping Beauties: Why Good Ideas Go Dormant and How They Wake Up.
It’s nice to believe in a meritocracy of ideas—genius is always recognized, innovation always seized upon and rewarded. In fact, so many of the people we now acknowledge as the world’s great creators initially got little traction for their work. It faded out, and only later—often much later—did it somehow come roaring back to life.
Discoveries as diverse as dark matter, lichen, and continental drift…technologies from solar panels to the steam engine…artists from Bach to Bruegel, Vermeer to Melville…all, David Byrne shows us, were sleeping beauties. Why did they fall asleep? How did they wake back up? Ranging across centuries and the full scope of human endeavor, Byrne arrives at important conclusions that serve as a lens for bringing to light new seeds for our future breakthroughs.
Sleeping Beauties is a master class in how not to be blind to the next great thing. Several times throughout history, the shock of the new landed like a blow on vested interests and entrenched views, putting innovation on hold. Suppression emerged from pushback, the absence of key supporters, or simply a lack of complementary economic conditions.
David Byrne is a musician, performer, writer, and multidisciplinary artist who has captivated audiences since 1975, when he co-founded Talking Heads. Over the course of his career he has released 20 studio albums, scored films—most notably The Last Emperor, for which he received Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Grammy wins—and brought his singular vision to the stage, from the Broadway production American Utopia, which received a Special Tony Award and was adapted into a film directed by Spike Lee, to Here Lies Love, his disco musical that received four Tony Award nominations including Best Original Score, to Theater of the Mind, an immersive theatrical journey co-created with writer Mala Gaonkar. His visual art—including photography and installation works—has been exhibited internationally, and he is the founder of Reasons to Be Cheerful, an online publication devoted to solutions-based journalism. Byrne has published multiple books, including Bicycle Diaries, How Music Works, and Arboretum.
RSVP: Ticketed
Where: Robert Frost Auditorium
Date: Saturday the 10th
Time: 8 pm
Address: 401 Elenda St., Culver City, CA 90230
Website: LiveTalks Page
Da Poetry Lounge Open Mic at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person Event
The nation’s largest weekly spoken word Open Mic event is 28 years strong. DPL is a community space for every poet to be heard. They provide a platform to celebrate poetry while using it as the foundation for creativity, innovation, and expression across an array of media outlets.
Hosted by BLU.
With DJ Faucet.
$10 suggested donation. Pay what you can. Do NOT line up prior to 7:30 pm Free parking adjacent to the theater.
Masks are encouraged. See website link for details.
Where: The Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center
Date: Tuesday, the 13th
Time: 9 pm – 11 pm (Doors at 8:15 pm)
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd. #101, Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: Instagram Page
Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?
Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block for a brief intro and 40 minutes of free writing on any topic without judgement. Afterwards, you will be able to share a bit about your process and ask Francesca questions about your writing.
Francesca Lia Block is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories, and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association, and from the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY. Currently she teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension, Antioch University, Pocket MFA, and numerous workshops across the country. Francesca also edits LIT ANGELS, a literary journal available on Substack. Her latest novel is House of Hearts now out in paperback. https://www.francescaliablock.com/
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Mystery Book Club at West Valley Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us for engaging discussions at our monthly Mystery Book Club meeting!
10/14: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
Where: West Valley Branch Library, LA\PL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 10:30 am – 12 pm
Address: 19036 Vanowen St., Reseda, CA 91335
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/mystery-book-club-22
Wilmington Book Club: In the Time of the Butterflies at Wilmington Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us as we discuss In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez and receive your books for next month as well.
For questions, please contact klarson@lapl.org.
Where: Wilmington Branch Library, LA\PL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 1300 N. Avalon Blvd., Wilmington, CA 90744
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/wilmington-book-club-12
Loyola Village Book Club: Good Night, Irene at Westchester – Loyola Village Branch Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
Join us in the Community Room to discuss Good Night, Irene by Luis Alberto Urrea. New members welcome.
Where: Westchester – Loyola Village Branch Library, LA\PL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 12 pm – 1 pm
Address: 7114 W. Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/loyola-village-book-club-discussion-8
Central American Memoria Histórica Archive Fall 2026 Contemporary Artist Series: Carolina Rivera Escamilla at Cal State LA – In-Person Event
Join us in the Student Union Theater to welcome Carolina Rivera Escamilla for our Contemporary Artists Series.
Carolina Rivera Escamilla is a writer, poet, educator, theater actor, documentarian, and cultural worker based in Los Angeles. She has over forty years of artistic practice, is published in several anthologies, and her book of short stories, “…After…” (2015) seamlessly intertwines the historical memory of the Salvadoran civil war, transforming language into the poetic imagination of hope and compassion. Her first book of poetry, In the Corner of Your Country was published in 2023.
Escamilla is the director, writer, and producer of the documentary, “Manlio Argueta: Poets, and Volcanoes,” (2011), a brilliant homage to the internationally acclaimed Salvadoran writer and novelist. The film will be screened in its entirety at this open and public event.
Where: Cal State LA, Student Union Theater
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 1:40 pm – 2:55 pm
Address: 7114 W. Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: Instagram Page
Good Trouble Reading Group: The Gastronomical Me via Edendale Branch Library, LAPL – Online Event
For this month’s Good Trouble Reading Group, we’ll be discussing a selection from The Gastronomical Me, M.F.K. Fisher’s memoir of the travels that set her on the path to becoming one of the greatest modern food writers. In 1929, when newly married Fisher and her husband journeyed through France and farther afield, a whole world of novel flavors and experiences opened up to her. Her account of the meals she shared and the eccentric characters she met along the way unfolds against the backdrop of mounting pre-war tensions and her own growing awareness of how food would soon become her life’s work. In these profound, deeply observed reports from her first forays into the world, Fisher created a foundational story of travel, food, and self-discovery that still influences and inspires readers and writers today.
Email eden@lapl.org to read the selection online and for the Zoom link to attend.
Where: Edendale Branch Library, LAPL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/good-trouble-reading-group-gastronomical-me
2nd & 3rd Grade Book Club: at pages: a bookstore – In-Person Event
2ND & 3RD GRADE BOOK CLUB: Meets monthly, generally on the second Wednesday of each month at 4:30 pm.
We read new releases of early grade fiction. Book selection is done by voting at each meeting for the following month’s meeting.
Facilitated by Whitney Howard. Please RSVP to whitney@starlandalchemy.com.
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 4:30 pm – 5:30 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-10-14/2nd-3rd-grade-book-club
Malibu Library Book Club: The Good Lord Bird at Malibu Library, LACL – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
An absorbing mixture of history and imagination, and told with James McBride’s meticulous eye for detail and character, The Good Lord Bird is both a rousing adventure and a moving exploration of identity and survival. For Adults.
The Malibu Library Book Club is now available on Zoom. Participate from the comfort of home! Contact the librarian at cfischer@library.lacounty.gov or call 310.456.6438 to be added to Zoom participation.
Where: Malibu Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 5 pm – 6:30 pm
Address: 23519 West Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17328147
Artesia Book Club: The Five People You Meet in Heaven at Artesia Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a book discussion. The book for October is The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. For adults.
Books are available for checkout at the library. Some titles are available as free downloadable eBooks or digital audiobooks from LA County Library at lacountylibrary.org.
All interested persons are welcome and invited to attend.
Where: Artesia Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 18801 Elaine Ave., Artesia, CA 90701
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17548910
Spanish Book Club: En agosto nos vemos / Until August at Cellar Door Bookstore – Online Zoom Event
Participants will discuss En agosto nos vemos / Until August by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The extraordinary rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize–winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover. Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios, and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart. Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love—an unexpected gift from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-07/history-book-club-banished-citizens
Live Talks LA Presents: Barbara Kingsolver, with Lisa Napoli, & Partita via Program– Online Virtual Event
Join us online for An Evening with Barbara Kingsolver, in discussion with Lisa Napoli, discussing the writing life and her new novel, Partita.
Livia Cable has made her peace with her marriage and modest livelihood in the farm country where she grew up, until a shocking phone call from an old lover shakes her to the core. Decades earlier, this man knew her as Livia Bohusz, a music conservatory student estranged from her home and family, uncertain of anything except her passion for music and promise as an extraordinary pianist. His request, now, to see her again stirs up ghosts she’s kept at bay for a lifetime. Shifting between past and present, Livia’s decision to meet or reject the reunion means confronting step by step, in memories framed as musical dances, the experiences of childhood loss, abandonment, self-immolating passion, and perilous attachment to a man who broke her belief in love and ruptured the course of her life. With razor-sharp acuity and deep affection, Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver’s unforgettable new novel reflects on class barriers, the risks of ambition, and the timeless, life-changing power of art.
Barbara Kingsolver is the author of ten bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, The Bean Trees, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, and Coyote’s Wild Home, a children’s book co-authored with Lily Kingsolver. She also collaborated with family members on the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than thirty languages and has earned a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has received numerous awards and honors including the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, Demon Copperhead, the National Humanities Medal, and most recently, the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.
Lisa Napoli is the author of six books, including the best-seller, Susan Linda Nina & Cokie, about the “founding mothers” of NPR. A former broadcaster on public radio and MSNBC, she covered the rise of the Web for the NY Times as a columnist & reporter. A recent graduate of the CUNY Graduate Center program in Biography & Memoir, Lisa teaches memoir workshops and loves consulting with writers to help develop their craft. She recently was named a literary arts fellow at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA.
RSVP: Ticketed
Where: Live Talks LA
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: LiveTalks Page
Peter King, with Mina Kimes, & The Game at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to hear Peter King, in conversation with Mina Kimes, to discuss The Gamet.
With his signature blend of history, insider reporting, sharp opinion, and vivid anecdote, Peter King, in conversation with Mina Kimes, offers an extraordinary front-row-seat chronicle of the modern NFL, taking us into the defining moments, teams, controversies, and more.
For 40 years, Peter King’s unmatched access, curiosity, and passion have made him synonymous with the National Football League. He broke countless stories, giving us the human side of the sport and influencing countless reporters. Players trusted him; coaches and owners revealed information to him. He gathered it all into notebooks and columns that kept fans riveted.
Now, in The Game, King has brought all his knowledge and insight together in one place to tell the story of the modern NFL as no one else could. Moving from the mid-1980s, when the league went head-to-head with baseball in popularity, to the present, when it dominates every other entertainment in America, King narrates the NFL’s explosive rise from the inside. He puts us in the room with Pete Rozelle, toward the end of the legendary commissioner’s career and life. He takes us on the Madden Cruiser, on a cross-country journey with John Madden. He goes behind the scenes in the Reggie White free-agency saga, when the small-town Green Bay Packers made the canniest offer you’ll ever hear. He gives us Deion Sanders’s philosophy on how to be great on the field and how to work the system off it. He shows us Steve Young, lying in a bed with IVs in each arm after the greatest game of his life on the biggest stage. He shares the bizarre story of how a tanning bed and some well-timed push-ups helped catapult Peyton Manning to the top of the 1998 draft. He reveals Nick Foles’s mastery of a moment no one thought he could be equal to. He brings us inside the worlds of referees, of owners, of NFL drafts. Looking at the future, he fires a warning shot about the greed overtaking the game.
Peter King wrote for Sports Illustrated from 1989 to 2018, including the weekly multiple-page column “Monday Morning Quarterback.” He is the author of five books, including Inside the Helmet. He has been named National Sportswriter of the Year three times. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Mina Kimes is an NFL Analyst at ESPN, where she is one of the regulars on NFL Live, ESPN’s flagship football program, which won Sports Emmys for Best Daily Studio Show in both 2025 and 2026. In addition to her work on NFL Live, Mina also appears on shows such as First Take and SportsCenter, and hosts her own football podcast, The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny. Before joining ESPN as a Senior Writer for ESPN the Magazine in 2014, Mina was an award-winning investigative journalist for Fortune Magazine and Bloomberg News.
