By Luis J. Rodriguez

The music from the stage at the Pacoima City Hall in June pulled a small crowd onto a makeshift seating area during the “Celebrating Words” Festival, sponsored by Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore—the only annual outdoor literacy & arts festival in the San Fernando Valley.

Las Bandidas, a group of women donning “Charo” garb, danced and sang in the “banda” style popular in Mexico and many parts of the United States. That stage also held an alternative rock band, a Cumbia band, Son Jarocho performers, Hip Hop, spoken word performers, poets, and much more. There were also vendor booths of artists, artisans and community service organizations. Temachtia Quetzalcoatl, Tia Chucha’s resident Mexika danza group (so-called Aztec dancers) opened up the event.
Continue reading “Celebrating Poetry, Celebrating Ideas, Celebrating Creativity”

By Kurt Streeter

NOTE: The article that follows is from last November. It’s a great profile piece about who he was, his art (play writing and poetry, etc.) and the activism he did, like bringing the theater to an area of L.A. lacking arts education, Watts.

The bullet screamed out of the barrel of a silver-plated handgun, tearing through his left eye, his nasal canal, the optic nerve in his right eye. He fell to the barroom floor.

Everything was dark and he waited for death. So did the paramedics; he heard them say he probably wasn’t going to make it.

Four days later, lying in a hospital bed, he still couldn’t see. He was afraid he was going crazy, that the trauma of being shot made him imagine he was blind. Then a doctor sat at his side and explained: Surgeons had been forced to remove his left eye. The optic nerve in his right eye was severed.

“It will no longer work,” the doctor said. “You’ll never see anything again.”

Continue reading “Lynn Manning, co-founder of Watts Village Theater Company, dies at 60”

Note: An old, but still relevant article on Los Angeles publishing.

The continuing upheavals and bleak realities of the intersecting worlds of publishing houses and big-box retailers this year have made the normally reliable little joy of picking up a new book a minefield of guilt and ennui. From Amazon’s bad-faith feud with Hachette Book Group (way to play dirty, Bezos) to the more quotidian bummer of the perpetually middle-of-the-road offerings on the book tables at Costco and Wal-Mart, it’s more important to buy indie and local now than ever. But when it comes to books, it can be hard for even the most dedicated reader to know where to find the latest and greatest small and indie presses.

The exciting small publishing houses profiled below are located right here in L.A. All offer tomes that you can find at beloved haunts like Skylight in Los Feliz and Diesel in Brentwood for those all-important last-minute stocking stuffers.

Continue reading “5 Indie L.A. Presses You Should Know”

I am about a week late in posting this. Last week it was announced by the Before Columbus Foundation that Los Angeles poet, Peter J. Harris, won an American Book Award for his book of personal essays, The Black Man of Happiness. He is a native of Southeast DC and an alumnus of Ballou High School and Howard University. He is also the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press). He has published his work in a wide variety of publications since the 1970s. Since 1992, he’s been a member of the Anansi Writers Workshop at the World Stage, in LA’s Leimert Park. Mike Sonksen at KCET.org has said this about Harris:

Peter J. Harris [is] one of the most prominent voices from Leimert Park, over the last 20 years, “The Black Man of Happiness” is a nearly 350-page tome that includes 20 powerful essays interspersed with a few poetic interludes. Harris asks the simple question, “What is a happy Black man?” Before he defines this in a myriad of ways, he also identifies the obstacles that get in the way. Harris not only debunks negative stereotypes of the African-American man, he empowers readers with his frank discussion about being a son, father, stepfather, grandfather, creating brotherhood with his gay colleague and transcending his youngest daughter’s rape by her Black stepfather. Written in a literary style that merges heartfelt sincerity, raw honesty, and humor, there is much inspiration in these pages.

The following is the entire press release from the Before Columbus Foundation, listing all the winners. Congratulations to all the winners and especially Peter J. Harris.

