INTERVIEW BY KARINA WILSON
From litreactor.com

Poets were once central to public life. The Ancient Greeks and Romans regarded poetry as the best way to record epoch-making events, laud emperors or deities, and map the quests completed by heroes. Wherever a city fell or a conqueror rose, a poet observed from the sidelines and would, later, carve their account into cool clean lines of dactylic hexameter. Civilization, politics, and moral principles compressed into feet and couplets;  history registered as art.

Somewhere along the line since, however, poetry’s civic status faded – perhaps in the palaces of Renaissance princes, who liked to control the flow of words through bestowing, and removing, private patronage?  Poetry became a luxury, a privilege reserved for residents of ivory towers, far removed from everyday discourse, reserved for the most personal expression.  But, thanks to initiatives like Poetry In Motion on transport systems it didn’t disappear from public spaces entirely.

Continue reading “Words On The Streets: City Poet Steven Reigns”

Han Vance discusses and signs Golden State Misadventures

Golden State Misadventures chronicles an amusing and ultimately life-altering quest of a soon-to-be-divorced father from Atlanta as he travels turn of the millennium California, immersing himself in the urban grittiness of the Bay Area, glitzy yet morally ambiguous quirkiness of Hollywood and slow burn reclusiveness of the Emerald Triangle. Han Vance is an Atlanta-based American culture reporter: writer (author/journalist/poet/blogger).

Where: Book Soup

Date: Monday, the 24th

Time: 7:00 pm

Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069

Website: http://www.booksoup.com/event/han-vance-discusses-and-signs-golden-state-misadventures

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literary Events 8/23/15-8/30/15”

By IVY POCHODA

Steph Cha might be the world’s only author of Korean American feminist noir. That might sound overly niche, but it isn’t. Her
Juniper Song detective series featuring, you guessed it, a female Korean PI, plays by most of the conventions of the noir genre and does so with much finesse.

Juniper might idolize Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s great hard-boiled detective, but she more closely resembles another Los Angeles PI — Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins. Like Mosley, Cha weaves her mysteries around Los Angeles’ immigrant and outsider communities, creating a richer and more ethnically diverse (and more accurate) portrait of the city than the average detective novel.

Continue reading “Steph Cha talks about the L.A. immigrant noir of ‘Dead Soon Enough’”

Check out some great Los Angeles poets. Hear some powerful poetry. Then by Laura Davila’s chapbook from DSTLARTS.org among the others. Continue reading Poets For All Presented by Writ Large Press

Mysterious Book Club

Join the Palisades Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library for a discussion of “Before the Poison by Peter Robinson. At the outset of this haunting stand-alone from Arthur Ellis Award-winner Robinson (No Cure for Love), British film composer Chris Lowndes, a recent widower, leaves California after more than 30 years for the peace and quiet of the Yorkshire countryside. He buys isolated Kilnsgate House, which the estate agent neglects to mention was the site of a sensational crime….Robinson manages a melancholy tone without veering into the maudlin….Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary Agency.

Where: Palisades Branch of LAPL

Date: Tuesday, the 18th

Time: 6:00 pm

Address: 861 Alma Real Drive, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

Website: http://www.lapl.org/whats-on/events/mysterious-book-club-4

Continue reading “Los Angeles Literature Events 8/17/15-8/23/15”

By Luis J. Rodriguez

The music from the stage at the Pacoima City Hall in June pulled a small crowd onto a makeshift seating area during the “Celebrating Words” Festival, sponsored by Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore—the only annual outdoor literacy & arts festival in the San Fernando Valley.

Las Bandidas, a group of women donning “Charo” garb, danced and sang in the “banda” style popular in Mexico and many parts of the United States. That stage also held an alternative rock band, a Cumbia band, Son Jarocho performers, Hip Hop, spoken word performers, poets, and much more. There were also vendor booths of artists, artisans and community service organizations. Temachtia Quetzalcoatl, Tia Chucha’s resident Mexika danza group (so-called Aztec dancers) opened up the event.
Continue reading “Celebrating Poetry, Celebrating Ideas, Celebrating Creativity”

By Kurt Streeter

NOTE: The article that follows is from last November. It’s a great profile piece about who he was, his art (play writing and poetry, etc.) and the activism he did, like bringing the theater to an area of L.A. lacking arts education, Watts.

The bullet screamed out of the barrel of a silver-plated handgun, tearing through his left eye, his nasal canal, the optic nerve in his right eye. He fell to the barroom floor.

Everything was dark and he waited for death. So did the paramedics; he heard them say he probably wasn’t going to make it.

Four days later, lying in a hospital bed, he still couldn’t see. He was afraid he was going crazy, that the trauma of being shot made him imagine he was blind. Then a doctor sat at his side and explained: Surgeons had been forced to remove his left eye. The optic nerve in his right eye was severed.

“It will no longer work,” the doctor said. “You’ll never see anything again.”

Continue reading “Lynn Manning, co-founder of Watts Village Theater Company, dies at 60”

Note: An old, but still relevant article on Los Angeles publishing.

The continuing upheavals and bleak realities of the intersecting worlds of publishing houses and big-box retailers this year have made the normally reliable little joy of picking up a new book a minefield of guilt and ennui. From Amazon’s bad-faith feud with Hachette Book Group (way to play dirty, Bezos) to the more quotidian bummer of the perpetually middle-of-the-road offerings on the book tables at Costco and Wal-Mart, it’s more important to buy indie and local now than ever. But when it comes to books, it can be hard for even the most dedicated reader to know where to find the latest and greatest small and indie presses.

The exciting small publishing houses profiled below are located right here in L.A. All offer tomes that you can find at beloved haunts like Skylight in Los Feliz and Diesel in Brentwood for those all-important last-minute stocking stuffers.

Continue reading “5 Indie L.A. Presses You Should Know”

I am about a week late in posting this. Last week it was announced by the Before Columbus Foundation that Los Angeles poet, Peter J. Harris, won an American Book Award for his book of personal essays, The Black Man of Happiness. He is a native of Southeast DC and an alumnus of Ballou High School and Howard University. He is also the author of Bless the Ashes, poetry (Tia Chucha Press). He has published his work in a wide variety of publications since the 1970s. Since 1992, he’s been a member of the Anansi Writers Workshop at the World Stage, in LA’s Leimert Park. Mike Sonksen at KCET.org has said this about Harris:

Peter J. Harris [is] one of the most prominent voices from Leimert Park, over the last 20 years, “The Black Man of Happiness” is a nearly 350-page tome that includes 20 powerful essays interspersed with a few poetic interludes. Harris asks the simple question, “What is a happy Black man?” Before he defines this in a myriad of ways, he also identifies the obstacles that get in the way. Harris not only debunks negative stereotypes of the African-American man, he empowers readers with his frank discussion about being a son, father, stepfather, grandfather, creating brotherhood with his gay colleague and transcending his youngest daughter’s rape by her Black stepfather. Written in a literary style that merges heartfelt sincerity, raw honesty, and humor, there is much inspiration in these pages.

The following is the entire press release from the Before Columbus Foundation, listing all the winners. Congratulations to all the winners and especially Peter J. Harris.

Continue reading “Peter J. Harris Awarded a 2015 American Book Award”