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Santa Monica, CA 90403
Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-10-14/peter-king-mina-kimes-game
WEHO Reads Event: Into the Unkown Readings – City of West Hollywood – Online via Zoom & YouTube Event
Let’s open portals to spectacular new worlds and get lost in them.
What can we discover in worlds that have never existed? And how does queer imagination remake the rules of magic, adventure, and belonging?
Five queer fantasy and YA authors venture past the edges of the map—into imagined realms cozy, macabre, sweeping, and strange. Their books conjure witches and spellwork, alternate universes, and heroes who have rarely seen themselves at the center of the story. In an evening of reading and discussion, they’ll talk about building the fantastical, the freedom of the undiscovered, and why imagined worlds can tell the truest stories about our own.
Featuring Georgia K. Boone, Kiri Callaghan, Lizzy Ives, C.B. Lee, and Shelly Page.
WeHo Reads is a literary series presented by the City of West Hollywood. The 2026 program is produced by BookSwell, a literary media company amplifying historically excluded voices. Additional support is provided by media partnerships with Book Soup and Los Angeles Review of Books. Attendees are advised that the program may include mature language and themes.
More information at the link in bio.
RSVP: Free
Where: City of West Hollywood Online Event
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: Instagram Page
Wiseburn Library Book Club: The Silent Patient at Wiseburn Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us for a book discussion and light refreshments! This month, read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Copies of the books are available at the library. For ages 18+.
Refreshments generously provided by the Friends of the Hawthorne and Wiseburn Libraries.
“Alicia Berenson is a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, living in a posh area of London. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late. Alicia shoots him five times and then never speaks another word.”
Where: Wiseburn Library, LACL
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 6:45 pm – 7:45 pm
Address: 5335 W. 135th St., Hawthorne, CA 90250
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17415217
Los Feliz Writers: Shut Up and Write (2 sessions) in Los Feliz at Bar Alcove – 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 14th
Time: 6:45 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1929 Hillhurst Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: Instagram Page
Abigail Savitch-Lew, with Emdash, & Livonia Chow Mein at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Abigail Savitch-Lew, in conversation with Emdash, will discuss Livonia Chow Mein.
In the vein of Happiness Falls and Family Lore, a gripping story of family history and political upheaval centered around a Chinese family-owned restaurant in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and its impact on the neighborhood’s Jewish and Black residents over the course of a century.
In 1978, two tenements on Livonia Avenue in Brownsville burn to the ground, killing one resident and displacing dozens of others. It remains unclear who set the buildings ablaze, but the survivors are convinced the culprit is Mr. Wong.
Who exactly is Mr. Wong, and what allegedly drove him to this extraordinary act of violence, is the question that consumes this novel as it plunges into four generations of Wong family history. First is Koon Lai, an immigrant who runs a Chinese restaurant on Livonia Avenue; second, his son Richard, a man desperate for his own chance at the American Dream; and third, Jason, a poet who seeks his escape in the bohemian counterculture of the 1970s, but finds himself an unwitting participant in Brooklyn’s gentrification. In the 21st century, Jason’s daughter Sadie returns to Brownsville as a journalist, determined to unravel the mystery of what happened decades earlier on the night the buildings blazed.
Joining together the present and the past is the community organizer Lina Rodriguez Armstrong, who was also displaced by that fire and who has spent the intervening years fighting for the rights of Brownsville’s residents and organizing a Livonia Avenue community land trust.
A stunning debut from a new talent, Livonia Chow Mein contemplates how the American pursuit of freedom relies on a collective amnesia and challenges us to consider what it would take for us to truly live in harmony.
Abigail Savitch-Lew is a writer of fiction and nonfiction and an American of Jewish and Chinese (Ashkenazi and Toisanese) descent. She has a BA in literary arts from Brown University and an MFA in fiction from Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of the novel Livonia Chow Mein, and her short stories have been published in The Round, Post Road, The Best Teen Writing of 2010, and The Apprentice Writer. Previously, she was a staff reporter for City Limits, an Asian American Writers’ Workshop Margins Fellow, and an adjunct professor of creative writing at Rutgers. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, the artist Emmanuel Knight, her sister-in-law, and their cat.
EMDASH a.k.a Emily Lu Gao (高璐璐) is a poet-who-also-writes-fiction, educator, and daughter of Chinese immigrants. She writes to heal, grow, and decolonize. They’ve received support from LAMBDA, McCormack Writing Center, Sundress Publications, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, The Chinese American Museum of LA, Jersey City Arts Council and more. She has learned as much from community organizing and open mics as she did from her Rutgers-Newark MFA in Poetry. They’re published in Poetry Northwest, ANMLY, Alocasia, Underblong and elsewhere.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
Matthew Quick & Dad, Love Me at Chevalier’s – Online Event
Matthew Quick will present and discuss Dad, Love Me: A Memoir.
Matthew Quick is the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook. From the outside, Matthew Quick seemed to have it all: a loving marriage, a thriving career as a novelist, a beautiful home, and a public role as a mental health advocate who spoke to audiences around the world as a success story. Privately, he was struggling with depression, and some days he didn’t want to live.
At the root of it was his relationship with his father. When a young Quick first said he wanted to become a novelist, his father’s response was a single cutting word, “Idiot!”, and that voice stayed with him for decades. Quick poured that pain into The Silver Linings Playbook, drawing its tense father-son relationship from his own life. The novel became a New York Times bestseller and an Oscar-winning film starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, but the approval he longed for never arrived. As the distance between them grew, Quick sank further into anxiety and addiction.
The memoir follows his path back. A health scare forces him to get sober, only for writer’s block to threaten his career. He turns to a Jungian analyst he nicknames “Zeus,” and in those sessions long-buried shame and grief finally surface. Then, just as he is putting himself back together, his father is diagnosed with dementia. Knowing that any chance at reconciliation has to happen now, Quick and his wife leave coastal North Carolina and move to an island outside Beaufort, South Carolina, just around the corner from his parents. There, as his father slowly slips away, Quick tries to build the connection they never had.
Dad, Love, Me is an honest, often funny, and deeply moving exploration of masculinity, mental illness, addiction, generational trauma, and the hard work of forgiveness. It’s a book for anyone who grew up starved for a parent’s love and chose to keep loving anyway.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-10-14/matthew-quick-author-dad-love-me-memoir
Books & Brews Book Club: Lonesome Dove at pages Off-site at Culture Brewing Company – In-Person Event
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 14th at 7 pm at Culture Brewing. Each ticket includes a copy of Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry and a beer (or soft drink if you prefer).
Thank you so much for reading with pages: a bookstore, and we look forward to seeing you at Culture Brewing to discuss this book!
If you are unable to attend this book club meeting but would like to be added to our mailing list for future Books & Brews meetings, please email Jeff at jeff@pagesabookstore.com.
The 40th anniversary edition of the Pulitzer Prize–winning classic of the American West, with a new foreword by Yellowstone cocreator Taylor Sheridan. An epic of the frontier, Lonesome Dove is the grandest novel ever written about the last defiant wilderness.
Where: pages Off-site at Culture Brewing Company
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 327 Manhattan Beach Blvd., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-10-14/books-and-brews-book-club
Book Event: Jasmine Guillory, with Rebekah Weatherspoon, & It’s Only Dancing at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Jasmine Guillory, in conversation with Rebekah Weatherspoon, will discuss It’s Only Dancing.
It’s the summer before her senior year of high school and Kat (Kitty to her family) planned to spend it reading good books, working on her college applications, and enjoying her independence. Instead, she’s stuck for an entire month with her family at a camp in the desert in Southern California.
When she stumbles across a staff party on the first night, she’s jealous of their joyful, uninhibited dancing. She hasn’t danced like that since two years ago, when she was forced to quit ballet, which she once loved more than anything. She’s determined to leave dance where it belongs—the past.
But Jordan, the handsome and magnetic hip-hop dance instructor, keeps dragging it into her present. As Kat begins sneaking around and lying to her parents to spend time with Jordan, she’ll have to ask herself—what is she willing to risk to finally feel free? And is it possible her feelings for Jordan could reignite her love for dance?
Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author of nine novels including The Wedding Date, the Reese’s Book Club selection The Proposal, and Flirting Lessons. Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan, Bon Appetit, and Time, and she is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. She lives in Oakland, California. IT’S ONLY DANCING is her YA debut.
After years of meddling in her friends’ love lives, bestselling and multi award-winning author Rebekah Weatherspoon turned to writing romance to get her fix. Raised in Southern New Hampshire, Rebekah now lives in Southern California where she will remain forever because she hates moving. With over twenty-five titles under her belt, Rebekah has covered subgenres including extremely sexy and equally dark romantic suspense, paranormal romance, steamy romantic comedies on horseback, and now young adult romance. With everything going on in the world she still believes in love, the fluffier the better.
RSVP
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: Eventbrite Page
Jon Klassen and Tess Hannigan Present: Designing Books for Babies at Skylight – In-person Event
Jon Klassen will present and discuss The House with Nobody in It.
Here are the things in this house: a chair, a clock on the wall, a stool, a lamp. And more. What’s missing from this house? Somebody. This is the house with nobody in it. Well, there might be something . . .
Designed as a sturdy keepsake to read, play with, and treasure, The House with Nobody in It takes readers through a recognizable, cozy house, while layered die-cut doors and windows throughout introduce a hint of intrigue. This is the house with nobody in it—or is it?
Pairing the familiar with a touch of mystery, Jon Klassen proves once again to be a master of breaking the mold, playing with expectations…and delighting even the youngest of readers.
Jon Klassen will present and discuss Your Horse.
Another entry in the Your Things board book series for the youngest of children.
This is your horse.
It is yours to have.
Your horse is brown, but it could be other colors, too. It can do a lot of things, like run, walk, and jump. But best of all, it will keep your secrets. It will never ever tell. At the end of the day, it will sleep, your secrets held behind closed eyes, and you can sleep, too. Jon Klassen brings his minimalist touch to a soothing story of a horse that a child can trust and befriend, one that is there for whatever the child needs. Building on the quiet but evocative world he created in Your Farm, Your Forest, and Your Island, Jon Klassen turns his focus to objects in Your Truck and now Your Horse, inviting young children to consider more things that are theirs and theirs alone, reinforcing that they have a right to things like solitude, exploration, and companionship.
Jon Klassen is the creator of the #1 New York Times bestselling I Want My Hat Back, which received a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor, and its companions, This Is Not My Hat, which won a Caldecott Medal and a Kate Greenaway Medal, and We Found a Hat, named a Publishers Weekly Best Children’s Book of the Year. He is also the creator of the Your Places and Your Things board book series, as well as the picture books The Rock from the Sky and The Skull. He is the illustrator of How Does Santa Go Down the Chimney?, Extra Yarn, Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, and the Shapes Trilogy, all by Mac Barnett. For his contributions to children’s literature, Jon Klassen is a member of the Order of Canada and was named the 2026 recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Originally from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Jon Klassen now lives in Los Angeles.
Tess Hannigan is the author and illustrator of picture books, including Spider in the Well and The Bear Out There. She also works in editorial art, amongst other things, and considers herself an all-purpose illustrator. Some say she has the heart of a designer and the sensibility of a professional clown. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario.
Where: Skylight
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-10-14/designing-books-babies-jon-klassen-and-jess-hannigan
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 14th
Time: 7:30 pm – 10 pm
Address: 4321 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: Instagram Page
Tom Cole, with Bradford Nordeen, & Chimes: A Monologue at Poetic Research Bureau – In-Person Event
Poetic Research Bureau hosts Tom Cole for a reading and conversation with writer Bradford Nordeen, celebrating his new book on Song Cave, Chimes: A Monologue.
