Los Angeles Literature Events 10/12/15 – 10/18/15
David J. Peterson and “The Art of Language Invention”
David J Peterson, the creator of the Dothraki language for HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” discusses and signs “The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building” and reveals the steps he takes to invent new languages in this detailed guide.
In this book the author focuses on four key elements everyone who creates a constructed language must consider: sounds, words, language evolution, and written language. The conlang phenomenon will teach you more about linguistics than you ever learned before.
Where: Book Soup
Date: Monday the 12th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, CA 90069
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Poet Marsha de la O, a San Buenaventura Treasure
by Melinda Palacio
From: La Bloga
I had the pleasure of interviewing Marsha de la O in Ventura a few weeks ago. After the scandal in the New York Timesover a White poet using a Chinese name to get his work published, Marsha wanted to make sure La Bloga knew she was not Latina, but had kept her name from a previous marriage. I’ve admired Marsha’s poetry for several years and I’ve always assumed she was Chicana like me. I assured her that La Bloga readers would be grateful to hear about an exceptional, award-winning poet who was once a bilingual teacher and a former member of CABE, California Association for Bilingual Education.
Marsha arrived at poetry through prose in the form of vignettes. However, when a stranger came up to her and said, ‘You are the true poet,’ she allowed herself to believe him and even earned an MFA in poetry from Vermont College. She is an intuitive poet. She shared her poeming process with La Bloga:
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Los Angeles Literature Events 10/5/15 – 10/11/15
Jessica Wilson on http://www.KillRadio.org
Jessica Wilson guests and celebrates her new book of poetry, “Serious Longing,” published by Swan World Press from Paris, France. In studio are special guests: Patricia Kanozai, Editor-in-Chief of Swan World Press, and Los Angeles Blues sensation, Sayed Sabrina.
Where: Full Spectrum, a literary variety show
Date: Monday the 5th
Time: 10 pm
Address: Listen and call in at (213) 252-0998, Los Angeles, CA 90028
Website: http://www.killradio.org or http://www.pw.org/calendar
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Announcement: Los Angeles Native Wendy C. Ortiz’s New Book
From: Civil Coping Mechanisms blog CCM is pleased to announce BRUJA by Wendy C. Ortiz, the author of the critically acclaimed EXCAVATION: A MEMOIR and HOLLYWOOD NOTEBOOK. With Bruja, Ortiz continues to upend and reinvent the memoir in inventive and deeply emotional ways to better fit the terms and trajectory of her exploration. Behold the “dreamoir”–the details from the most malleable and revelatory portions of one’s … Continue reading Announcement: Los Angeles Native Wendy C. Ortiz’s New Book
Orange Line
A short story by Daniel A. Olivas
Origonally publish in The Coachella Review, reposted on La Bloga
We sit on the bench waiting for the Orange Line. Rosario reads a Bolaño novel that I gave her last week for her twenty-fourth birthday. In truth, I’d bought it for myself but I couldn’t get past the first thirty pages so I wrapped it in some nice gold wrapping paper, bought a card with a smiling monkey on it (you can’t go wrong with a monkey card), and gave it to Rosario. She loved it, wondered how I knew she wanted to read it. I shrugged. Brilliant, I guess.
I should have brought a book with me. Rosario is buried in Bolaño and I just look around. No one is here, just us. And a long-haired throwback to the seventies who sits on the next bench over to my right. Rosario sits to my left. Where is everyone? It’s Tuesday morning. Yes it’s early, but don’t people work anymore? Funny question since I don’t work, not right now. Between jobs, as they say. And Rosario is getting her masters in English literature at CSUN, so she’s not really working, either.
Los Angeles Literary Events 9/28/15 – 10/4/15
Amy Stewart on “Girl Waits with Gun”
From the New York Times best-selling author of “The Drunken Botanist” comes an enthralling novel based on the forgotten true story of one of the nation’s first female deputy sheriffs. Constance Kopp doesn’t quite fit the mold. She towers over most men, has no interest in marriage or domestic affairs, and has been isolated from the world since a family secret sent her and her sisters into hiding fifteen years ago. One day a belligerent and powerful silk factory owner runs down their buggy, and a dispute over damages turns into a war of bricks, bullets, and threats as he unleashes his gang on their family farm. When the sheriff enlists her help in convicting the men, Constance is forced to confront her past and defend her family and she does it in a way that few women of 1914 would have dared.
Where: Vroman’s Bookstore
Date: Monday, the 28th
Time: 7 pm
Address: 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, California 91101
Website: https://www.vromansbookstore.com/amy-stewart-sept-2015
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Narrative 10
With David L. Ulin
To mark the publication of his new book, Sidewalking: Coming to Terms with Los Angeles, Narrative has a few burning questions for David Ulin.
1. Who is your favorite character in fiction; your fave character in life?
Oh, what a question. Favorite character? It’s like choosing a favorite child. My favorite characters, probably, are those who hew closest to their authors: the quietly desperate men and boys of Raymond Carver; the wide-eyes alter egos of Jack Kerouac. I love the unnamed narrator in Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson; also, Meursault and the corrupted “judge-penitent” of The Fall, Clamence. I love the detective heroes: Philip Marlowe, Easy Rawlins. I adore Mildred Pierce. And St. Augustine, always Augustine, wrestling with the curse of his humanity, so contemporary and relevant over nearly two millennia. I respond to characters who are not creations so much as expressions, impressions, self-portraits, in a sense. As for life, well . . . that’s a harder question, or maybe it’s that life has never offered me such clarity.
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LitCrawl L.A.: Los Angeles’ Literary Lovefest Returns To North Hollywood
By Eve Hill
The literary life of Los Angeles is thriving, and a free celebration is afoot! On October 21st, 2015, LitCrawl L.A. returns to North Hollywood with a walkable menu of literary offerings. Feed both your literary and literal appetite as over 200 Los Angeles writers descend upon NoHo’s assorted coffee shops and restaurants to read from their latest works. Start your personal literary lovefest now by curling up with a sampling of the authors described below.
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Convivir: Las Lunas Locas a Way for Women to Write
By Cynthia Guardado
In March, I began attending a women’s writing circle called Las Lunas Locas in El Sereno, Ca. The women’s circle was started by Karineh Mahdessian and Sophia Rivera, with the intention of creating a safe space for women to write in communion. Each Monday night we meet at 7:30pm and begin our journey for that evening. We sit in a circle inside Here & Now a beautiful space that provides reiki, herbal workshops & community events.
As a poet, a mujer, I noticed that the manuscript I have been developing for 5 years is extremely feminine. This was somewhat of a surprise to me, but I’m not sure why it wasn’t obvious since I am a woman who writes about herself and other woman. Perhaps it was because no one has ever taken the time to acknowledge me and say you are a women, you write from your own perspective, and then follow that with encouraging words that made me feel comfortable writing from my femininity.
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Chiwan Choi in the Fall Issue of Twelfth House
Los Angeles poet Chiwan Choi has published another section from his current poetry project “If 100, Then 150,” this time in Twelfth House. As Choi said on his blog in July about this project, “as some of you know, I’ve been working on a poem (or the poem’s been working me) in the last month or so…The poem started out as a shorter piece called ‘if 100, then 150,’ I wrote it to read at the Machine Dreams robot symposium at UCLA on June 11. While I liked the piece enough when I read it, it didn’t feel finished at all. So when I had a chance to read again 10 days later…I edited it and read it again. It felt much better…but still not done…The editing ‘solution’ I found became a bigger problem. Ok. Not problem, but definitely bigger. I realized the poem, still called “if 100, then 150,” needed to be a 100 part piece.”
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Los Angeles Literature 