An interview with Daniel Acosta Regarding His Young Adult Novel, “The Iron River”

by Daniel A. Olivas
FROM: La Bloga

9781941026946_p0_v1_s550x406Daniel Acosta was born in Monterey Park, California, and grew up in Iron River’s Sangra neighborhood, across the street from the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks until his teens. After graduation from San Gabriel Mission Grammar School, he spent his high school years in Compton, California, at the Catholic Claretian Junior Seminary.

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Los Angeles Literature Events 11/05/18 –11/11/18

download.jpgAnnie Leibovitz & Annie Leibovitz at Work at Book Soup

Join us to hear acclaimed photographer Annie Leibovitz discuss and sign her book, Annie Leibovitz At Work. Originally published in 2008, this revised and updated edition brings her bestselling book back into print. She will explain how her pictures are made and her process in developing one of the richest bodies of work in the photographic canon. Please check website for signing line guidelines and details.

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday the 5th

Time: 1 pm – 2 pm

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

Website: http://www.booksoup.com/event/annie-leibovitz-signs-annie-leibovitz-work

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Los Angeles, City of Poets

by Sesshu Foster
FROM: LARB

phpThumb_generated_thumbnailONE DAY, when my brother Paul was 12, he came home wearing a shirt made from the American stars and stripes. My uncle caught him — my uncle owned the East L.A. house we lived in at the time and he reminded us of this fact regularly. He beat Paul to the floor and tore the shirt off. That same year, they put Paul on a Greyhound bus at the old terminal on Sixth and Los Angeles Streets and sent him up to Northern California to live with our dad. After a couple years, Paul was out on his own, moving through a series of hippie communes, Big Sur cabins, and foster homes, where he started reading Allen Ginsberg and the Beats.

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Los Angeles Literature Events 10/29/18 –11/04/18

downloadPage Turner Book Club & Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore at Encino-Tarzana Branch Library, LAPL

Please join us for our monthly Page turner Book Club, where we post our selections for the upcoming months so you can plan ahead. For this month, October, we are reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

Where: Encino-Tarzana Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 29th

Time: 5 pm

Address: 18231 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, CA 91356

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/page-turners-book-club-0

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Speaking up for ALOUD at the Central Library

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This month marks the 25th anniversary of the reopening of the Los Angeles Central Library after a cataclysmic fire and phoenix-like rebirth. It is also the 25th anniversary of ALOUD, the library’s landmark program of conversations and performances that has played a crucial role in reviving the image of the city center as a cultural destination Continue reading “Speaking up for ALOUD at the Central Library”

Nancy Lynee Woo is an Incorrigible Optimist and that’s a Good Thing

FROM: Palacio Podcast

BJOIA-picNancy Lynee Woo is a freelance writer, editor, and creative consultant, and organizer of creative events including community writing workshops and poetry series. She is also an incorrigible optimist and is not shy about admitting it and for good reason. (Her middle name is actually “Lynée” but WordPress won’t let me use it in SEO. My apologies.)

“I cannot help but try and see the best in everything and I have to believe that things are getting better.”

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Los Angeles Literature Events 10/22/18 –10/28/18

download30 Years of Homeboy Industries & Radical Kinship at Central Library, LAPL

Celebrate 30 Years of Homeboy Industries, which has provided hope, training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women, allowing them to redirect their lives and become contributing members of our community.  This public panel will examine their work, and the evolution of Homeboy Industries, founded by Father Gregory Boyle, and recounted in his most recent book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship.

Where: Central Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 22nd

Time: 6 pm – 8 pm

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

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/radical-kinship-celebrating-30-years-homeboy-industries

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Los Angeles Literature Events 10/15/18 –10/21/18

download“Listen to This” Open Mic Poetry Night at Pico Branch Library, SMPL

Share your own poems, or read from your favorite writer. “Listen to This” allows you to listen or to take turns at the microphone, reading, reciting, or performing one poem at a time.

Where: Pico Branch Library, SMPL

Date: Monday the 15th

Time: 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm

Address: 2201 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405

Website: http://calendar.smgov.net/library/eventsignup.asp?ID=27978     Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/15/18 –10/21/18”

Overheard At Vroman’s

Reyna Grande In Conversation With Alex Espinoza

by Michel Sedano
From: Labloga.blogspot.com

Alex_Espinoza_Reyna_Grande_Vromans.jpgFriday night’s is an audience of readers, gente who have come on Friday night to the independent bookseller, Vroman’s, in Pasadena CA because reading matters to them. They want to hear Reyna Grande, whose stories to them mattered.

Reyna Grande has five books; two novels, three memoirs (one the YA Distance Between Us) and not including translations. She’s the kind of writer a passerby would want to sit and hear. But there’s SRO. And still they stand. She’s that kind of speaker.

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