Through a striking and unforgettable performative monologue, Tom Cole’s Chimes: A Monologue introduces the distinctive voice of a first-person narrator mentally indexing his lifetime of memories. His individual experiences of shame, addiction, and self-destructive behavior are recounted with mischievous humor, even if they have left lasting scars. Now, after months of monotonous solitude, a storm of unresolved issues resurfaces, triggered by the incessant and irritating clang of an out-of-town neighbor’s outdoor wind chime. As his self-examinations become an obsession, feelings of alienation and unworthiness worsen and lead to unconventional solutions.
In the tradition of the plays of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Georg Büchner, Charles Ludlam, and Sarah Kane, Cole weaves the very bleakest of humor with startling and heartbreaking feats of intimate self-reflection. Speaking on issues of class, sex, intimacy, and the highs and lows of queer reality today, Chimes asks how and where one finds the answers to living a complicated life.
Tom Cole is a writer, performer, and artist living between the Lower East Side and Kingston, NY. His work has been presented at Participant Inc, Thread Waxing Space, Art on Air, Dixon Place, Clocktower Gallery, ICA Boston, Performa, Howl Arts, Poetry Project, and the Boston Center for the Arts. He is a three-time MacDowell Playwriting fellow, and an Edward Albee Foundation Playwriting fellow. Cole’s writing has been anthologized in Pathetic Literature, edited by Eileen Myles; Sluts, edited by Michelle Tea; Flesh and the Word 4, edited by Michael Lowenthal; This New Breed, edited by Rudy Kikel, and Flashpoint, edited by Michael Bronski. His first book, Chimes: A Monologue, will be released by The Song Cave in fall 2026.
Bradford Nordeen is a queer film educator and historian who works in writing and exhibitions. The founder of Dirty Looks Inc, he is currently the Mellon curatorial fellow for The Horror Show at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Where: Poetic Research Bureau
Date: Wednesday the 14th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm (Doors at 7 pm)
Address: 2220 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90057
Website: https://www.poeticresearch.com/events/tom-coles-chimes-a-monologue
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: My Favorite Teacher.
Where: Art Parlor
Date: Wednesday the 14th
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 14th
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: DarkER Ink Anthology Reading: a Poetry Anthology Sequel Inspired by Horror at The Ugly Mug – In-Person Event
Host Ben Trigg features guest readings from DarkER Ink Anthology: A Poetry Anthology Sequel Inspired by Horror, published by local publisher Moon Tide Press.
The poems in this follow-up collection to 2019’s Dark Ink prove that—like the creature left for dead, who always comes back—you can’t keep great poets’ love for horror buried six-feet deep. Crack the spine of this book, before it comes for yours.
$5 cover fee, cash only
Where: The Ugly Mug, Orange
Date: Wednesday, the 14th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm
Address: 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA 92866
Website: Facebook Page
Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?
Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block 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 15th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Book Club for Adults: Parable of the Sower 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 Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Pick up a copy at the information desk today! For adults
Where: Chet Holifield Library, LACL
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 4 pm – 5 pm
Address: 1060 S. Greenwood Ave., Montebello, CA 90640
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17458802
Book Launch: Danny O’Dea, with Will Iannacone, & Packages: A Novel at North Figueroa Bookshop – In-Person Event
Danny O’Dea, in conversation with Will Iannacone, will discuss Packages: A Novel
Packages is a novel about the stories we tell to survive—and the ones that haunt us when survival isn’t enough.
Set against the charged intimacy of a Southern college town, Danny O’Dea’s debut follows Michael McKnight, a young man orbiting grief, desire, and moral uncertainty as he navigates friendship, sexuality, faith, and the quiet violence of complicity. When a series of mysterious packages begin arriving at an off-campus house, Michael finds himself drawn into a web of secrecy that forces him to confront not only what his peers are capable of, but what he himself is willing to ignore.
Moving fluidly between memory and present action, Packages is both a coming-of-age story and a reckoning—about masculinity, queerness, guilt, and the ways institutions and friendships fail the most vulnerable. With prose that is sharp, intimate, and darkly funny, O’Dea captures the intoxicating freedom of youth alongside its moral blind spots, asking how responsibility is formed, deferred, or abandoned altogether.
At once tender and unsettling, Packages announces a bold new literary voice and marks the arrival of a writer unafraid to look directly at the cost of looking away.
Danny O’Dea is a writer whose work examines grief, masculinity, and the quiet violence of looking away. His fiction is concerned with the stories we tell to survive—and the cost of believing them. Packages is his debut novel.
Where: North Figueroa Bookshop
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 5:30 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6040 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042
Author Event: Gigi Leung Lee-Chi & Everyday Moment at Cerritos Library – In-Person Event
Join us for a special event featuring Gigi Leaung Lee-Chi, author of Everyday Movement and translator Jennifer Feeley for a conversation on fiction, translation, and the responsibility of carrying Hong Kong stories across languages. Set during and in the aftermath of Hong Kong protests, the collection explores how authoritarian pressure, migration, political disappointment, and collective trauma enter the most intimate spaces of daily life. Following the conversation, there will be a Q&A, followed by a book signing. Books will be available for purchase from BelCanto Books. Registration is required as space is limited, ages 18+.
Where: Bel Canto Books at Cerritos Library, Skyline Room
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 6 pm
Address: 18025 Bloomfield Ave., Cerritos, CA 90703
Pitch Deck Poetry Slam at Cal Lutheran, Kwon Fong Gallery of Art & Culture – In-Person Event
Pitch Deck Poetry Slam brings slam poets and entrepreneurial thinking together to tackle real-world problems and pitch creative solutions through spoken word.
Where: Cal Lutheran, Kwon Fong Gallery of Art & Culture
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 8:30 pm
Address: 60 West Olsen Rd., Thousand Oaks, CA 91360
Website: https://plts.callutheran.edu/management/events/student-events.htm
Adaptation Book Club: Frankenstein (2025), Film Screening at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will watch Film: Frankenstein (2025), dir. Guillermo del Toro.
Have Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein read before this film screening. The discussion on the book and the film will be the week after on October 22nd at 6:00 pm!
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 8th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Special Author Event: Kristin Fontana & Amazon Rising: Awakening the Wild Feminine at pages: a bookstore– In-Person Event
Join us to welcome Kristin Fontana to present and sign her book Amazon Rising: Awakening the Wild Feminine.
For many years. Kristin Fontana wrote a weekly Starcast for The Beach Reporter, connecting with readers throughout the South Bay. With the publication of Amazon Rising Awakening the Wild Feminine, Kristin is returning to Manhattan Beach and looks forward to reconnecting with many of the readers who followed her forecasts over the years.
In Amazon Rising, evolutionary astrologer Kristin Fontana introduces asteroid Amazone #1042 as a powerful key to understanding instinct, courage, autonomy, and the inner feminine warrior. Drawing on two decades of research and seven years of writing, Fontana offers a framework for discovering where the Amazon lives in the birth chart and how her story can help readers reconnect with what is natural and essential within themselves – and find the courage to be who they are.
RSVP
Where: pages: a bookstore
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 904 Manhattan Ave., Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
Website: https://pagesabookstore.com/event/2026-10-15/special-author-event-kristin-fontana
Author Event: Avra Wing, with Don Cummings, Present Books at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us to meet author Avra Wing, in conversation with Don Cummings!
Avra Wing’s memoir, Stride: How I Walked Away from Trauma Toward Healing, has been praised as “eye opening,” and a “standout” that will appeal to anyone “facing new challenges in life.” She is also the author of the novel Angie, I Says, a New York Times notable book, made into the feature film Angie starring Geena Davis and James Gandolfini, as well as the young adult novel After Isaac. Her poetry has appeared in New Ohio Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Image, and the Santa Fe Literary Review, among other journals, and her collection, Mammoth Life & Accident, will be published in January 2027. Avra leads a writing workshop at the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York. She has three grown children, and lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband.
Don Cummings is known for his fearless and humorous writing in books, essays, theatre, and film. His love-sex-and-health memoir, Bent But Not Broken, is published by Heliotrope Books. It received fine praise from Kirkus Reviews. Cummings’ skills as a writer are apparent from the beginning. “His prose is effortlessly clever, finding the entertaining medium between lyricism and sass.” He has had short stories published in Rain Taxi, Epiphany, and Cagibi. He often performs his personal essays at venues such as Comedy Central’s Sit ‘n Spin, HBO Workspace, Largo, Brooklyn Reading Works, Tell It!, Personal Space and True Story.
RSVP at website to let us know you’ll be there.
Where: Underdog Bookstore
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 312 South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, California, 91016
Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/avra-wing
Bel Canto Book Club: Dirty Kitchen at Bel Canto Books, Retro Row – In-Person Event
Join us for a discussion of Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family by author Jill Damatac.
Bel Canto Book Club meets in person on the third Thursday of each month at our bookstore (2106 E 4th Street, LB) to discuss a hand -picked favorite chosen by bookstore owner Jhoanna.
Past book club favorites include: Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, and Yellowface by R. F. Kuang.
If you live in the Long Beach/LA area, you may purchase books directly from Bel Canto Books by visiting our Retro Row location (2106 E 4th Street) or our KUBO LB location (3976 Atlantic Avenue). A link is included below to purchase the book online via open_in_newBookshop.org.
Book Club Guidelines
We strive for a thoughtful and respectful discussion of the featured book and its related themes.
You do not have to have finished the book to participate, but we ask that you contribute to the discussion in whatever way you feel comfortable.
We do not tolerate demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech.
Where: Bel Canto Books, Retro Row
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 6:30 pm
Address: 2106 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: withfriends page
L.A. Harbor Lights Poetry Night: F. Douglas Brown Features at Arena Theatre, L.A. Harbor College – In-Person & Online Hybrid Zoom Event
This student and community-based series 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.
F. Douglas Brown is the author of two poetry collections, ICON (Writ Large Press, 2018), and Zero to Three (University of Georgia, 2014), winner of the 2013 Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. He also co-authored with poet Geffrey Davis, Begotten (URB Books, 2016), a chapbook of poetry as part of the Floodgate Poetry Series. Brown, an educator for over 25 years, currently teaches African American Poetry and African American Studies at Loyola High School of Los Angeles, where he serves as the Director of the Office of Equity and Inclusion.
He is both a Cave Canem and Kundiman fellow and was selected by Poets & Writers as one of their ten notable Debut Poets of 2014. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies such as the Academy of American Poets, The PBS News Hour, The Langston Hughes Review, The Virginia Quarterly, and Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature (University of Pittsburg, 2021).
Hosted by Christian Hanz Lozada.
Where: Arena Theatre, L.A. Harbor College
Date: Thursday the 17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 300 E. Ocean Ave., Long Beach, CA 90802
Website: Instagram Page
Eric Hendrikx, with Tommy Flanagan, & Motorcycle Life at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Eric Hendrikx, in conversation with Tommy Flanagan, will discuss Motorcycle Life: Stories, Wisdom, and Obsession from Riders Around the World.
More than 100 riders from around the world reveal how motorcycles shape their lives, identities, and sense of freedom in this visually rich exploration of modern motorcycle culture.
In Motorcycle Life, author and journalist Eric Hendrikx brings together more than 100 riders from across the globe in a visually rich exploration of what draws people to two wheels—and why they never leave. Through intimate interviews and striking photography, the book captures a wide spectrum of voices, from actors and builders to racers, designers, and everyday riders.
Featuring stories from Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, Tommy Flanagan, Carey Hart, and Steve Caballero, each interview reveals something deeper: how riding becomes a tool for freedom, a response to grief, a path to independence, or a lifelong obsession.
Some found motorcycles as children. Others came to them later, searching for something they couldn’t name. All of them discovered the same truth—that riding strips life down to something more immediate, more honest, and more real.
Part cultural document, part visual journey, Motorcycle Life is a celebration of the people behind the handlebars—and the shared human need for movement, connection, and meaning.
