The new LA bookstore and performance space is devoted to work by women and POC.
From: Crave

by Ernest Hardy

Earlier this week, Air 11, a bookstore and performance space devoted to the work of women and people of color, opened its doors in midtown Los Angeles on Fairfax Avenue. Co-founded by Oakland native/current downtown LA resident Lauryn Pendergrass and LA native Peter Woods, who’s been at the forefront of the LA arts and music scene with his outfit Quality Collective for over a decade now, and Writ Large Press for the last few years, the spot will host readings and music performances. It will also feature rotating residencies by small, independent presses, and conduct literary workshops. It’s currently hosting Alpha, a show of visual art by almost two dozen artists. That show will be up for two months. On June 20^th, Liz Kay reads and discusses her new novel Monsters: A Love Story. Ashaki Jackson and Jen Hofer will be guest readers, and Cave Canem Fellow F. Douglas Brown hosts. The event starts at 7:30 PM and is free.

After the opening party, Pendergrass and Woods answered a few questions for Crave.

Continue reading “A Conversation with the Owners of Air 11”

From: Speaking of Marvels

What’s your chapbook about?

Surveillance speaks to the execution videos that have become a part of our collective (national) memory. Specifically, the poems respond to the virtual record of police killing unarmed Blacks with impunity. My work reverses the lens —it watches the witnesses, the YouTube viewers, and God while critiquing the practice of trialing civilians by gunfire.

Continue reading “Ashaki M. Jackson”

From: Fresno State’s MFA Blog

Our blog’s ongoing “On the Books” series introduces you to writers from our growing list of Fresno State MFA alumni who are getting their first books published. The third installment profiles Michelle Brittan Rosado. Her writing has appeared in Calyx, Los Angeles Review, Quarterly West and elsewhere. She currently lives in Long Beach.

In a May phone interview, MFA communication specialist Jefferson Beavers spoke with Michelle about finding a press that you love, finding “Fresno poetry,” and finding a dissertation topic in an unlikely place.

When were you in the Fresno State MFA program?

I started the program in Fall 2008 and finished in Spring 2011, in poetry.

Continue reading “On the Books: Michelle Brittan Rosado”

The last two weeks have been busy in Los Angeles literature.  Each of the last two weeks have been capped off by two major events:  The 2nd annual Blk Girrrl Bookfair and the 5th annual Litfest Pasadena.

Last weekend was the 2nd annual Blk Girrrl Bookfair.  The founder, Tika Lark, a L.A. poet, community activist and independent  journalist, founded the Bookfair as a “free, radical feminist bookfair that actively beats down anti-blackness, colorism, patriarch, classism, nationalism, ableism and oppression in the literary and arts world.”

Continue reading “Blk Girrrl Book Fair and LitFest Pasadena”

PEN Emerging Voices at Chevalier’s Bookstore

To celebrate the PEN fellowship’s 20^th anniversary, PEN Center USA has opened the Emerging Voices Author Series to the public. Free to members who bring their Author Evening ticket; non-members can purchase tickets at https://penusa.org/author-evenings  site.

We recommend you read The Stories of Richard Bausch by Richard Bausch, The Color Master by Aimee Bender, and Ron Carlson Writes a Story by Ron Carlson in preparation for the evening, and arrive ready to engage in a discussion about the art of the short story.

Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of short stories. An acknowledged maser of the short story form, he has won numerous awards and fellowships, and is currently a professor at Chapman University.

Ron Carlson’s most recent novel is Return to Oakpine. In his essay collection Ron Carlson Writes a Story he gives rare insight into a veteran writer’s process by inviting the reader to watch over his shoulder as he creates the short story. He is a professor of English and Co-Director of the MFA Program in Writing at UC Irvine.

Aimee Bender is the author of five books, her short fiction has been widely published, as well as heard on PRI’s This American Life and Selected Shorts. She is a professor of English at USC.

Marissa Matarazzo is the author of Drenched: Stories of Love and Other Deliriums. She is an Assistant Professor in the Graduate Writing Program at tis College of Art and Design.

Where: Chevalier’s Bookstore

Date: Monday the 6^th     

Time: 7 pm – 9 pm

Address: 126 N. Larchmont Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90004

Website: http://www.chevaliersbooks.com

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 6/06/16 – 6/12/16”

From: The L.A. Times

After news broke that there had been a shooting attack at UCLA Wednesday, the campus was swarmed by law enforcement officers and we later learned that professor William Klug had been killed killed by a former student, who then took his own life). U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, who earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology at UCLA in 1972, composed this poem, “Where We Find Ourselves.”

Where We Find Ourselves
              In memory of professor William Klug
and the students of UCLA, 6-1-16

There are

“small massacres” now — yes

it is true, this place where we find

ourselves

so

we put up bluish

plastic chairs, angled desks

glassy projectors against the door

the door, yes  — it is all

Continue reading “‘Where We Find Ourselves’: Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem on the shooting at UCLA”

I know, I am way late on this story as the second issue of the online journal S-Curves was released close to two months ago. Better late than never.

As posted by Editor/Publisher Faith Currant in her Editor’s Note, she says about this issue, “[W]e didn’t set out to curate around a theme, but also as with our first issue, a theme showed up anyway. Our contributors all chose to explore identity — who we are, who others think we are, who we are in relation to our self-image, our families, our lovers and the world around us.” And as per their mission S-Curves continues to focus on writers from Topanga Canyon. There are poems from Tucker Weiss and Becky Sanvictores and the new voice Joe Gutesha that Faith Currant says has the”ability to observe and deconstruct his own experiences and inner world without self-pity or sentimentality, and with a great deal of maturity and compassion.”

Continue reading “Second Issue of S-Curves Released”

Memorial Mental Monday at House of Brews

An open mic venue that gathers every Month. 6:30 Sign-up start to be on the Mic. Poets, Musicians, Singers, Dancers, Comics, Magicians attend sooooooo…. come and express your self.

The venue was started by Melba aka Mama Hazze and Poet, Mor’Reese 9 years ago; and has been doing well since thanks to the talented Jewels in the community. Currently Hosted by Poet, Evy Spirit Luv Child and our tag Team Victor Sotomayor, Gabby & Jessica Delgato, and Micheal De Los Angeles who are the bones & blood of Mental Monday!

Where: House of Brews

Date: Monday the 30^th

Time: 7 pm – 10:15 pm

Address: 231 N. Maclay Ave., San Fernando, CA 91304

Website: www.facebook.com/events/516354665242278/

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 5/30/16 – 6/5/16”

by Luis J. Rodriguez
From: LAPL BLOG

North Carolina has some of the most diverse terrain of any state—from the Great Smoky Mountains, which includes the Blue Ridge peaks of the massive Appalachian mountain range, to the Outer Banks on the Atlantic coast. The state is rich in bio-diversity, history, and people. North Carolina was home to the first English settlement and is one of the original 13 colonies. The Cherokee are among the state’s first peoples. Although many Cherokees were removed during President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830 (catapulting the infamous “Trail of Tears”), the tribe maintains a reservation here. The state’s biggest city, Charlotte, is a financial center. And Raleigh-Durham is known as the Triangle, encompassing higher-learning research institutes like Duke University, North Carolina State University, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Tobacco is big here—as are turkey farms, textiles, furniture, processing plants, and more. The state had slave plantations but also a divided legislature during the U.S. Civil War. The state joined the confederacy later than other southern states and only after the attack on Fort Sumter, signaling the start of war that eventually took 40,000 North Carolinian lives.

Continue reading ““Poet in Motion”—North Carolina and Transgender Justice”

Cheryl Della Pietra at Book Soup

Author Cheryl Della Pietra discusses and signs Gonzo Girl, a story inspired by her time as Hunter S. Thompson’s assistant. A recent college grad, trying to make it in the world of New York publishing with no connections, settles for an unpaid magazine internship while slingling drinks on Bleecker Street. She jumps at the opportunity to work as an assistant to a famous author, hoping to get her manuscript to an experienced editor.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday the 23^rd    

Time: 7 pm

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

Website: http://www.booksoup.com/event/cheryl-della-pietra-discusses-and-signs-gonzo-girl

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 5/23/16 – 5/29/16”