The Former LA Times Book Critic in Conversation with Paul Holdengraber
By Lit Hub
FROM: Lit Hub
In this episode of A Phone Call With Paul, Paul Holdengraber speaks with David Ulin, writer, and former book critic of the Los Angeles Times, about the dramatic changes in Los Angeles, the literature of the city, and his work on Joan Didion.
Continue reading “David Ulin on the Rapidly Changing Landscape of Los Angeles”
By Steve Chiotakis
FROM: Greater L.A./KCRW
Southern California may not get the credit it deserves for its strong literary community and a great spoken word scene. However, poets Shonda Buchanan and Mike Sonksen tell Greater LA the poetry community could be the most diverse scene in the city of Los Angeles.
Continue reading “2 Local Poets: ‘The Spirit of Activism Has Always Been in LA Poetry’”
Emerging poet and professor bridgette bianca discusses her life, work and the local literary community. Continue reading Poet Bridgette Bianca on Connecting Through Spoken Word
Kenji Liu Is Using Frankenstein As A Metaphor For Toxic Masculinity
by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
FROM: Bitch Media
Kenji Liu and I enter a tea shop on Las Tunas Drive in an area that feels like the epicenter of the boba tea shop movement in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley. K-pop plays over the speakers while a worker noisily fixes a hole in the ceiling, and Liu and I have to raise our voices in order to discuss Monsters I Have Been, his new collection of sci-fi–inspired poems that uses the figure of Frankenstein’s monster as a way to reflect on toxic masculinity. But though our location isn’t an ideal place to record an interview, after immersing myself in Monsters’ mix of languages, pop-culture references, and chopped-up texts, I wanted to meet in a location that has a similarly busy vibrance.
An interview with Fullerton College Professor and Poet, Cynthia Guardado. She discusses her book “Endevor,” a book about the experiences of women of color in America. Continue reading Endeavor: An Interview with Cynthia Guardado
Brenda Delfino interviews Sara Borjas FROM: LARB
Poems can be windows. They can also be doors. These are truths to prescribe to while reading Sara Borjas debut poetry collection Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff. A window can work as an enterence, can mirror the reflection of someone familiar. In her poem “Lies I Tell,” previously published by the Academy of America Poets, Borjas writes,
Continue reading “Pocha and Proud: An Interview With Sarah Borjas”
In 1967, the Watts Prophets arose from the ashes of the Riots to offer a voice for the voiceless. Over a half-century later, Amde Hamilton is still creating change.
By Sam Ribakoff
FROM: TheLAnd
There used to be a lot more trees on this stretch of 103rd Street, but most of them were cut down so police helicopters could watch Watts’ residents from the sky. Amde Hamilton, 78 years old, still moves down these streets that he grew up on with a glide you can imagine him having in the late ‘60s, when he formed the Watts Prophets with Otis O’Solomon and Richard Dedeaux.
By Feroz Rather
FROM: The Southeast Review
Born in San Francisco and raised in Vacaville, Michelle Brittan Rosado earned an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Fresno, and is currently a PhD candidate in Creative Writing & Literature at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Why Can’t It Be Tenderness, which won the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (University of Wisconsin Press, 2018). Her chapbook, Theory on Falling into a Reef, won the inaugural Rick Campbell Prize (Anhinga Press, 2016). Her poems have been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, Poet Lore, San Francisco Chronicle’s “State Lines” column, and The New Yorker, as well as several anthologies.
Continue reading “In Search of Evanescence: A Conversation with Michelle Brittan Rosado”
From: Write Minded
In this episode of Write Minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers, Grant and Brooke explore with guest, Los Angeles native and writer, Francesca Lia Block, author of The Thorn Necklace, how writing is healing and oftentimes therapeutic. Today’s episode is about the feeling side of writing—and how touching into that both unlocks deeper places in a person’s writing and has the ability (at least some of the time) to set writers free from their angst and doubts and any lingering messages that might get lobbed at them by their inner critics. If you’ve ever wondered if writing has the power to heal, tune in.
Continue reading “Healing through Writing, featuring Francesca Lia Block”
by Adam Leipzig
From: Cultural Weekly
Since her abrupt firing on August 27, former ALOUD director Louise Steinman has mostly been quiet. She declined to comment for the media, and did not seek press attention. Meantime, the Library Foundation issued a series of statements and hired a new director of public programs.
Los Angeles Literature 