Eric Hendrikx is an author, journalist, and lifelong motorcyclist whose work explores adventure, resilience, and modern identity. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, and Robb Report, reaching readers in more than 100 countries. He coauthored Bringing Metal to the Children with Zakk Wylde and Echos from Eden with Dax Dasilva, featuring Jane Goodall. He lives between Toronto and Los Angeles with his wife, Natasha, and their two English black Labradors, Indy and Poe. For more books, articles, and his Substack newsletter, visit EricHendrikx.com. Follow @EricHendrikx
Where: Book Soup
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-10-15/eric-hendrikx
Beyond Latinx Heritage Month: Event at LibroMobile – In-Person Event
Sarah Rafeael Garcia and Lizzette Barrios Gracian will be in conversation between two Latina-owned bookstores in OC.
Promoting Literacy & Unity through Social Media: How Can We Connect as OC.
RSVP
Where: LibroMobile
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St., A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/beyond-latinx-heritage-month-1
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 15th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Rabbit Hole Nonfiction Reading Club at Skylight – In-Person Event
Join us in store every third Thursday of the month for Skylight’s political, current events, and history nonfiction book club!
Rabbit Hole Reading Club is a monthly in-person current events book group and a nonfiction book subscription.
Take part in one or both!
If you’d like to get on the listserv and receive book club updates from us, email rene@skylightbooks.com.
To participate in the book group, just read the book and show up at the meeting! No RSVP required.
Where: Skylight
Date: Thursday the 15th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-10-15/rabbit-hole-nonfiction-reading-club
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 16th
Time: 9 am – 10 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Weekly Pajama Storytime at Once Upon a Time, Montrose – In-Person Kids & Family Event
Our most popular story time is ready to delight and dazzle! This is also the prime time to see Pippi Longstocking, our bookstore cat in action.
There is a large FREE parking lot off Florencita Dr. as well as metered parking along Honolulu Ave. and Montrose Ave.
Free to attend.
NOTE: Free to attend.
Where: Once Upon a Time
Date: Friday, the 16th
Time: 9:30 am
Address: 2207 Honolulu Ave., Montrose, CA 91020
Website: Once Upon a Time Event Page
Bilingual Storytime at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Bilingual Storytime! Exposing your children to multiple languages is highly beneficial for their learning and development, and what better way to do it than through this fun activity where we will read a wonderful story in both English and Spanish.
¡Hora de cuentos bilingüe! Exponer a tus hjijos a varios idiomas es de gran beneficio para su aprendizaje y desarrollo, y qué mejor que hacerlo en esta divertida actividad en donde leeremos un maravilloso cuento en inglés y en español.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Booze and Books: Meet Shane Hawk and Justin C. Key at Ritual Brewery Redlands – In-Person Event
Inlandia and Booze and Books welcomes authors Shane Hawk and Justin C. Key to a meet-and-greet event.
Booze and Books is a horror, weird lit, book and trinket fair hosted by the Inlandia Institute and Pen & Honey Bookstore at Ritual Brewery. There will be horror themed vendors and a special meet and greet with best-selling and award-winning authors, Justin C. Key and Shane Hawk. Free 21 and over event. No outside food or drinks permitted. Food vendor on site.
Shane Hawk is a horror writer, editor, and creator of the Native Horror Index, a comprehensive database of Indigenous horror. He is a coeditor of the bestselling Never Whistle at Night series and cowriter of the horror stage play The Land Has Spoken. At Counterpoint Press, Hawk exclusively acquires and edits books authored by Indigenous North Americans. You can find his work in numerous anthologies, magazines, and academic volumes. He lives in San Diego, California, with his wife and daughter, and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma.
Justin C. Key wanted to write for as long as he can remember. He blended his passions for science and writing by penning short stories in middle school and sat down to draw up his first novel while studying Biology at Stanford University. He’s been writing ever since.
His short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Crossed Genres, and KYSO Flash, as well as in the revolutionary children’s iPad application, FarFaria. Justin’s medical training richly informs his writing, and the power of story and narrative allows him to connect with patients on a deeper level. Justin lives in Los Angeles with his wonderful wife, two sons, and daughter.
Inlandia is a non-profit literary arts and culture organization serving the Inland Empire.
Where: Ritual Brewery
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 5 pm – 8 pm
Address: 1315 Research Dr., Redlands, CA 92374
Website: https://aboutredlands.com/redlands-events/booze-and-books-horror-weird-lit-trinket-fair-october-2026
Mystery Book Club: The Binding Room at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss the novel The Binding Room (Inspector Anjelica Healey Thriller #2) by Nadine Matheson.
When Detective Anjelica Henley is called to investigate the murder of a popular preacher, she discovers a second victim, tortured and tied to a bed in an upstairs room. He is alive—but barely—and his body shows signs of a dark religious ritual.
With a revolving list of suspects, Henley finds herself in the spotlight with more questions than answers as she attempts to untangle both crimes. But when another body appears, the case takes on a new urgency. Unless she can apprehend the killer, the next victim may just be Henley herself.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 6 pm – 7 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-16/mystery-book-club-binding-room
Doménica Feraud & You Are What You See at Book Soup – In-Person Event
Doménica Feraud will present and discuss You Are What You See: how my favorite shows became my worst influences.
Entertainment was never just entertainment…It was instruction.
From the sleek hallways of Constance Billard to the rainy corridors of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Doménica Feraud—like so many of us—was raised by TV. It was her greatest comfort, her most passionate obsession, her favorite form of therapy. Her childhood friends were cloaked in laugh tracks, her mentors monologued under stage lights, and her ideas of love, sex, power, beauty, and self-worth were shaped frame by frame.
But what if the stories that comforted women also misled us into becoming shells of who we were meant to be?
In You Are What You See, Feraud peels back the shiny veneer of pop culture to uncover the deeper truths encoded in our most beloved media. With fierce intellect and unflinching vulnerability, she revisits the onscreen moments that taught her how to exist as a woman, how to eat, how to please, and how to love—for better or for worse. From the subtext of sitcom banter to the seductive manipulation of office romance, she reveals the quiet violence of cultural messaging and the radical possibility of unlearning it.
A bold blend of cultural criticism, personal narrative, and feminist inquiry, this essay collection invites readers to reclaim their gaze and rewrite the stories they’ve been told about who they are. For every feminist who ever crushed on a problematic character, every person shaped by reruns, and every pop-culture devotee ready to challenge the status quo, You Are What You See is a mirror, a reckoning, and a call to demand more from the media that shapes our world.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 8 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90069
Comics O’Clock at Heavy Manners Library – In-Person Event
Featuring: Harper Sims, Mary Cruz, Sophia Uy, Sunil Hall, David King, Shanti Rittgers, Alabaster Pizzo, and Nic Smal.
Harper Sims is a storyboard artist, designer and illustrator living in Los Angeles, CA.
Mary Cruz N/A
Sophia Uy is a Chinese-Filipino-American story artist, filmmaker, and illustrator pursuing a BFA in Character Animation and Creative Writing minor at CalArts. Storytelling media of all sorts are where she finds her greatest joy, and filmmaking is the medium she loves most of all.
Sunil Hall is an animation artist, writer and creator based in the Los Angeles area. He co-created The Mighty Ones, a show he ran at Dreamworks. Hall also co-executive produced the Disney cartoon Stugo, and he has Directed and Storyboarded on many productions at multiple studios over the last 25+ years.
David King is a visual artist working in painting, drawing and collage. His work has been shown in Europe and across the U.S., including venues such as Artist’s Space in New York, The Soap Factory in Minneapolis and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and The Lab in San Franicsco. He has enjoyed several residencies—including at Ucross and Jentel in Wyoming, and Recology and the Lucid Art Foundation in the Bay Area. King is the recipient of a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. He lives in Grass Valley, CA with his husband.
Shanti Rittgers is an artist from Connecticut known for her work in animation and illustration. She has contributed to projects like “Invincible Fight Girl” (2024) and “Scrooge: A Christmas Carol” (2022), and studied illustration with a concentration in animation at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Alabaster Pizzo (b. 1988) is from New York and went to the School of Visual Arts. An excerpt of her comic “Mimi and the Wolves” (published by Avery Hill) appeared in Best American Comics 2015, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and edited by Bill Kartalopoulos and Jonathan Lethem.
Nic Smal is a South African animator, writer, musician, and voice actor. Alongside Lucy Heavens, he is the co-creator, co-star, and co-leader of the animated musical-comedy Kiff and serves as an executive producer, writer, and storyboard artist for the series, in addition to writing and producing songs and voicing Principal Secretary and other characters.
NOTE: Ticketed.
Where: Heavy Manners Library
Date: Friday, the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 2115 Sunset Blvd,, Los Angeles, CA 90026
Website: https://www.heavymannerslibrary.com/events/comics-o-clock-a-comic-reading-10-16
Jennifer Tseng, with Eric C. Wat, & Mixed Feelings: Essays at Skylight – In-Person Event
Co-Sponsored with Kundiman, a nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Join us to hear Jennifer Tseng, in conversation with Eric C. Wat, discuss Mixed Feelings: Essays.
Jennifer Tseng is the author of three award-winning poetry books—The Man with My Face, Red Flower, White Flower, and Thanks for Letting Us Know You Are Alive—; a collection of flash fiction, The Passion of Woo and Isolde, winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award and finalist for a CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction; and a novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness, finalist for the PEN American Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award. She is an associate professor of literature & creative writing at University of California, Santa Cruz. You can read essays from her forthcoming collection, Mixed Feelings, on The Paris Review Daily.
Eric C. Wat is the author of four books, including Daddy Issues: Stories (2025 winner of Barbara DiBernard Prize in Fiction), Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (2023 winner of the Outstanding Book Award in History from the Association of Asian American Studies) and the Los Angeles Times-bestselling novel SWIM. His second novel manuscript was a finalist in the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series in 2022.
Where: Skylight
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 7:30 pm – 9 pm
Address: 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90027
Website: https://skylightbooks.com/event/2026-10-16/jennifer-tseng-w-eric-c-wat-mixed-feelings
Open Mic Night at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us every third Friday for Open Mic Night, featuring local performers.
FREE, for all ages.
Where: Underdog Bookstore
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 312 South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, California, 91016
Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/open-mic-august-8bg33-td25h
Rebekah Faubion, with Liz Kerin, & What a Nightmare at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Rebekah Faubion, in conversation with Liz Kerin, will discuss What a Nightmare.
They called her a nightmare, so she became one.
Haven Powers has spent years trying to disappear. Once a loud, troublemaking girl who defied every expectation in her small town of Friendship, Texas, now she’s learned to hide her fire behind a quiet receptionist’s smile. It’s safer that way—for her, and for everyone else.
When an unsettling encounter with her predatory boss cracks open the tightly locked box inside her, Haven dreams a terrifying dream about him, only to wake up and discover it’s come true; he’s dead. Desperate to gain control of this deadly power once and for all, Haven returns home.
Welcomed suspiciously with open arms, Haven is immediately met with the ghosts of her past. Under the suffocating pressure of the town and her family who believe obedience is next to godliness, Haven soon finds herself on a path to revenge. She’ll show them what happens when the girl they called too much, too loud, too everything, finally lets her demons loose.
Rebekah Faubion is the author of queer rom-coms with tons of heart and more than a little steam. She is also the author of the young adult horror novel Lost Girls, coming from Delacorte Press in 2026. When she isn’t writing books that make her bi soul sing, she enjoys watching anything romantic or scary (or, better yet, both), hiking in the Hollywood Hills, and reading tarot by candlelight.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Friday the 16th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-10-16/rebekah-faubion
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music Event at Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
SWAAM Spoken Word Art & Music is offered every 1st & 3rd Friday of the month and hosted by Lorenzo Frank.
Featured guests: “Tebe Zalango.”
Tickets at Eventbrite: $15.
NOTE: See site for details.