Continue reading “Peter J. Harris Awarded a 2015 American Book Award”

A new literary journal debuted a week and a half ago at Avenue 50 Studios. Angel City Review is it’s name. I’ll let Founding Editor Zachary Jensen, tell you in his own words, from the Forward to Issue One:

Continue reading “A New Literary Journal Debuts, Emphasis on Los Angeles Writers”

By Brian Dunlap

Los Angeles literature has deep roots. It essentially began in 1884 with Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. Visiting writers like Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, have attempted to explain this sprawling metropolis. To criticize it because the city didn’t conform to the places they were from or couldn’t see Los Angeles beyond the confines of Hollywood. Other writers have moved to L.A. like Mona Simpson and Attica Locke and have made a life here, writing about the city or being too intimidated to try. But Los Angeles literature has increasingly become a literature written by its natives, shifting it from a literature of exile to a literature of belonging. Writers from Boyle Heights/East L.A., like Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis Rodríguez; Watts like Kamau Daáood and Wanda Coleman; Leimert Park like A.K. Toney; the Westside like 2014 Los Angeles Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman; the young adult fiction of Francesca Lia Block; to Alex Espinoza, Amy Uyematsu, Naomi Hirahara, Helena María Viramontes and Steve Erickson are desperate to communicate their experience and tell us what they mean. To these writers Los Angeles is fundamentally home.

Like all culture in Los Angeles, L.A. Literature just happens. Gallery openings occur, theater productions open, literary reading and open mics take place, all with virtually no media attention. That’s the problem with L.A.; culture happens and no one knows about it. The L.A. Times virtually ignores its city’s lit scene except when the occasional book set in L.A. comes across their desk to review or it’s April and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books occurs. The L.A. Weekly only mentions the city’s literature in best of articles (best independent bookstores, best L.A. writers, best novels written about L.A.) Other than the occasional, maybe even rare, story about an author, etc., in a community paper and the L.A. Review of Books doing a good job publishing Los Angeles Writers and a decent job reviewing its literature, the only regular source of coverage for the Los Angeles literary scene is done by Mike “The Poet” Sonksen with his KCET.org column “L.A. Letters.”

Continue reading “Three Generations of L.A. Poetry”

Author at Skylight Books

Author Louisa Hall discusses her new novel Speak with Ivy Pachoda. This thoughtful, poignant novel explores the creation of Artificial Intelligence—Illuminating the very human need for communication, connection, and understanding. In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, this series of stories is told from the perspectives of five very different characters, in a structure reminiscent of David Mitchell.  Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.

Louisa Hall holds a PhD in literature from the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches literature and creative writing, and supervises a poetry workshop at the Austin State Psychiatric Hospital. She is the author of the novel The Carriage House and her poems have been published in numerous journals.

Ivy Pochado is the author of Visitation Street and The Art of Disappearing. She has A BA from Harvard and a MFA in fiction from Bennington College.

Where: Skylight Books

Date: Monday the 20th

Time: 7:30 pm

Address: 1818 N. Vermont Blvd., Los Feliz, CA 90027

Website: http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/louisa-hall-discusses-her-new-novel-speak-together-ivy-pochoda

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literary Events 7/20/15-7/26/15”

by Melissa Sanvicente, Tia Chucha.org

Funds will allow Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore to extend the reach of the arts to those with limited access

SYLMAR, CA – The California Arts Council announced it plans to award $11,640 to Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore as part of its Local Impact program.

The Local Impact program fosters equity, access, and opportunity by providing project and partnership support for small arts organizations reaching underserved communities. All projects must extend the reach of the arts to underserved populations that have limited access to the arts.

Continue reading “Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore Receives California Arts Council “Local Impact” Grant”

By LILA NORDSTROM, Bustle.com

First off, did you know that there are more than eight bookstores in L.A.? Given how most of my friends back east talk, it seems like that probably needs to be clarified before we can continue. Sure, we’re a city famous for living in an airheaded, laid-back, tabloid-driven bubble, but Los Angeles is actually a surprisingly great city for readers — there many wonderful bookstores here, enough so that I had to pare down my list of favorites in order to write something of readable length.

Continue reading “The 8 Best Bookstores in Los Angeles, Because, Yes, People Do Read Out West”