Former Los Angeles Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez preserves the rich, early literary history of L.A.’s Eastside from 1978 to 1984. Alongside writers such as Helena Maria Viramontes, Mary Helen Ponce, and Manazar Gamboa, among others, he helped build the Chicano/a/Latinx literary community that continues to flourish in Los Ángeles today. Continue reading From the Heart of a Writer to the Heart of the World
Pam Ward remembers Lynn Manning, an artist, poet, playwright and Watts native, who was active in the literary community in 1990s and whose plays have been performed all across Los Ángeles from the Skylight Theatre to the Mark Taper Forum and beyond. Continue reading Two Poets & a Bag of Peaches: My Last Day with Lynn Manning
Earlier this month the literary community lost a talented poet and a good man. Poet Laurel Ann Bogen writes about how she became friends with Jerry Garcia, who he was and what he ment to her and the community. Continue reading How I Knew Jerry Garcia
Los Angeles Literature’s newest literary history essay by Pam Ward.
Los Ángeles has been home to many powerful poets and writers, native born and transplants. They’ve read on stages, both makeshift and otherwise, from The Valley to Beyond Baroque, to Downtown and Chinatown to The Eastside, at Cafe con Libros in Pomona to LibroMobile in Santa Ana and the Ugly Mug in Orange, to long gone spots like Redondo Poets, Papa Bach Bookstore and 5th Street Dicks in Leimert Park and everywhere in-between. L,Á. native Pam Ward, author of Want Some Get Some, Mad Girls Burn Slow and the poetry collection Between Good Men & No Man At All, takes readers back to her first decade in the literary community, between the mid-80s to the mid-90s, remembering how the poets got down and how poetry saved lives.
Continue reading How to Float: A Poet, The Woman’s Building and Beyond Baroque
Los Angeles has a long and deep literary tradition of political storytelling that dates back to the natives and their myths. Since, this tradition has become as diverse as the writers that make up the literary community today. Here is some of that history. Continue reading A Political Storytelling Tradition in Southern California
The LGBTQIA literary legacy in Greater Los Angeles runs deep, going back more than 50 years. They have not only impacted Los Angeles literature, but they’ve also helped shape the local literary community and continue to shape the community today. Here is a list of many, but not all, of the LGBTQIA writers past and present that make up the Greater L.Á. literary community. Continue reading LGBTQIA Legacy in the Literary Community
Mike Sonksen documents the history of L.Á. Poetry venues and the evolution of spoken word. Continue reading A Whole Ecosystem: Collective Effervescence in Los Angeles Poetry
L.Á.’s oldest Black-owned bookstore, Eso Won, is closing at the end of the year. The owners want to retire. Continue reading Eso Won Books Writes Its Closing Chapter
“Leslie Turner White served as inspiration for Chandler’s Marlowe, and whose autobiography, Me, Detective (1936), played a pivotal if largely forgotten role in the formation of American noir.” Continue reading The Forgotten Noir Detective
“That’s the thing about Los Angeles: Everything we say about it is both true and false.” Continue reading How Los Angeles Transformed American Literature
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