Writer’s Workshop at Baldwin Hill Branch Library
Writing a book and looking for feedback? Need deadlines to help you reach your writing goals? Then this is the group for you!

Each meeting, you should bring 5-10 double-spaced pages of writing to share with the group. Every member will have time to present their work and receive feedback.

Please call the information desk with any questions, and to RSVP: 323-733-1196.

Where: Baldwin Hills Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 21^st                      

Time: 5 pm – 6:30 pm

Address: 2906 S. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90016

Website: http://lfla.org/event/writers-workshop     Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/21/16 – 11/27/16”

by Jeffrey Fleishman

From: Los Angeles Times

A sense of the other seeps through Viet Thanh Nguyen’s work, a place where war and memory play like discordant whispers, and defining one’s identity, especially for an immigrant or a refugee, can be as disquieting and elusive as chasing light through a prism.

A child of the Vietnam War who arrived in this country when he was 4, Nguyen is at once outsider and citizen, provocative terrain for a writer seeking to articulate and reconcile the opposing national narratives that have shaped his life. His first novel, “The Sympathizer,” which won a Pulitzer Prize  this year, is set against American involvement in Vietnam, as told by a sly protagonist of multiple perspectives: “a spy, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces.”

Continue reading “National Book Award finalist Viet Thanh Nguyen speaks out on war, capitalism and Donald Trump”

by Ilana Masad

From: L.A. Times

The stories in Dana Johnson’s collection “In the Not Quite Dark” take place in and around Los Angeles, the historical Pacific Electric Building in downtown in particular. Characters across stories live there, either the victims of gentrification or the unapologetic gentrifying. In “Because That’s Just Easier,” yuppie parents try to teach their child that there is nothing she can do for the homeless of downtown. When the girl observes a man prone on the sidewalk, she wonders whether or not he’s alive. Her father kneels down and says, “If he’s not dead … then it’s harder.” The girl decides by the end of the story that the homeless man must be dead then, because — as the title states — that’s just easier.

Continue reading “Shining short fiction collections by Dana Johnson and Anne Raeff”

Tim Wu, with Madeleine Brand, at ALOUD Reading Series

Tim Wu, in conversation with KCRW’s Madeleine Brand, will discuss and sign his new book The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads, which explores the rise of firms whose business models are the mass capture of attention for resale to advertisers. Wu looks at the cognitive, social, and unimaginable ways that industries focusing on human attention are transforming our society and our personal lives.

Check website to confirm RSVPs and/or stand by status guidelines.

Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 14^th                      

Time: 7 pm

Address: 630 West 5^th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071

Website: http://lfla.org/event/the-attention-merchants-the-epic-scramble-to-get-inside-our-heads/

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/14/16 – 11/20/16”

Alice Hoffman, with Lisa See, at Vroman’s Bookstore

Alice Hoffman, in conversation with author Lisa See, will discuss and sign her new novel Faithful, the story of a young woman survivor finding her way in the modern world. From the bestselling author of The Marriage of Opposites and The Dovekeepers, comes this soul-searching story of Shelby Richmond, an ordinary girl until an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate when her best friend’s future is destroyed in an accident, and Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt.

Join us to hear two favorite bestselling authors in conversation!

Where: Vroman’s Bookstore

Date: Monday the 7^th            

Time: 7 pm

Address: 65 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91101

Website: http://www.vromansbookstore.com/event/alice-hoffman-conversation-lisa-see-discusses-and-signs-faithful

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 11/07/16 – 11/13/16”

Conchas Y Café Continues at Junipero Serra Library

DSTLarts and Junipero Serra Branch Library present Conchas Y Café, an adult creative writing workshop, offered every Monday, where you can work with local artists on the DIY art of writing poetry, drawing mini-comics, collaged instruction, self-publishing and making zines.

Where: Junipero Serra Branch Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 31^st           

Time: 6 pm – 7:30

Address: 4607 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90037

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/concha-y-cafe-talleres-de-escritura-creativa

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/31/16 – 11/06/16”

Libyan Author at ALOUD, Central Library

Hisham Matar, in conversation with Louise Steinman, will discuss and sign The Return Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between.     When Matar was a university student in England, his father was one of the regime’s most prominent critics in exile. His earlier book, In the Country of Men, a chronicle of his journey home to his native Libya after the fall of Qaddafi in search of the truth behind his father’s disappearance and kidnapping, was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. This book, The Return, weaves the intimacy of a memoir with the suspense of journalism, to offer a reflection on exile, art, family, and the history of a revolution.

See website to RSVP and ensure seating.

Where: Mark Taper Auditorium, Central Library, LAPL

Date: Monday the 24^th          

Time: 7 pm

Address: 630 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, CA 90071

Website: http://www.http://lfla.org/event/the-return-fathers-sons-and-the-land-in-between/

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 10/24/16 – 10/30/16”

by Luis J. Rodriguez

From: LAPL BLOG

Let us dare haunting verse of the oppressed,

poems with hoodies, finger-tapping, ambling.

I mean pissed off and ardently expressed,

poems delirious as midnight rambling.

Bebop, Hip Hop, a decima or slam,

metered lyrics, free shaped texts… no matter,

bring out the fire, the punch, a resounding jam.

Let it ring far, a magnificent chatter.

Naming the nameless, voicing the unheard,

questioning the questions, swimming, splashing.

No expert strokes but damn if not expert word;

every line bleeding, grieving, pleading, slashing.

            The power of poetry is its stance,

            page or stage, electrifying or trance.

Continue reading “Los Angeles Poets and the Temper of Our Times”

by Mike Sonksen

From: Entropy

It’s no secret that Literary Los Angeles is hotter than the Mojave. The following essay is a dispatch spotlighting a new bookstore and several recent books.

The latest great news is the opening of a new bookstore in Boyle Heights, OTHER BOOKS / OTROS LIBROS on Cesar Chavez and Cummings. Located a block from the legendary eatery Guisados, the new store is a collaboration between the proprietors of Seite Books, formerly in East Los Angeles and KAYA Press. This new store is highly anticipated because Seite has always had an incredible collection of titles and KAYA Press is one of the West Coast’s most innovative presses. Seite was forced to relocate because their lease was not renewed on their original space and this new partnership puts them on an even busier street in collaboration with KAYA, so it’s a double blessing for aficionados of local literature.

Continue reading “OTHER BOOKS AND A FEW MORE AFTER THAT”

From: Women Who Submit

Saturday December 3, 2016 Wendy C. Ortiz will lead the 3rd installment in the WWS Fall Workshop Series: Public Notebook to Book. Ortiz is the author of two memoirs, Excavation(Future Tense Books, 2014) and Hollywood Notebook (Writ Large Press, 2015) and has her third book, Bruja, being release October 31, 2016 from Civil Coping Mechanisms.

Ortiz has used journals and public notebooks throughout her career. In fact, “Hollywood Notebook, a prose poem-ish memoir, and Bruja, a dreamoir, both began as public notebooks and eventually found their way to becoming print books,” and in her workshop, Ortiz will share strategies for keeping a notebook and how to shape it into a piece of writing intended for an audience.

Continue reading “PUBLIC NOTEBOOK TO BOOK: AN INTERVIEW WITH WENDY C. ORTIZ”