Where: Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center
Date: Friday, the 16th
Time: 8 pm – 12 am
Address: 4305 Degnan Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90008
Website: https://www.depoet.info/swaam
Santa Monica Poetry Reading Series: Third Friday Salon with host Elena Secota at Rapp Saloon/HI Santa Monica – In-Person & Online Hybrid Event
Santa Monica Poetry Reading Series: Third Friday Salon at Rapp Saloon is celebrating its 15-Year Anniversary and has an Open Mic & Featured Readers every 3rd Friday of the month.
Third Friday: Elena Secota, Host
This is a hybrid event, live in-person while offering a Zoom option for our performers and guests.
Featured guest poets and artists this month: TBA
Surprise Guests
Where: Rapp Saloon at HISUA
Date: Friday, the 16th
Time: 8:30 pm – 11 pm
Address: 1436 2nd St., Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: Facebook Page
Lit Angels: Morning Writing with Francesca Lia Block at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Do you want to find creative inspiration and overcome writer’s block in a supportive and peaceful community setting? Are you interested in writing professionally or for personal growth and healing but unsure where to begin?
Come join acclaimed author and writing instructor Francesca Lia Block 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 17th
Time: 10 am – 11 am
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Shut Up & Write! at The Wicked Wolf – In-Person Event
Bring your writing project for a focused session at The Wicked Wolf, followed by optional conversation with fellow writers. All experience levels are welcome. There are no critiques or readings. Nonalcoholic drinks are available.
Free writing session; please support the venue by purchasing a drink.
Where: Wicked Wolf
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 10 am – 12 pm
Address: 2332 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, CA 90806
Website: https://longbeacheventscalendar.com/event/8b6b81c9-26e5-5c78-b0b0-3986ee4db3cf/2026-10-31
Graphic Novel Book Club: Wake Now in the Fire via Bel Canto Books – Online Event
Join us for an online discussion of Wake Now in the Fire by author Jarrett Dapier, a graphic novel based on a true story, a group of high schoolers in Chicago work to overturn the system-wide ban of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis.
Past book club favorites include: Good Talk by Mira Jacob, In Waves by AJ Dungo, The High Desert by James Spooner, and Brittle Joints by Maria Sweeney.
If you live in the Long Beach/LA area, you may purchase books directly from Bel Canto Books by visiting our Retro Row location (2106 E 4th Street) or our KUBO LB location (3976 Atlantic Avenue). A link is included below to purchase the book online via open_in_newBookshop.org.
Book Club Guidelines
We strive for a thoughtful and respectful discussion of the featured book and its related themes.
You do not have to have finished the book to participate, but we ask that you contribute to the discussion in whatever way you feel comfortable.
We do not tolerate demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior and speech.
Where: Bel Canto Books
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 11 am
Address: Online Event (see site)
Website: withfriends page
Community Book Club: Love & Saffron at Lancaster Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join the discussion of Kim Fay’s novel Love & Saffron.
Held on the third Saturday of each month at Lancaster Library’s group meeting room. October’s selection is Love & Saffron by Kim Fay. For Adults.
When 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom sends a fan letter—as well as a gift of saffron—to 59-year-old Imogen Fortier, a life-changing friendship begins. Joan lives in Los Angeles and is just starting out as a writer for the newspaper food pages. Imogen lives on Camano Island outside Seattle, writing a monthly column for a Pacific Northwest magazine, and while she can hunt elk and dig for clams, she’s never tasted fresh garlic—exotic fare in the Northwest of the sixties. As the two women commune through their letters, they build a closeness that sustains them through the political upheaval of the 1960s and the unexpected in their own lives. Because of her correspondence with Joan, Imogen’s decades-long marriage blossoms into something new and exciting, and in turn, Joan learns that true love does not always come in the form we expect it to.
Regular print copies will be available at the reference desk. E-book, and e-audiobook versions are available within our system. We will also be selecting our next book club selections. This program is for adults.
Where: Lancaster Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm
Address: 601 W. Lancaster Blvd., Lancaster, CA 93534
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17328529
No Fest: Poetry Marathon Fundraiser at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center – In-Person & Online Hybrid YouTube Event
Beyond Baroque started No Fest in 2025 as a way to help make up for the loss of grant funding and to bring our community together in support of Beyond Baroque. For the last couple of years, we have continued to find ways to gather and raise the support needed to sustain our programs and mission to keep art, community, poetry, experimentation, and new literary work alive.
This year, we are asking our community to come together not only to help sustain this work, but to celebrate it. We hope you will join us for No Fest, and we look forward to seeing you at our historic space in Venice!.
In this marathon-style reading, Beyond Baroque gathers poets and members of the Beyond Baroque family in the Wanda Coleman Theater for a full day of poetry and art. The event will also include a community Open Mic hosted by Joseph Paulson, a Small Press Fair in the Poets’ Garden, the closing of the exhibition X: On The Road and At The Crossroads, and a special performance by L.A. rock band Lawndale, led by former Beyond Baroque Programming Curator, Jack Skelley, who organized readings and punk rock performances in the early 80s. Guests can purchase tickets for individual segments or as an all-day No Fest pass!
12 pm – 6 pm: Small Press Book Fair in The Poets’ Garden
Beyond Baroque Books, Magra Books, Afterword Books, Green Integer, T.O.P.I.D Press / Razorcake, What Books Press, Veterans for Peace, Drifter Zine, Venice Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library
Reading Segments in The Wanda Coleman Theater
12 pm – 1 pm: Metaphors Be With You
Michelle Bitting, Laela Duncan, Jeff Graham, Richard Modiano, Iván Salinas, Adam Stutz, Duncan Cuervo, Johanna Drucker, Karen Kevorkian, Lizeth de la Luz, Zachary Jensen
1 pm – 2 pm: Honoring Ancestors & Lineage
Cynthia Briano, Teresa Mei Chuc, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Lynne Thompson, Allison Hedge-Coke, Grace Muller, Harry Northup, Brian Sonia-Wallace, Xochitl Julisa Bermejo
2 pm – 3 pm: Nearly Fatal Poets
Laurel Ann Bogen, Suzanne Lummis, Brendan Constantine, Nikki Ochoa, Shelby Pinkham, Amy Raasch, Rhiannon Cielos Chavez, Steven Reigns
3 pm – 4 pm: Open Mic Hosted by Joseph Paulson
4 pm – 5 pm: Lunch Break
5 pm – 6 pm: QTPOC Power & Resistance
José Hernandez Diaz, Elina Katrin, Jeremy Ra, Luivette Resto, Mitchell Jacobs, AJ Luxton, Jen Cheng, Anika Duenas, José Enrique Medina, Julian dela Cruz
6 pm –7 pm: Ghosts of Venice West
Genesis Perez, S.A. Griffin, Tom Laichas, Mike Sonsken, Pam Ward, Holaday Mason, Rich Ferguson
7 pm –8 pm: Possibilities of Language
Jimmy Vega, Amy Gerstler, Joseph Mosconi, Gail Wronsky, Ivanna Baranova, Larkin Higgins
8 pm – 9 pm: Lawndale Performance
TICKETED: See Site for details.
Where: Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 12 pm – 9 pm
Address: 681 Venice Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90291
Website: https://www.beyondbaroque.org/calendar/no-fest-poetry-marathon-fundraiser
MFA Open Mic Event at Mt. Saint Mary’s University, Doheny Campus – In-Person Event
Join us for the MFA Open Mic at the Doheny Campus, immediately following the Open House.
Where: Mt. Saint Mary’s University, Doheny Campus
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 12 pm – 2 pm
Address: 10 Chester Place, Los Angeles, CA 90007
Website: https://www.msmu.edu/about-the-mount/events/?trumbaEmbed=view%3Devent%26eventid%3D1443297797
Book Release: Shawna Landler & The Role of Mom Will Be Played By at The Book Jewel – In-Person Event
Join us as we welcome Shawna Landler to present and discuss The Role of Mom Will Be Played By.
Where: The Book Jewel
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 12:30 pm
Address: 6259 W. 87th St., Los Angeles, CA 90045
Website: Instagram Page
Sisters in Crime Los Angeles: Modern Day Noir at Agoura Hills Library, LACL – In-Person Event
Join us as we welcome Sisters in Crime Los Angeles authors, DC Frost and Jaime Parker Stickle, 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 check-out through the library.
Attendance is limited, and advance registration is required. Please register every individual in your party. This will be used to save your spots in the program. We cannot guarantee availability for any unregistered attendees.
Where: Agoura Hills Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 1 pm – 2:30 pm
Address: 29901 Ladyface Ct., Agoura Hills, CA 91301
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17328611
Teach-In: Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants by Ashia S. Ajani at Reparations Club – In-Person Event
Come learn about native, nonnative, and invasive plant classification and its intersections with environmental racism, Afro-diasporic ecological knowledge, and world (un)making. Discussing excerpts from Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants (Timber Press, 2026), author-researcher Ashia Ajani makes a case for interpreting the lived realities of Black people in the Western Hemisphere through appreciating the complexity of plant insurgency and its implications for more tender living among the decline of Empire.
Tending the Vines unpacks the complex rhetorical lives of these plants, most of which have been used as both ugly metaphors for Black incursion as well as powerful symbols for Black liberation. It also highlights the ethnobotanical uses that have sustained displaced populations for centuries. Throughout, Ajani complicates our notions of “invasive” and belonging, by contextualizing how plants move, are moved, and, of course, move us.
Ashia S. Ajani is a storyteller and environmental educator born and raised in Denver, CO, unceded territory of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Their work has appeared in Sierra Magazine, Orion Magazine, Callaloo Literary Journal, and Atmos Literary Magazine, among others. Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023) was their debut poetry collection.
Where: Reparations Club
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 1 pm (Doors at 12:30 pm)
Address: 3054 S. Victoria Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: Eventbrite Page
Reading + Signing w/ Regina O’Melveny, Carolyn Brigit Flynn, & Deena Metzger at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us at the studio at Village Well for a reading and signing!
Authors Regina O’Melveny, Carolyn Brigit Flynn, and Deena Metzger will present their work new and old and sign copies of their books.
Regina O’Melveny is an artist and writer whose work has been widely published in literary magazines such as The Bellingham Review, The Sun, West Marin Review, and Barrow Street. Her poem, Fireflies, won the Conflux Press Poetry Award, released as an artist’s book designed by Tania Baban. She has published three chapbooks, Secret, New and other gods which won a prize from the Munster International Literary Centre in Ireland. Full-length poetry books include Blue Wolves winner of the Bright Hill Press award and The Shape of Emptiness released by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions. Her novel, The Book of Madness and Cures, published by Little, Brown and Company was listed as one of the six best historical novels of the year 2012 by NPR. Her novel The Sea-Cure is forthcoming from Running Wild Press. She lives in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Carolyn Brigit Flynn is a poet, essayist, and teacher. Her works include the poetry collection Communion, and three literary anthologies, most recently Sacred Stone, Sacred Water: Women Writers and Artists Encounter Ireland. Her poems and essays have been published worldwide, and she writes a monthly Substack newsletter. For more than 25 years, she has taught writing and led retreats in Ireland and California titled “Writing to Feed the Soul.” She lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her wife, the poet Jean Mahoney. More at http://www.carolynbrigitflynn.com and http://www.carolynbrigitflynn.substack.com/.
Deena Metzger lives at the edge of Topanga State Park with Coyotes, Bobcats, Cougars and Ravens. She has published 20 books. The Story that Must Not Be Told is her latest novel, following the eco-fictions, A Rain of Night Birds and La Vieja: A Journal of Fire. The Burden of Light is her latest book of poetry following Ruin and Beauty, New and Selected Poems. She has introduced Literature of Restoration as an Earth and spirit centered genre that doesn’t lead to extinction. Her essays are at Desperate Love Letters to a Wounded Earth, https://deenametzger.substack.com/. Website: www.deenametzger.net.
