Poetry Lives Here: The Sims Library of Poetry

By Mike Sonsken
FROM: KCET.org

Over the last three decades, the Los Angeles Poetry community has grown into one of the most diverse and active scenes in this city. Before the pandemic, dozens of readings were held weekly and usually at least four or five simultaneously on the same day in different corners of L.A. County. Nonetheless, in a gentrifying city, with the exception of a few long-term spaces like Beyond Baroque, Skylight Books, Stories or the World Stage, the poetry scene is transitory. Many readings only last a few years before the gallery or coffeehouse hosting it goes out of business or the folks who organize the reading find a demanding job that takes them away from poetry. This is where Hiram Sims comes in.

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Everything Is Radiant Between The Hates Now Available for Pre-Order

FROM: Moon Tide Press

It’s been quite the year, but Moon Tide Press is beyond grateful to have been able to continue giving the world quality poetry, and the goodness does not stop. So we’re thrilled to announce that the first release of 2021 is now available for pre-order, Everything Is Radiant Between the Hates, by Rich Ferguson.

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Moon Tide Wishes You All a Safe and Festive Day of Gratitude

By Eric Morago
FROM: Moon Tide Press

I have thought about how I would start this blog post over and over again—wanting so desperately to dive into giving thanks for all Moon Tide and I have to be grateful for, but also feeling that doing so somehow dismisses what a difficult year it has been for so many. I recognize there will be many this holiday season for which gratitude will be a desert mirage—something their eyes and mind convinces themselves of in order to give them, rightfully so, hope. But for me, gratitude is much more tangible this year than it ever has been.

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David Ulin Talks USC’s New Literary Journal ‘Air/Light’ And Its Focus On Southern California

By Peter Larsen
FROM: Orange County Register

While considering a name for the new literary journal “Air/Light,” editor David Ulin recalled a magazine piece he’d read years ago in which a climatologist described the unusual way that air transforms light in Southern California.

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America’s Oldest Children’s Bookstore is Struggling in the Pandemic. But There’s Hope

By Mary McNamara
FROM: Los Angeles Times

Once upon a time, in the hills above Los Angeles, where owls hoot, bear cubs frolic and deer trip daintily down the street, there lived a family with two little girls, named Jessica and Amelia, who loved to read.

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Chicana Writing Avatar Sarah Rafael García Moves Forward with Her Rolling Bookstore

by Liz Goldner
FROM: KCET.org

Sarah Rafael García, a familiar writer/entrepreneur/celebrity in her hometown of Santa Ana, exudes radiance, energy and success. Yet she attributes her accomplishments in writing, teaching, publishing and recently becoming the owner of a bookstore to acknowledging discomfort in her life. She uses that discomfort — as an out-of-place Chicana — as a major source of motivation.

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How Pico Iyer found L.A.’s Beating Heart at the L.A. Times Festival of Books

By PICO IYER
FROM: The L.A. Times

Los Angeles is the city without a heart, we used to hear when I was growing up in England, few of us having come within 5,000 miles of California. Seventy-eight school districts in search of a center, a desert car culture in which every last soul is locked inside her own four doors, a teenage wasteland: The clichés came streaming in on us as we stood in the rain at bus stops in chilly Oxford, on our way to another unheated basement.

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