Author on Theater at Palms-Rancho Park Library

Author Barbara Kraft will speak about the Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionesco who was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theater, and helped to inaugurate a new type of theater which came to be known as “theater of the absurd.” He believed that the king of the “theater of the absurd” was Shakespeare.

Where: Palms-Rancho Park Library

Date: Monday the 26^th         

Time: 3:30 pm – 5 pm

Address: 2920 Overland Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90064

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/lecture-eugene-ionesco

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 9/26/16 – 10/02/16”

A writer looks back on how the San Gabriel Valley has changed, and how it changes those drawn to it

By Alex Espinoza
From: Los Angeles Magazine

I was born in Tijuana, in an unnamed colonia atop a muddy hillside above the city. After my siblings and I received our green cards, we crossed the border with 
our mother into Southern California. I was raised in La Puente, which borders the City of Industry, a place known for its many warehouses and factories. As kids, my friends and I played in empty fields sandwiched between loading docks owned by multi-million-dollar companies. Our fathers disappeared into the cavernous bellies of these plants. They came home exhausted, kicked off their work boots, cracked open beers, and told stories about feuds along the assembly line, about angry machines that ripped off fingers and arms, about chemicals that could melt skin away, about broken spines and permanent hearing loss. We were a community of immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador. We arrived seeking shelter from poverty and civil unrest and instead found ourselves confronting a society that had all but abandoned the mythical American dream.

Continue reading “The Irresistible Draw of Assimilation”

Poetry Reading at Pomona College

Poet Anna Moschovakis will discuss We Will Get into Trouble for This, and be reading from her work as part of the literary series.

Anna Moschovakis is a poet, editor and translator, the author of several chapbooks, and a member of Ugly Duckling Presse. A core faculty member of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, she is also a visiting assistant professor at the Pratt Institute.

Where: Crookshank Hall Room #108, Pomona College

Date: Monday the 19^th         

Time: 4 pm – 5:30 pm

Address: 140 W. Sixth St., Claremont, CA 91711

Website: http://www.pomona.edu/events/literary-series-anna-moschovakis

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 9/19/16 – 9/25/16”

By Katie Orphan

From: Lithub.com

Los Angeles still comes to mind for most as a place of palm tree-lined streets, movie stars, and perhaps, a cultural wasteland. In a vastly diverse city of millions, those images have their space, but there’s room for so much more. If you find yourself in Los Angeles for a weekend, there is plenty of literary tourism to embrace. It’s a city not only written about, but written in, so there are landmarks a plenty. So much so, that I’m confining this weekend to the Eastern sides of Los Angeles.

Continue reading “A LITERARY LONG WEEKEND IN LOS ANGELES A BOOKISH VISIT TO THE LAND OF BUKOWSKI AND DIDION…”

Something Has To Be Done About This
by Michael Sedano
From: labloga.blogspot.com
I have watched in recent years the diminishing promise of the Los Angeles Latino Book and Family Festival. The September 10 seventeenth iteration of the LBFF brought dozens of people to Olvera Street and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. No one can be happy at this sparse attendance for the invariably worthwhile event.

Attendance has been dramatically greater; 22,000 in 2012. Then, the event featured county fair ambience, a warren of tents shading displays by bookstores, individual authors, vendors of ethnic merchandise and art. Accomplished entertainers took the stage. In the meeting rooms, gente could choose from a rich schedule of panels where writers read and signed their books. Public performance from the stage, microphone and everything, should be a writer’s best reward.

Continue reading “LAtino Book & Family Fest.”

Tween Book Club at Fairfax Branch Library–Children’s Event

Tween Book Club is for ages 9 to 12, or 4^th grade and up. This month we will discuss The War That Saved My Life, by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. This moving historical novel set during World War II is about a nine-year-old girl with a foot deformity who has never been allowed to leave her London apartment. But as children are sent to the countryside to escape the war, Ada sneaks out along with her brother who is being sent away. Does the war hold potential for Ada to live a better life?

We will have copies available at the branch, and talk about the book in a relaxed environment. Refreshments will be provided.

Where: Fairfax Branch Library

Date: Monday the 12^th         

Time: 4 pm – 5 pm

Address: 161 S. Gardner St., Los Angeles, CA 90036

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/tween-book-club-war-saved-my-life

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 9/12/16 – 9/18/16”

To anyone who has not already submitted to one of Angel City Reviews first 3 issues submissions are open until Halloween. Remember as it says on the review’s website, Angel City is “a literary journal that…aim[s] to present a diverse range of both writers and genres that run the gamut from experimental narratives to grittier fiction with a literary air. We are neither afraid of, … Continue reading Angel City Review Now Open For Submissions

Aphasia Book Club of Mid Valley

Aphasia is a language impairment, usually due to stroke, that affects individuals’ ability to speak, understand speech, read and write.

The Mid-Valley Branch is proud to offer a book club designed especially for adults with aphasia, and provides its members with supportive materials to improve their comprehension and ability to discuss complex topics. A single book will be discussed over a period of several weeks.

Our first book will be Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. For more information or to register call Sarah Catheart at (818) 677-4856 or email her at sarah.catheart@csun.edu.

Where: Mid-Valley Regional Library

Date: Monday the 5^th         

Time: 1 pm – 3 pm

Address: 16244 Nordhoff St., North Hills, CA 91343

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/aphasia-book-club-mid-valley

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 9/05/16 – 9/11/16”

By Diego Renteria

From: Tell Your True Tale

As a teenager, I was part of a mariachi group with high school friends. We performed at birthday parties, masses, quinceañeras, and weddings around Southern California, each time becoming part of someone’s special occasion.

We always hesitated about taking gigs after December 15th because members traveled with their families for the holidays. In 2006, however, almost all our members stayed in our town of South Gate for Christmas, so that year we accepted a Christmas Eve gig because it was a one-hour performance in our hometown.

Continue reading “Song For The Living”

by Victoria Kim

From: Los Angeles Times

Standing in the heart of Koreatown, novelist Krys Lee is turned around.

Was this the direction to the Korean market to which her family made a pilgrimage every weekend, and her mother would rent her cache of Korean videotapes? Which way was the tofu restaurant she and her pastor father walked to countless times, after her mother died and there was no one to cook him Korean food?

And where was her father’s final apartment, where he lived, broken and lost, until he suffered a heart attack mid-sermon at the pulpit?

Continue reading “Raised in California and living in Seoul, novelist Krys Lee wrestles with Korean identities”