The Sea-Cure:
The Sea-Cure, a novel of journeys in the seventeenth century will transport you, dear reader, far beyond the first passage from Holland to Tenerife, aboard a merchant ship that also carries misfits and the mad sent away from their towns as outcasts. The ship sails between known and unknown islands, where the voyageurs traverse human and animal realms, beauty and beastliness, servitude and freedom, isolation and love. You’ll discover what brings together Hans, a handsome but poor Dutchman who tends the mad aboard ship, and Toñina, a fascinating Spanish lady of Tenerife whose bewildering appearance, an oddity inherited from her father, challenges all who meet her with both aversion and wonder. Shipwrecked on an unknown island, they will encounter and create the strange new geography of their lives.
The Light of Ordinary Days:
In 2013, exactly a century after her grandparents emigrated from Ireland to America, Carolyn Brigit Flynn returned to her ancestral homeland in the wake of a family tragedy. Raised in a boisterous Irish Catholic family in 1970s Washington, DC, Flynn grew up amid traditional music, stories, and blarney—but also with silence about the poverty and hardship her grandparents left. Her charismatic father bore his own wounds and shunned her when she fell in love with another girl in high school.
In her thirties, Flynn realized she could not build an authentic life until she reckoned with the Irish ghosts she felt coursing through her blood. Her journey took her from the sacred stones of Newgrange to a windswept Irish island where she lived alone for a month. In the coming years, she braided her own experience of trauma and healing with the deeper thread of Ireland’s history of colonization, ancient spirituality, and profound resilience. At once intimate and expansive, Flynn’s memoir is both a personal love letter and a historical excavation. Ultimately, The Light of Ordinary Days invites readers to consider how we reassemble ourselves after tragedy—how we make a true home, across the sea or within the soul, by honoring the places and people who came before.
The Story That Must Not Be Told:
In 1975, a German student Ina Andreae, comes to Los Angeles to study, and later commits suicide. Fifty years later, her brother, Wolfgang Andreae, visits Deena Metzger, who was Ina’s teacher, to ask what she knew. What followed from that alliance is this novella, a fiction that is not a fiction, an unfolding emergence of facts, events, and stories, showing us how wounds going back to Hitler still affect us, and their startling resemblance to the grim political dramas of today.
RSVP!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 1 pm – 3 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
2026 WAHLA FEMME FEST at Zula Den – In-Person Event
Join us for our 3rd annual FEMME FEST for a day of creativity, healing, and empowerment for women and femmes!
A creative & holistic healing day for women & femmes BY women & femmes. Come join us at the ZULA DEN for a rejuvenating creative and holistic immersion.
Featuring spoken word artists Pastiche Queen, Kat Magill & Arielle Estoria, hosted and produced by Ravina & LoloWink, the 3rd annual women and femme retreat is a for femmes, by femmes experience in Los Angeles, centering women, femmes, trans and nonbinary community members as well as those who resonate with femme identity. Holistic healing includes Body Work/ Massages by BODYWORK BY TANYA. We will also have workshops by Writing As Healing founder RAVINA , and other workshop facilitators channeling spirit of poetry, music and empowerment. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to nourish your mind, body, and soul!
Pastiche Queen is a multidisciplinary performing artist, creative producer, and educator whose work redefines the boundaries of contemporary multi-media performance. Operating at the vital intersections of queer, trans, and Indigenous storytelling, Pastiche Queen crafts immersive, deeply collaborative performance spaces that explore the complex text of identity, resilience, and community history.
Kat Magill is a 2x National Poetry Slam finalist, HBO Def Jam Poet, published author, educator and producer of the Poetic Film: The Myth. With over 15 years as a touring poet, her dynamic performances have graced prestigious stages such as HBO, Current TV, Politico, and the United Nations, where she has shared the spotlight with esteemed individuals including Queen Latifa, Ashley Judd, Sonia Sanchez, and Talib Kweli. Her poetry and deep-rooted sense of community have led her to become a celebrated educator of spoken word for two decades leading arts education as the executive director of Say Word, publish two collections of poetry, create a nationally touring poetry film, develop a nationally renowned spoken word curriculum, and debut three theater productions as a playwright.
Arielle Estoria was born and raised in foggy Northern California, now residing in Los Angeles CA, Arielle Estoria (R-E-L EH-STORY-UH) (she/her) is a Poet, Speaker and Host, Author and Actor. Her motto, “Words not for the ears but for the soul” stems from her dedication to remind anyone who encounters her and her work that words are meant to be felt and experienced not just heard. Arielle has shared her work through custom spoken word pieces, workshops and themed keynote talks with companies such as Google, Sofar Sounds, Lululemon, Dressember, Tedx, the SKIMS campaign by Kim Kardashian and more.
Tickets include general admission, food/ refreshments, workshop admissions, featured artists book signing access, journals, writing utensils.
General Admission + Massage Deposit: $10 deposit fee secures your space for a massage during the duration of the event.
You can choose your time slot for a 15-minute massage at the event.
$20 value- $10 deposit goes towards cost; $10 paid on site to Massage therapist directly (Venmo, zelle, cash, etc.)
Where: Zula Den
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 1 pm – 4 pm
Address: 4011 W. Jefferson Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90016
Website: Eventbrite Page
Poetry Writing Studio with Charlotte Ward 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.
Charlotte Ward has co-authored The Home Birth Book, Doubleday; Simply Live It Up: Brief Solutions, Purposeful Press; and since 1991, multiple editions of the best-selling gemology series: Diamonds, Emeralds, Gem Care, Jade, Opals, Pearls, Phenomenal Gems, and Rubies & Sapphires, Gem Book Publishers. She has edited many business projects, six books on life coaching, and three memoirs. With a BA in English and a teaching certificate, University of Florida, and an MLS with Distinction, Georgetown University, she holds credentials in the MBTI, Neuro-Linguistic Programing, Photo Reading, and Success Unlimited Network®. Long a member of Malibu Woman’s Club who delights in collaboration, she hosts a writing group, participates in area poetry events, and attends Santa Monica College Emeritus creative writing and literature classes.
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.
Where: Malibu Library, LACL
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 1:30 pm – 4 pm
Address: 23519 West Civic Center Way, Malibu, CA 90265
Website: https://visit.lacountylibrary.org/event/17328599
A Hundred Years in the Hundred Acre Wood at Central Library, LAPL – In-Person Event
The first Winnie-the-Pooh book is 100 years old, just like Central Library! We’re celebrating with stories, songs, a craft, and more! Intended for ages 3 and up. For more information, please contact children@lapl.org.
Central 100
Where: Central Library, LAPL, Children’s Literature
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071
Website: https://www.lapl.org/events/book-club-9
Walk and Write with Inlandia Institute at Mt. View Mortuary and Cemetery, San Berardino – In-Person Event
Cemetery tour will be led by Lauren Pedroza @riptours and the writing workshop will be led by RM Ambrose @rmambrosefiction and will happen on site right after the tour.
$50 and Registration is required.
Where: Mt. View Mortuary and Cemetery
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 2 pm – 5 pm
Address: 570 Highland Ave., San Bernardino, CA 92404
Website: Instagram Page
Leslie Adame, with Ashley Granillo, & Chloe Vega and the Issing Unseen at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Leslie Adame, in conversation with Ashley Granillo, will discuss Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen (Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic #2).
Born and raised in California and a first-generation Mexican American, Leslie Adame has lived by that motto since high school. Growing up in a low-income community, Leslie always felt a calling to give back. She completed thousands of hours of community service in high school and college alone and pursued Political Science at UCLA, only to realize halfway that politics was not her passion.
In Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen, after saving her parents from the clutches of an evil sorcerer, Chloe Vega just wants a normal year at her magical academy. But when you wield legendary new powers, danger is never far behind.
Her enemies will stop at nothing to use her to reveal the Agents of Magic to the rest of the world. And with their secret society on the brink of discovery, the agency begins to question whether Chloe is their best weapon—or their greatest risk.
When Chloe’s powers spiral out of control, the cost isn’t just their chance at victory, it’s the people she loves. Can she master her powers in time or will she lose everything?
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 2 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-10-17/leslie-adame
Saturday Afternoon Poetry: Sultana Raza + Poets published in Four Feathers Press online edition: BITE – Online Zoom Event
Join us online for a reading by Sultana Raza + Poets published in Four Feathers Press online edition: BITE.
Of Indian origin, Sultana Raza’s SFF work’s been published in Amon Hen, Entropy, Columbia Journal, Star*line, Bewildering Stories, Unlikely Stories Mark V, Blaze Vox, The World of Myth, impspired, Focus (BSFA), file770, Galaxy#2, Galaxy#4, Musing on Muses Anthology (Birgid Gate’s Press), and Antipodean SF. She has also published fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction. She has an MA in Literature.
All events are curated by Don Kingfisher Campbell.
Where: Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Online
Date: Saturday, the 17th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: Online SAP Zoom Event
Website: https://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com/
MG Author Visit: Sarah Mlynowski & Rumor Has It at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person MG Event
Join us for a visit from author Sarah Mlynowski in celebration of her new release Rumor Has It, co-authored by Christina Soontornvat!
Sarah Mlynowski is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author and coauthor of over fifty books for teens, tweens, kids, and adults, including the Whatever After series, the Best Wishes series, and the Upside-Down Magic series, which was adapted into a Disney Channel movie. Originally from Montreal, Sarah now lives in Los Angeles with her family. Visit her online at sarahm.com.
From strangers to sisters.
Annie couldn’t be more excited. She’s moving to an adorable small town where she’ll find the perfect friend group and maybe even her first boyfriend. Her new house has a pool, and she’s getting a stepsister her age named Leela.
Leela is NOT happy. She’s leaving the bright lights of New York City to live in the middle of nowhere with an annoying stepsister AND two stepbrothers. Plus, kids at her new school seem gossipy and toxic. Leela wants out.
When a blended family brings together two very different girls—each with their own secrets, crushes, and schemes—drama ensues. Will Annie and Leela find a way to get along, or is their luck about to run out?
Fast-paced and bingeable, this book features gorgeous illustrations by artist Madi Wong that bring the characters and setting to life. Bestselling and award-winning authors Sarah Mlynowski and Christina Soontornvat set up an irresistible series that will have you eager for Book 2!
RSVP!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Before the Ban Book Club: Banned Together (Weekend Meeting) at Cellar Door – In-Person Event
Banned Together: Our Fight for Readers’ Rights is a dazzling YA anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators.
Books are disappearing from shelves across the country. What does this mean for authors, illustrators, and—most crucially—for young readers?
This bold collection of fiction, memoir, poetry, graphic narratives, essays, and other genres explores book bans through various lenses, and empowers teens to fight back. From moving personal accounts to clever comebacks aimed at censorship, fifteen legendary YA authors and illustrators confront the high-stakes question of what is lost when books are kept from teens.
Contributors include Elana K. Arnold, Nikki Grimes, Ellen Hopkins, Kelly Jensen, Brendan Kiely, Maia Kobabe, Bill Konigsberg, Kyle Lukoff, MariNaomi, Trung Lê Nguyen, Ashley Hope Pérez, Isabel Quintero, Traci Sorell, Robin Stevenson, and Padma Venkatraman; the collection is a star-studded must-read that packs strength and power into every last word.
Striking illustrations from Ignatz-nominated artist Debbie Fong pair perfectly with the searing, impactful narrative. Resources include tips from the Vandegrift Banned Book Club and other teen activists, as well as extensive recommended book lists, a How to Start Your Own Little Free Library flier, and more.
Ashley Hope Pérez grew up in Texas and is the author of three award-winning novels for young adults, including Out of Darkness, which received a Printz Honor and the Tomás Rivera Book Award—and was one of the top ten most banned books of 2021. Ashley is a former high school teacher and an assistant professor of world literatures at The Ohio State University. In 2023, Ashley was a part of PEN America’s lawsuit against Escambia County, Florida. She lives in Columbus with her two sons; find her online at http://www.ashleyperez.com.
