Alice Hoffman, with Lisa See, at Vroman’s Bookstore

Alice Hoffman, in conversation with author Lisa See, will discuss and sign her new novel Faithful, the story of a young woman survivor finding her way in the modern world. From the bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers, comes this soul-searching story of Shelby Richmond, an ordinary girl until an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate when her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, and Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

Join us to hear two favorite bestselling authors in conversation!

Where: Vroman’s Bookstore

Date: Monday the 7^th            

Time: 7 pm

Address: 65 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/alice-hoffman-conversation-lisa-see-discusses-and-signs-faithful

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/07/16 – 11/13/16”

Conchas Y Café Continues at Junipero Serra Library

DSTLarts and Junipero Serra Branch Library present Conchas Y Café, an adult creative writing workshop, offered every Monday, where you can work with local artists on the DIY art of writing poetry, drawing mini-comics, collaged instruction, self-publishing and making zines.

Where: Junipero Serra Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 31^st           

Time: 6 pm – 7:30

Address: 4607 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90037

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/concha-y-cafe-talleres-de-escritura-creativa

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/31/16 – 11/06/16”

Libyan Author at ALOUD, Central Library

Hisham Matar, in conversation with Louise Steinman, will discuss and sign The Return Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between.     When Matar was a university student in England, his father was one of the regime’s most prominent critics in exile. His earlier book, In the Country of Men, a chronicle of his journey home to his native Libya after the fall of Qaddafi in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance and kidnapping, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. This book, The Return, weaves the intimacy of a memoir with the suspense of journalism, to offer a reflection on exile, art, family, and the history of a revolution.

See website to RSVP and ensure seating.

Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 24^th          

Time: 7 pm

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

Website: http://www.http://lfla.org/event/the-return-fathers-sons-and-the-land-in-between/

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/24/16 – 10/30/16”

by Luis J. Rodriguez

From: LAPL BLOG

Let us dare haunting verse of the oppressed,

poems with hoodies, finger-tapping, ambling.

I mean pissed off and ardently expressed,

poems delirious as midnight rambling.

Bebop, Hip Hop, a decima or slam,

metered lyrics, free shaped texts… no matter,

bring out the fire, the punch, a resounding jam.

Let it ring far, a magnificent chatter.

Naming the nameless, voicing the unheard,

questioning the questions, swimming, splashing.

No expert strokes but damn if not expert word;

every line bleeding, grieving, pleading, slashing.

            The power of poetry is its stance,

            page or stage, electrifying or trance.

Continue reading “Los Angeles Poets and the Temper of Our Times”

by Mike Sonksen

From: Entropy

It’s no secret that Literary Los Angeles is hotter than the Mojave. The following essay is a dispatch spotlighting a new bookstore and several recent books.

The latest great news is the opening of a new bookstore in Boyle Heights, OTHER BOOKS / OTROS LIBROS on Cesar Chavez and Cummings. Located a block from the legendary eatery Guisados, the new store is a collaboration between the proprietors of Seite Books, formerly in East Los Angeles and KAYA Press. This new store is highly anticipated because Seite has always had an incredible collection of titles and KAYA Press is one of the West Coast’s most innovative presses. Seite was forced to relocate because their lease was not renewed on their original space and this new partnership puts them on an even busier street in collaboration with KAYA, so it’s a double blessing for aficionados of local literature.

Continue reading “OTHER BOOKS AND A FEW MORE AFTER THAT”

From: Women Who Submit

Saturday December 3, 2016 Wendy C. Ortiz will lead the 3rd installment in the WWS Fall Workshop Series: Public Notebook to Book. Ortiz is the author of two memoirs, Excavation(Future Tense Books, 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and has her third book, Bruja, being release October 31, 2016 from Civil Coping Mechanisms.

Ortiz has used journals and public notebooks throughout her career. In fact, “Hollywood Notebook, a prose poem-ish memoir, and Bruja, a dreamoir, both began as public notebooks and eventually found their way to becoming print books,” and in her workshop, Ortiz will share strategies for keeping a notebook and how to shape it into a piece of writing intended for an audience.

Continue reading “PUBLIC NOTEBOOK TO BOOK: AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. ORTIZ”

From: Sundress Press

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the author of the forthcoming collection of poetry Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge  (Sundress Publications, 2016). Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge is a feminist collection of poetry straddling borders, and arose when daughter of Mexican immigrants, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, traveled from Los Angeles to the Tucson-Sector of the U.S.-Mexico border in August 2011 to volunteer with the humanitarian aid organization, No More Deaths. She hoped to gain a concrete understanding of the “wall,” and the result was a book illustrating a speaker driven to activism by a need to honor her family’s journey.

Bermejo spoke with our Editorial Intern, Kristin Figgins, about her influences, her family, the work that helped inspire the collection, and more.

Continue reading “AN INTERVIEW WITH XOCHITL-JULISA BERMEJO”

Concha Y Café Workshop at Junipero Serra Branch Library

Join us every Monday for the Conchas Y Café adult creative writing workshop, presented by DSTL Arts. Work with local artists on the DIY arts of: writing poetry, drawing mini-comics, collaged illustration, self-publishing and making zines.

Where: Junipero Serra Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 17^th          

Time: 6 pm -7:30 pm

Address: 4607 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90037

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/concha-y-cafe-talleres-de-escritura-creativa

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/17/16 – 10/23/16”

By Tyler Malone
From: Los Angeles Times

Justice is a concept that is always on Natashia Deón’s mind. As a lawyer, a law professor, a mother and now a novelist, it undergirds all she does.

Sitting in her writing space, a cozy converted garage in a home not far from Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, flanked by a spiral staircase and a Murphy bed, a dark wood desk and an overstuffed bookshelf, she says, “The first time that I wanted to quit being a lawyer was two weeks after I passed the Bar.”

Continue reading “Natashia Deón may be the hardest-working debut novelist in Los Angeles”

by Olga García Echeverría
From: labloga.blogspot.com

In Posada: Offerings of Refuge and Witness, author Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo takes us on a journey that begins with the story of her grandmother’s stolen “black lava” metate.  The narrator in the poem is stitching together a past full of gaps. Like many of us, Bermejo is hungry for knowing the stories of those who came before her.

“Who carried the metate and molcajete from Teocaltiche?” the poet asks her father who migrated to the United States from Mexico with his family when he was a boy.  “I don’t remember,” he answers. But the poet deciphers that it must have been him, her father, the eldest son, who carried her grandmother’s only valuables from Mexico. She writes, “Maybe remembering hurts dusty shoulders, maybe they miss the weight of home too much.”

Continue reading “Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge”