A Catalyst for Change

From: http://www4.csudh.edu/watts/index

In 1965, the Watts Rebellion devastated a community and awakened the nation, bringing longstanding grievances and inequalities into the spotlight. California leaders placed their hopes on an institution of higher education as a catalyst for change, and decided to build a new state college close to the communities impacted by the rebellion.

A transformation was needed. And they got one.

Fifty years later, California State University, Dominguez Hills boasts over 90,000 alumni, with over 65 percent of our alumni living within 25 miles of the campus.

The university changes lives each and every day through the transformative power of education.

Continue reading “50th Anniversary, Watts Writers Workshop”

Lillian Faderman & Roberta Kaplan at Aloud

“Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA,” features renowned litigator Roberta Kaplan and scholar Lillian Faderman in conversation with LA Times columnist and author Patt Morrison. Kaplan takes us behind the scenes of this gripping legal journey in her new book, Then Comes Marriage. Award-winning activist and author Lillian Faderman’s latest book, The Gay Revolution, begins in the 1950s, when the law classified gays and lesbians as criminals, then moves to the present to offer a sweeping account of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian, and trans rights. Following this summer’s landmark Supreme Court decision supporting gay marriage, hear from two of today’s most influential champions for equality.

Where: Downtown LA Central Library, Taper Auditorium

Date: Monday the 19^th

Time: 7 pm

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

Website: http://www.lfla.org/event/then-comes-marriage-united-states-v-windsor-and-the-defeat-of-doma/

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/19/15 – 10/25/15”

by Jessica Ceballos

From: Medium.com

It’s a beautiful morning in Los Angeles, but since last night my head has been stuck in 1999. And I know where my heart is, but pieces of memory are tugging at anything that might be a little loose.

How does someone survive through so much heartache. The NBA draft, the fame, the money, the championships, the wedding to pretend that love makes everything better, the hope that everything will be made better. None of thatcan make a deep dark sad better. Especially when that sad started at birth. And the world kept trying to crush him, and so he self-medicates though the crushing, through the depression, through everything. And then it becomes too heavy and something makes the sadness stop…for just a second…and that second becomes everything in the world. And it’s okay to be happy for just one second. But that’s only on the outside.

Continue reading “Triggers. Memories. A long [non-linear] time ago.”

Last week in Los Angeles Literature on Tuesday the 6^th, Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L. Ulin dropped his new book Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles at Skylight Books in Los Feliz. Sidewalking offers a compelling inquiry into the evolving landscape of Los Angeles. Part personal narrative, part investigation of the city as both idea and environment, Sidewalking is many things: a discussion of Los Angeles as urban space, a history of the city’s built environment, a meditation on the author’s relationship to the city, and a rumination on the art of urban walking. Exploring Los Angeles through the soles of his feet, Ulin gets at the experience of its street life, drawing from urban theory, pop culture, and literature. For readers interested in the culture of Los Angeles, this book offers a pointed look beneath the surface in order to see, and engage with, the city on its own terms.

On Wednesday the 7^th, Book Show Books was honored to host the release party reading for the publication of Jessica Wilson’s first book of poetry, Serious Longing, published by Swan World Press out of Paris, France. Patrice Kanozsai says of the collection, “Deep and whole poetry about origins, ancestors, childhood with real efficient poetic words…Sometimes amazing…Sometimes funny… Always relevant. Jessica will take us with Jim Morrison in a rabid hole…”

Continue reading “Last Week In Los Angeles Literature”

By Geoff Manaugh

Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles” arrives at a particularly heady moment for rethinking the identity of the city. From the promise of new Metro lines and the possibility of the 2024 Olympics to architect Michael Maltzan’s provocative idea that the city has hit its outermost limit and must now splash back on itself, talking about L.A. seems far more popular than walking in it.

For Times book critic David Ulin, Los Angeles contains multitudes. Indeed, the peculiar magic of L.A., his book convincingly suggests, is that other cities, both real and imagined, are always coming into blurred focus on the edges of its existing streets and buildings. Whether this is because of a particular L.A. street standing in for Manhattan in every car commercial or if it’s because of the city’s infamous postmodernity — L.A.’s architecture mimicking, perhaps mocking, any style, anywhere — the result is the same. Los Angeles is a kind of urban zip file inside of which every other city has been compressed.

Continue reading “Review ‘Sidewalking’ author David Ulin jumps feet first into trying to understand Los Angeles”

David J. Peterson and “The Art of Language Invention”

David J Peterson, the creator of the Dothraki language for HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” discusses and signs “The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building” and reveals the steps he takes to invent new languages in this detailed guide.

In this book the author focuses on four key elements everyone who creates a constructed language must consider: sounds, words, language evolution, and written language. The conlang phenomenon will teach you more about linguistics than you ever learned before.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday the 12^th

Time: 7 pm

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

Website: http://www.booksoup.com/event/david-j-peterson-discusses-and-signs-art-language-invention-horse-lords-dark-elves-words

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/12/15 – 10/18/15”

by Melinda Palacio

From: La Bloga

I had the pleasure of interviewing Marsha de la O in Ventura a few weeks ago. After the scandal in the New York Timesover a White poet using a Chinese name to get his work published, Marsha wanted to make sure La Bloga knew she was not Latina, but had kept her name from a previous marriage. I’ve admired Marsha’s poetry for several years and I’ve always assumed she was Chicana like me. I assured her that La Bloga readers would be grateful to hear about an exceptional, award-winning poet who was once a bilingual teacher and a former member of CABE, California Association for Bilingual Education.

Marsha arrived at poetry through prose in the form of vignettes. However, when a stranger came up to her and said, ‘You are the true poet,’ she allowed herself to believe him and even earned an MFA in poetry from Vermont College. She is an intuitive poet. She shared her poeming process with La Bloga:

Continue reading “Poet Marsha de la O, a San Buenaventura Treasure”

Jessica Wilson on http://www.KillRadio.org

Jessica Wilson guests and celebrates her new book of poetry, “Serious Longing,” published by Swan World Press from Paris, France. In studio are special guests: Patricia Kanozai, Editor-in-Chief of Swan World Press, and Los Angeles Blues sensation, Sayed Sabrina.

Where: Full Spectrum, a literary variety show

Date: Monday the 5^th

Time: 10 pm

Address: Listen and call in at (213) 252-0998, Los Angeles, CA 90028

Website: http://www.killradio.org or http://www.pw.org/calendar

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/5/15 – 10/11/15”

From: Civil Coping Mechanisms blog CCM is pleased to announce BRUJA by Wendy C. Ortiz, the author of the critically acclaimed EXCAVATION: A MEMOIR and HOLLYWOOD NOTEBOOK. With Bruja, Ortiz continues to upend and reinvent the memoir in inventive and deeply emotional ways to better fit the terms and trajectory of her exploration. Behold the “dreamoir”–the details from the most malleable and revelatory portions of one’s … Continue reading Announcement: Los Angeles Native Wendy C. Ortiz’s New Book