Debbie Fong is an Ignatz-nominated cartoonist, illustrator, and author living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author/illustrator of Next Stop, and the illustrator of What Can I Say? and How to Be a Person by Catherine Newman. Debbie is the artist behind POMMO Press, an online shop where she sells colorful prints, stationery, and other fun goods. Find her online at http://www.debbiefong.com and @pommopress.
Where: Cellar Door
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-17/ban-book-club-banned-together-weekend-meeting
David Silverman & Bel-Air: The Centennial at Book Soup – In-Person Event
David Silverman will discuss and sign Bel-Air: The Centennial
A luxurious, oversized celebration of the great houses of Bel-Air, one of Los Angeles’s most glamorous enclaves.
Meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated, the book offers an immersive exploration of Bel-Air’s architecture, interiors, and landscapes—long considered the jewel of Los Angeles and one of the world’s most coveted places to live.
Founded in the 1920s by oil magnate Alphonzo Bell, Bel-Air built its legacy on privacy, beauty, and understated opulence, blending the allure of Hollywood with the serene foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Over the decades, celebrated architects—including A. Quincy Jones, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, Paul Williams, and John Elgin Woolf—shaped the neighborhood with enchanting homes, grand estates, refined clubs, and landmark hotels that became haves for cultural icons from Alfred Hitchcock and Marilyn Monroe to Elizabeth Taylor and Beyoncé.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 8818 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90069
Website: https://booksoup.com/event/2026-10-17/david-silverman
Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club: Bookshops & Bonedust at Cellar Door – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes #2) by Travis Baldree.
When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn’t always what we seek.
Set in the world of New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and secondhand books.
Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes #1 New York Times bestselling books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.
Where: Cellar Door
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 5 pm – 6 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-17/sci-fi-fantasy-book-club-bookshops-bonedust
Celebrate 100 Years of Caltech: David Zierler & To Illuminate Nature at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
David Zierler, Caltech’s institutional historian, is the Ronald and Maxine Linde Director of the Caltech Heritage Project. This year he published To Illuminate Nature, from Molecules to the Cosmos, a beautifully illustrated book about Caltech’s first century of discovery and impact. Based on oral history interviews of Caltech’s leading faculty, staff, trustees, and alumni with accompanying essays, photographs, To Illuminate Nature charts the remarkable story of a small research institute in Pasadena whose researchers have changed the world through their world-leading work in science, engineering, and space exploration.
This is a free event in celebration of Caltech. Please use our free RSVP form to let us know if you can join us. The book, which is not available for sale, will be made available to the first 50 attendees who arrive for the presentation. The event space will be open for seating by 4 pm and early arrival is encouraged.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Saturday the 17th
Time: 5 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-10-17/caltech-david-zierler
California History Book Talk: Miriam Pawel, with David Ulin, & California Dreams at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
Join us for a conversation with Miriam Pawel, author of the new book California Dreams: The Making and Remaking of the University of California!
Pawel (The Browns of California) will be joined by journalist and author David L. Ulin (Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles) to discuss the history of the University of California that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar calls “essential reading.”
Pulitzer Prize winner Miriam Pawel’s epic history of one of the world’s elite public universities, its sweeping social impact, and hopeful lessons about endurance in troubled times.
Distinguished by its founding mission as an engine of upward mobility, the University of California-a constitutionally independent public trust-is a great American experiment that has persevered through fraught battles over access, funding, and leadership.
The University has been at the nexus of nearly every public policy debate and social movement since the Civil War, from women’s rights to student protests, from academic freedom to affirmative action, shaping policies that reverberate throughout the United States.
California Dreams narrates UC’s rise and resilience through the lens of those whose lives it has transformed-in particular, five pioneering graduates whose diverse paths underscore why the University remains, in the words of Berkeley graduate Joan Didion, “California’s best idea of itself.”
At a time of staggering inequality and uncertainty, as higher education faces unprecedented threats, that role has never been more crucial. Drawing on extensive research in ten archives and dozens of interviews, California Dreams weaves together the linked history of the school and state in all its drama, significance, and humanity; the result is a magisterial narrative of both a remarkable public institution of higher education, and also California itself.
Miriam Pawel is an author, journalist, and independent historian. Her most recent book before California Dreams, The Browns of California, won the California Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times book prize in history.
David L. Ulin is Professor of the Practice of English, and editor of the journal Air/Light. He is the author or editor of 20 books, and the former book editor and book critic of the Los Angeles Times.
RSVP!
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 6 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd., #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Obsidian Tongues Open Mic: Julia C. Gaytán at Galeria Jasmin – In-Person Event
Join us every 3rd Saturday of the month for Obsidian Tongues Open Mic hosted by Ceasar K. Avelar.
October’s featured poet is Julia C. Gaytán.
Julia C. Gaytán is a Xicana poet and math geek whose work has appeared in MALCS Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, Poets for Science, and The Waiting Room, an anthology published by Nervous Ghost Press. Her debut poetry collection, Ion Love, was recently published by Riot of Roses Publishing House and is available wherever books are sold.
Where: Galeria Yasmin
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 7 pm – 9 pm
Address: 250 W. 2nd St., Pomona, CA 91766
Website: Instagram Page
Author Event: Icole Levein, with Nancy Lynee Woo, & Diary of a Mad Girl at Page Against the Machine – In-Person Event
Join us to welcome climate activist and author Nicole Levin, in conversation with Nancy Lynee Woo, to discuss her just-released illustrated literary comedy, Diary of a Mad Girl: Me vs. The Oil Industry vs. My Nonprofit Job.
Part illustrated diary, part existential comedy, and part psychedelic feminist fever dream, Diary of a Mad Girl follows Joelle, a thirty-something climate organizer living in Los Feliz with her tiny dog. She believes she has assembled the perfect progressive life: a hot musician boyfriend, a nonprofit job battling the oil industry, and a deeply one-sided emotional attachment to Adeline, her favorite online yoga instructor. But beneath the curated identity and activist routines, something is unraveling—possibly society itself.
Through diary entries, poetry, and psilocybin-induced journeys into parallel universes, Joelle searches for meaning in a world defined by climate collapse, emotional precarity, and widespread exhaustion. Diary of a Mad Girl examines the contradictions of modern activism and asks what it means to fight for collective justice while privately fearing isolation, irrelevance, and collapse.
With its blend of sharp humor and emotional vulnerability, the book has been described as “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” for burnt-out adults suffering from climate anxiety, burnout culture, millennial disillusionment, and the absurdity of surviving late-stage capitalism.
Nicole Levin is a climate organizer, writer, artist, and baby musician living in Los Angeles with her tiny dog. She studied government and environmental science at Harvard, wrote for an evil comedy magazine, then moved to LA with the dream of writing about issues that mattered. Her disillusionment with Hollywood TV writing helped her discover a passion for climate organizing. She has worked with Sunrise LA, the Sierra Club, and currently works at the Wilderness Society where she listens to what the forest tells her to do. Diary of a Mad Girl is her debut book.
Nancy Lynée Woo is an eco-centric poet based in southern California who harbors a wild love for the natural world. She has released a full-length poetry book entitled I’d Rather Be Lightning from Gasher Press, as well as two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Salamander, Tupelo Quarterly, Radar Poetry, Stirring, West Trade Review, and others. She has an MFA from Antioch University and a BA in sociology and environmental studies from UC Santa Cruz.
RSVP!
Where: Page Against the Machine
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 7 pm – 7:30 pm
Address: 2714 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: Facebook Page
Sapphic Speak LA Presents: Jazz & Poetry at Sound Dhaba – In-Person Event
LA’s new sapphic open mic PREMIER night this October 17th. 🎺🤍 Think Audre Lorde meets Billie Holiday: A sexy sapphic speakeasy with jazz music.
🎹Dress to impress. Audience members bring your energy, a friend, and an open heart.
🎷Doors & sign-up sheet open at 7:30 pm, mic 8 pm – 10 pm, socializing til 11 pm. The mic is open for poetry, short story, comedy and song. We welcome themes of love in queerness. Performers get 3 minutes on the mic!
🍸 Beverages, NA, and snack options available.
🎙️ The mic is specifically for those identifying as sapphic or queer and allies are welcome, please be respectful.
$10 suggested donation, no one turned away.
Where: Sound Dhaba
Date: Saturday the17th
Time: 8 pm – 10 pm (Doors at 7:30 pm)
Address: 2714 E. 4th St., Long Beach, CA 90814
Website: Instagram Page
Storytime with Ophra Ashur & Sailing the ABCs at Chevalier’s – In-Person Event
Join us as we Sail the ABCs with author Ophra Ashur.
Sailing the ABCs by Ophra Ashur is a rhyming picture book that helps young children recognize letters before they learn the sounds letters make. Letters appear as friendly characters, called “alpha-besties,” grouped in small, easy-to-remember clusters like ABC and DEF. They sail an origami boat to a tropical island filled with waterfalls, cloud animals, and seashells, with hidden visual surprises for kids to find along the way. Ashur is a child therapist and educator, and the book includes watercolor illustrations and bonus activities: a letter color key, a “Can U C” discovery challenge, and instructions for folding an origami sailboat.
Where: Chevalier’s
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 11 am – 11:45 am
Address: 133 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004
Website: https://chevaliersbooks.com/event/2026-10-18/storytime-ophra-ashur
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 18th
Time: 11 am – 5 pm (specific 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 18th
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Author Event: Miyoki Chan and Sneha Villalva at Underdog Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join Miyoki Chan and Sneha Villalva in conversation at Underdog Bookstore!
Miyoki Chan is passionate about empowering others to embrace growth, resilience, and connection, one mindful step at a time. Transformation, she believes, happens exponentially within a supportive community. It unfolds through learning and reflecting Her professional background spans education, linguistics, psychology, communication, project management, and child development. Yet, what truly shaped her is the personal struggle and growth journey she’s gone through with her own children. With over thirty years of linguistics training and a master’s in the subject, she possesses a natural ability to identify patterns, habits, and strategies. Through writing, coaching, and community-building, she’s unearthed sustainable frameworks for leading and thriving; a journey that gave rise to Breaking Through Survival Mode.
Sneha Villalva served as the executive speechwriter for the UCLA chancellor and two Pomona College presidents. She was previously a journalist with The Press-Enterprise in Southern California. A speaker and writer, she has spent her career helping leaders find and articulate what matters most-first for others, now for herself and her readers. Cut to the Essence is her invitation to stop adding and start discovering what remains when we subtract the noise.
IMeal Prep by Jodi will also have food available for purchase during the event.
Where: Underdog Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Address: 312 South Myrtle Avenue, Monrovia, California, 91016
Website: https://www.underdogbookstore.org/events/author-event
OC Poet Laureate Office Hours at LibroMobile – In-Person Event
Calling all writers and poets: OC Poet Laureate, Gustavo Hernández, is hosting office hours!
RSVP
Where: LibroMobile
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 12 pm – 2 pm
Address: 1150 S. Bristol St, #A3, Santa Ana, CA 92704
Website: https://www.libromobile.com/event-details/oc-poet-laureate-office-hours
Zine-Making at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person Event
All ages are invited to participate in this open studio-time dedicated to zine-making.
A zine is pronounced [zeen], and it is short for “magazine.” These handmade books can be easily reproduced using a copy machine and distributed to your community. Rooted in countercultural movements to spread info for social good, zines are low-budget and low-tech ways to spread your message.
We encourage you to stop by Village Well every Sunday in July to celebrate International Zine Month! Bring your big ideas, browse our zine collection for sale, and create a zine of your own.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 12 pm – 2 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
BE LIT! Event: Brilliant, Ethnic & Lit! at Garcia Center for the Arts – In-Person Event
Brilliant, Ethnic & Lit! An afternoon of live performances, vendors, workshops, and a children’s book drive at The Garcia Center for the Arts
We had a great time in LA last year so were bringing it to the I.E. BE Lit! Brilliant, Ethnic & Lit 📚🌟 Our out the box event celebrates literacy, poetry, zines, and art! Donate books to our youth book drive and get a coupon to use with vendors!
