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

A short story by Daniel A. Olivas

Origonally publish in The Coachella Review, reposted on La Bloga

We sit on the bench waiting for the Orange Line.  Rosario reads a Bolaño novel that I gave her last week for her twenty-fourth birthday.  In truth, I’d bought it for myself but I couldn’t get past the first thirty pages so I wrapped it in some nice gold wrapping paper, bought a card with a smiling monkey on it (you can’t go wrong with a monkey card), and gave it to Rosario.  She loved it, wondered how I knew she wanted to read it.  I shrugged.  Brilliant, I guess.

I should have brought a book with me.  Rosario is buried in Bolaño and I just look around.  No one is here, just us.  And a long-haired throwback to the seventies who sits on the next bench over to my right.  Rosario sits to my left.  Where is everyone?  It’s Tuesday morning.  Yes it’s early, but don’t people work anymore?  Funny question since I don’t work, not right now.  Between jobs, as they say.  And Rosario is getting her masters in English literature at CSUN, so she’s not really working, either.

Continue reading “Orange Line”

Amy Stewart on “Girl Waits with Gun”

From the New York Times best-selling author of “The Drunken Botanist”  comes an enthralling novel based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation’s first female deputy sheriffs.  Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.

Where: Vroman’s Bookstore

Date: Monday, the 28th

Time: 7 pm

Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, California 91101

Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/amy-stewart-sept-2015

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literary Events 9/28/15 – 10/4/15”

With David L. Ulin

To mark the publication of his new book, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, Narrative has a few burning questions for David Ulin.

1. Who is your favorite character in fiction; your fave character in life?
Oh, what a question. Favorite character? It’s like choosing a favorite child. My favorite characters, probably, are those who hew closest to their authors: the quietly desperate men and boys of Raymond Carver; the wide-eyes alter egos of Jack Kerouac. I love the unnamed narrator in Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson; also, Meursault and the corrupted “judge-penitent” of The Fall, Clamence. I love the detective heroes: Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins. I adore Mildred Pierce. And St. Augustine, always Augustine, wrestling with the curse of his humanity, so contemporary and relevant over nearly two millennia. I respond to characters who are not creations so much as expressions, impressions, self-portraits, in a sense. As for life, well . . . that’s a harder question, or maybe it’s that life has never offered me such clarity.
Continue reading “Narrative 10”

By Eve Hill

The literary life of Los Angeles is thriving, and a free celebration is afoot! On October 21st, 2015, LitCrawl L.A. returns to North Hollywood with a walkable menu of literary offerings. Feed both your literary and literal appetite as over 200 Los Angeles writers descend upon NoHo’s assorted coffee shops and restaurants to read from their latest works. Start your personal literary lovefest now by curling up with a sampling of the authors described below.

Continue reading “LitCrawl L.A.: Los Angeles’ Literary Lovefest Returns To North Hollywood”