Naomi Hirahara’s Los Angeles
By Mike Sonksen
From: Los Angeles Review of Books
Editor’s note: Naomi Hirahara has been a pillar of the mystery community since she published her first Mas Arai novel in 2004. To commemorate her final Mas novel, I asked Mike Sonksen, a.k.a. Mike the Poet, bard and historian of contemporary Los Angeles, to go on a walk with Naomi and write a profile that would do her justice. It was a huge task, but I believe he succeeded.
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NAOMI HIRAHARA IS one of the most prolific Los Angeles writers of the last few decades. Best known for her Edgar Award–winning seven-book Mas Arai crime novel series, she has also authored several nonfiction titles on Southern California Japanese-American history. Her newest Mas Arai mystery title and the final one of the series, Hiroshima Boy, was just published by Prospect Park Books in March 2018, and in April her latest nonfiction title, Life After Manzanar, was published by Heyday.
Mary McCoy & Camp So-and-So at El Sereno Branch Library – Teen Event
The most recent interview by Poetry.LA. is of Long Beach Poet Sarah Thursday. She is also the founder/publisher of Sadie Girl Press, which she founded in 2014 to create “print form collections of poetry, art, and beyond,” as the presses website states. As self-declared “poetry advocate,” she hosts readings series, leads workshops, organizes literary events, and promotes poets by publishing their work in chapbooks, anthologies. Her most recent chapbook is Seventeen Poems Not About a Lover from Arroyo Seco Press.
We were standing in the non-fiction, cultural studies aisle of Book Star on Ventura Boulevard when a woman came around the corner and sternly said, “No laughing!” We blushed and then, she smiled.
Courtney Fletcher & The Rhino Who Swallowed a Storm at Arroyo Seco Regional Library – Kids Event
Regina Louise & Someone Has Led This Child to Believe at Vroman’s Bookstore 
In 1995, Sue Landers needed a job. The 24-year-old was pursuing her MFA in poetry at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and needed to support herself while she was in school.
Bilingual Poetry Workshops at Tia Chucha’s Bookstore 
at Vroman’s Bookstore 