We’re bringing you an afternoon of:
✍🏽Live Performances
✍🏽-Artists Meet + Greet
✍🏽-Children’s Book Drive
✍🏽-Workshops
✍🏽-Book + Stationery Vendors
+ more!
📍 @thegarciacenterforthearts 536 W. 11th St. San Bernardino
⏰ 2 pm – 5 pm
🎟️ FREE entry!
Where: Garcia Center for the Arts
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 2 pm – 5 pm
Address: 536 W. 11th St. San Bernardino, CA 92410
Website: Eventbrite Page
Not Your Parents’ Book Club: Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Moster Stories at Cellar Door Bookstore – In-Person Event
Participants will discuss Our Shadows Have Claws: 15 Latin American Moster Stories by Yamile Saied Méndez and Amparo Ortiz.
From zombies to cannibals to star-crossed, shapeshifting lovers, this cross-genre anthology written by superstar YA authors from across the Latin American diaspora offers bold new thrills for every monster fan.
In these fifteen original short stories, bloodthirsty vampires are hunted by a quick-witted slayer; children are taken from their beds by “el Viejo de la Bolsa” while a military dictator steals their parents; and anyone you love might be a monster waiting to strike. The sinister worlds of these narratives are also magical ones, where supernatural beings can be avatars for justice, vengeance, sisterhood, and empowerment. Some monsters need to be slain; others should be embraced.
Yamile Saied Méndez is the author of many books for young readers, including Furia, a Reese’s YA Book Club selection and the inaugural winner of the YA Pura Belpré Award. She was born and raised in Rosario, Argentina. A Walter Dean Myers Grant recipient, she is a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a founding member of Las Musas, a marketing collective of Latine authors.
Amparo Ortiz is the author of Blazewrath Games and Dragonblood Ring. She was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and currently lives on the island’s northeastern coast. When she’s not teaching ESL, she’s streaming K-pop videos, vlogging for her eponymous YouTube channel, and writing about worlds both contemporary and fantastical.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 6675 Magnolia Ave., Riverside, CA 92506
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-11/cellar-door-book-club-reformatory
Middle Grade Book Club: Odder 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!
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 October is Odder by Katherine Applegate.
Odder spends her days off the coast of central California, practicing her underwater acrobatics and spinning the quirky stories for which she’s known. She’s a fearless daredevil, curious to a fault. But when Odder comes face-to-face with a hungry great white shark, her life takes a dramatic turn, one that will challenge everything she believes about herself—and about the humans who hope to save her.
Inspired by the true story of a Monterey Bay Aquarium program that pairs orphaned otter pups with surrogate mothers, this poignant and humorous tale told in free verse examines bravery and healing through the eyes of one of nature’s most beloved and charming animals.
Local author Heather Alexander is the 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.
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 2 pm – 3 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
Bucket List Book Club: Leave the World Behind at Cellar Door Bookstore – Online Zoom Event
Participants will discuss Leave the World Behind: A Novel by Rumaan Alam.
A magnetic novel about two families, strangers to each other, who are forced together on a long weekend gone terribly wrong.
From the bestselling author of Rich and Pretty comes a suspenseful and provocative novel keenly attuned to the complexities of parenthood, race, and class. Leave the World Behind explores how our closest bonds are reshaped—and unexpected new ones are forged—in moments of crisis.
Amanda and Clay head out to a remote corner of Long Island expecting a vacation: a quiet reprieve from life in New York City, quality time with their teenage son and daughter, and a taste of the good life in the luxurious home they’ve rented for the week. But a late-night knock on the door breaks the spell. Ruth and G. H. are an older couple—it’s their house, and they’ve arrived in a panic. They bring the news that a sudden blackout has swept the city. But in this rural area—with the TV and internet now down, and no cell phone service—it’s hard to know what to believe.
Should Amanda and Clay trust this couple—and vice versa? What happened back in New York? Is the vacation home, isolated from civilization, a truly safe place for their families? And are they safe from one another?
Rumaan Alam is the author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and the instant New York Times bestseller Leave the World Behind. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, and the New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
Where: Cellar Door Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 3 pm – 4 pm
Address: Online Zoom Event
Website: https://cellardoorbookstore.com/event/2026-10-18/bucket-list-book-club-leave-world-behind
Book Event: Diane Leslie’s The Critic at Rest at Diesel, A Bookstore – In-Person Event
Join us on Sunday the 18th for a Celebration of Life and Art with Diane Leslie’s The Critic at Rest. We’ll be joined by actors celebrating Diane’s work with readings from this hugely entertaining ironic novel celebrating the 1960s Los Angeles art scene. Refreshments served!
When an art critic descends on a local high school art show, two teen girls’ lives are about to change. Told from the point of view of Beth Lindley, this astutely comic novel charts the outlandish eccentricities of art critic Neil Barris and his influence on the lives of Beth and her best friend and budding artist, Quincy California, as they come of age in the ’60s L.A. art scene and beyond.
An irresistible juxtapose of professorial charm, profound self-obsession, genuine belief in young Quincy’s career potential (amid ongoing efforts to get her into bed and impose himself into her personal life) and spectacularly unhinged behavior, Neil Barris is the enthralling, confounding muse of The Critic at Rest.
Diane Leslie was born in Hollywood and by age nineteen was working as a television researcher and story analyst. After sailing halfway around the world, she married a sailboat rigger. Home in Los Angeles once again, she began writing fiction while raising two sons. For thirty years she hosted author readings and led book groups at Diesel and Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstores. She is the author of Fleur de Leigh’s Life of Crime and Fleur de Leigh in Exile. This brilliant novel is being published posthumously.
RSVP
Where: Diesel, A Bookstore
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 3 pm – 4:30 pm
Address: 225 26th St., Suite #33, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Website: https://dieselbookstore.com/event/2026-10-18/celebration-life-and-art-diane-leslies-critic-rest
Local Author Day: Jerell Hill, Elliot Blake & Travis Johns at Vroman’s – In-Person Event
Jerell Hill presents Developing Conscious Gratitude in Schools: A Blueprint for Shifting from Burdens to Brilliance.
Developing Conscious Gratitude in Schools transforms how educators address systemic inequality in American education. Jerell Hill presents a comprehensive blueprint for creating inclusive, empowering learning environments that shift students from burdens to brilliance, particularly those from low-income and marginalized backgrounds.
This book explores how neighborhood conditions, public health, housing policy, and segregation profoundly impact educational opportunities. Through compelling research, case studies, and practical strategies, Hill provides concrete approaches educators and administrators can implement immediately. Unlike theoretical works that merely describe problems, this offers actionable transformation.
Conscious gratitude is not about avoiding hardship, but transforming it into purpose, resilience, and meaningful connection while honoring the sacred practice of teaching.
Elliot Blake presents Into the Great.
Sparks fly when Lilah, a thief from a colony outside the borders of the Federated Solar Republic, meets Bax, an FSR security officer at a colony within those borders, during a time of heightened tensions for humanity as the silent, staring, seemingly invulnerable aliens dubbed The Aureum begin to meddle in human affairs.
Travis Johns presents The Used Parts of Jimbo Winslow.
James “Jimbo” Winslow is the football golden boy of a forgotten Tennessee town in the Appalachian Mountains. But growing up in an abusive home leaves a mark, and his mother’s twisted love drives him to a violent act that nearly destroys his future.
A last-minute scholarship pulls him from his hometown just as it threatens to swallow him whole. Leaving comes at a cost, though, as he abandons his high school sweetheart, and when a brutal injury ends his NFL dreams, Jimbo is left untethered.
With his mother’s violent warning to never return home, Jimbo drifts to Hollywood, where ambition turns corrosive. Chewed up by the city’s underbelly, reduced to selling his body to survive, and ultimately landing in jail, Jimbo loses every illusion he once believed about success, love, and himself.
Spit back out and broken, he finally returns to Tennessee, where his mother’s sudden tenderness feels like another cage, and her new husband dredges up memories of his absent father. Jimbo, faced with the demons he’s run from his entire life, must decide if he’s ready to face the woman he abandoned and the small town that both raised and ruined him.
The Used Parts of Jimbo Winslow is a raw, darkly funny, and devastating coming-of-age novel about what dies in the cracks where love should’ve grown and the fierce, perilous grace of offering your heart anyway-even when loving someone means cutting loose a piece of yourself and laying it in their hands.
Where: Vroman’s
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 4 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101
Website: https://vromansbookstore.com/event/2026-10-18/local-author-day
Political Science Book Launch: Quinn James Cunniff & The Bipartisan Path Forward at Village Well Books & Coffee – In-Person MG Event
Join us for the public launch of The Bipartisan Path Forward, Quinn James Cunniff’s debut book examining the rise of political polarization in America and exploring how strategic voting could help foster a more functional democracy.
Hear from the author as he discusses the ideas behind the book, the research that inspired it, and his proposed path toward reducing gridlock in Washington. The evening will include an author presentation, meet-and-greet, and book signing.
The Bipartisan Path Forward presents a practical and revolutionary solution to political polarization and gridlock in America’s capital. Drawing on his expertise in data analytics, Cunniff explains the power of split-ticket voting and shows how small shifts in voting patterns can fundamentally reshape the federal government and the future of American democracy.
Quinn Cunniff, CPA, holds a master’s degree in Accounting and Data Analytics from the University of Southern California. As an accountant and financial auditor, Cunniff specializes in exposing the true story behind the numbers. He resides in Los Angeles, California.
RSVP
Where: Village Well Books & Coffee
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 4:30 pm – 6 pm
Address: 9900 Culver Blvd. #1B, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: Event Page
The Poetry Brothel: LA Monsters at Sassafrass Saloon– In-Person Event
The Poetry Brothel LA: MONSTERS! slips into a noir-lit Halloween underworld. Poets, jazz, tarot, and creatures pull you closer.
Enter an immersive literary cabaret of poetry, jazz, and noir monsters.
🎷 Follow live performances through pulp shadows, movement, tarot, and art
✍️ Request a custom typewritten poem or intimate one-on-one reading
🧛 Dress glamorous or monstrous for a Halloween night with bite
👤 Age requirement: 21+
📝 Please note: doors open at 6 pm, and the show runs from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm.
❗ Important: includes flashing lights, reasonably amplified music, and fog effects
Step into Sassafras Saloon as The Poetry Brothel LA: MONSTERS! turns Halloween into a smoky film-noir cabaret. Crimson-lipped creatures, wolves in suits, and secretive vampires haunt the room while poets and artists conjure original verse, jazz, movement, tarot, and visual art.
Between stage sets, request a typewritten poem, seek a fortune, or slip into a private reading that lingers. Get your tickets now for The Poetry Brothel LA: MONSTERS! in Los Angeles!
RSVP; Ticketed
Where: Sassafrass Saloon
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 10 pm
Address: 1233 Vine St., Los Angeles, CA 90038
Website: https://feverup.com/m/776864
Write Yourself Free at Wicked Wolf – In-Person Event
Come share community and write yourself free with Sonny D, St, Dill, T and facilitator Maijoi.
Where: Wicked Wolf
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 6 pm – 8 pm
Address: 2332 Pacific Ave., Long Beach, CA 90806
Website: Instagram Page
Focus on Craft LA Book Club: The Death Do We Start at The Ripped Bodice – 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.
Book for October: The Death Do We Start (Tales of Monstrous Love #1) by Kate Crow.
Where: The Ripped Bodice
Date: Sunday the 18th
Time: 7:15 pm – 8:15 pm
Address: 3806 Main Street, Culver City, CA 90232
Website: https://therippedbodice.com/event/2026-10-18/focus-craft-book-club-october-2026
