The Passing of Larry Colker
by Brian Dunlap
NOTE: Initially I didn’t post anything on Los Angeles Literature about Larry Colker’s passing last month from cancer because I never met him and I didn’t know him as a writer. However, seeing that Beyond Baroque is celebrating his life, the life of an L.A. poet and friend, on Saturday, and the fact that Los Angeles Literature is a news, history and information site covering the Los Angeles literary community, I feel obligated to post a brief article about him.
Los Ángeles poet Irene Monica Sanchez has won the 2018 Joe Hill Labor Poetry Award.
Long Beach Poet Sarah Thursday announced Sunday that her newest full-length collection of poems, Conversations with Gravel, will be released early in October. As she said on Facebook, “This collection was 5 years in the making based on love, heartbreak, and coping with loss.” Conversations with Gravel is Thursday’s second full-length collection of poetry, after All the Tiny Anchors, which was published in 2014.
The Friday night crowd clapped, hooted and snapped their fingers for each poet who stood up to read their work at Fox Coffee House. The poets read from their phones, mostly, expressing loss, frustration with societal expectations and anger at injustice.
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.
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.
The Hazards of Good Fortune, Los Ángeles based writer and screenwriter Seth Greenland’s new novel, will be released August 21, 2018 by Europa Editions. It’s a story of interconnecting lives, in which generations, races, and religions converge and conflict. Until August you can read his fifth novel the old-fashion way: as a serialization online at The Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB).
A lot has happened in Los Ángeles Literature in May. Writers were running workshops for the community and they all came together on the 19th and 20th in Pasadena’s Theater District for the 7th Annual LitFest Pasadena, celebrating local writers and presses. Plus, as many L.A. writers teach at local high schools, community colleges and universities and as the school year ends, they’ve been reflecting on the impact they’ve had on their students. One has been recognized for his teaching with an award.
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