Healing through Writing, featuring Francesca Lia Block
From: Write Minded
In this episode of Write Minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers, Grant and Brooke explore with guest, Los Angeles native and writer, Francesca Lia Block, author of The Thorn Necklace, how writing is healing and oftentimes therapeutic. Today’s episode is about the feeling side of writing—and how touching into that both unlocks deeper places in a person’s writing and has the ability (at least some of the time) to set writers free from their angst and doubts and any lingering messages that might get lobbed at them by their inner critics. If you’ve ever wondered if writing has the power to heal, tune in.
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Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is the author of Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, 2017) a poetry collection that confronts and refutes the violence of erasure and assimilation, rooted in the borderlands of her birth. This violence and erasure is a physical space where “the speaker confronts her life in the eternal hallway of the subconscious,” as poet Sara Borjas says in her review of the book. For this confrontation and refutation Villarreal’s poetry collection was named, earlier this month, as a finalist for the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, which recognizes the work of a poet of promise with $10,000.
Wally Rudoplph & Christine Yoo at Annenberg Beach House 
The Tomorrow Prize for short science fiction is a competition by Los Angeles County high school students that inspires them to explore their present through speculating about their future and to excel in the art of storytelling.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration at CAAM
About 40 years ago, four musicians in a high school rock band decided to learn the Mexican standard “Las Mañanitas” to regale one of the band member’s moms on her birthday. Daunted by how difficult that proved to be — they had underestimated the complexity of their musical culture — the young East LA born-and-bred Chicanos decided to frame their Mexican roots music in rock ‘n’ roll and R&B grooves. And so, the iconic, multi-Grammy-winning band Los Lobos was born.
A bustling York Blvd., with mouth-watering smells wafting in the air from food trucks parked curbside. Near the corner of York and Avenue 50 is Pop-Hop Books, one of L.A.’s many independent bookstores.
Main Library Book Group & Snow Flower and the Secret Fan at Santa Monica Library, SMPL
Winter Author Series & YA Author Aditi Khorana at Memorial Branch Library, LAPL – Teen Event
Mike Sonsken has been a fixture in the Los Angeles Literary community for two decades. He burst on the scene spitting spoken word verse late into the night, at many venues, events, and open mics, some that no longer exist. During the course of these two decades he’s traveled to Echo Park and Sylmar, Venice and the Eastside, Downtown and Torrance, and everywhere in-between, performing poems laced with the city’s stories and history, hosting open mics and readings, being a tour guide to its streets, teaching students poetry and encouraging them to explore who and what Los Ángeles is.
