Category: Articles

Articles

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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Articles, Los Angeles Literary Events

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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Articles

Santa Monica’s Teen Readers Society is Busy Building The Next Generation of Bookworms

By Julia Escobar
FROM: The Argonaut

Since the late 1970s, the percentage of 12th graders who said they read a book or magazine almost every day for pleasure has dropped from 60% to 16%, according to a study published by the American Psychology Association.

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Articles

Poet Sara Borjas Wins Prestigious Award

By Brian Dunlap

Last year Fresno native and L.Á. based poet and UC Riverside professor, Sara Borjas, published her debut collection Heart Like A Window, Mouth Like A Cliff,” from Noemi Press, to critical acclaim. It’s a poetry collection about her chicanx heritage, immediate family, and personal journey, in terms of love, chicanx gender rolls and expectations and, as she calls herself, of being a “Pocha.”

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Articles

News From Poet Angelina Sáenz

By Brian Dunlap

During the Coronavirus pandemic, poet Angelina Sáenz revised her monthly open mic, La Palabra, and made it a weekly series for 10 weeks: 10 Poets in 10 Weeks. One poet a week was featured. They ranged from Jenise Miller to Willie Perdomo to Octavio Quintanilla. She’s been the host of the Highland Park-based open mic for just over two and a half years.

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Articles

Dryland Expands Its Mission

By Brian Dunlap

It’s been five years since “Dryland: A Literary Journal Born in South Central Los Angeles,” published its first issue. Since Founding Editor-in-Chief, Viva Padilla, set out to publish “the best poetry, fiction, and nonfiction of the Los Angeles literary underground, and to prioritizing Black and POC artists, writers, and poets,” as it states on the journal’s website.

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Articles

Community Service During COVID-19

FROM: L.A. County Library Library Staff Step Into New Roles We’ve always been dedicated to serving the communities of LA County, but now more than ever, with doors to our buildings closed to the public since mid-March, Library staff have met the challenges LA County faces head-on, using their unique and diverse skills to step into new roles to bring essential services to communities during … Continue reading Community Service During COVID-19

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Articles

She Dreamed of a Black-Owned Bookstore in Inglewood. Now, She’s Going to Run One

By Chace Beech
FROM: Los Angeles Times

 

download.jpeg-16Asha Grant was always a bookworm. As a little girl growing up in Inglewood, she spent hours poring over stories like Debbie Allen’s “Dancing in the Wings,” Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” and Veronica Chambers’ “Marisol and Magdalena.” Her parents were delighted, but also frustrated by how challenging it was to find stories about young Black children.

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