Covering the Local Literary Community
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Los Angeles Literature
Thank you for supporting Los Angeles Literature, an independent, online magazine covering the Greater Los Ángeles literary community—its news, history, writers and their writing through articles, book reviews, interviews, history and literary criticism.
Los Angeles Literature looks out from a perspective centering the city’s writers of color and its LGBTQIA writers, their events and issues and their literature—historically marginalized—and expands outward to the rest of the literary community.
To publish the best writing about the community, focused on publishing writers of color and LGBTQIA writers, we aim to pay writers for the work we publish and for the work we do to maintain and update the site.
The Origin of Los Angeles Literature
When Dunlap was in grad school and stumbled across poet, journalist and SoCal native Mike Sonksen’s articles about the literary community, he realized how vast and vibrant all its nooks and crannies are. Also he learned about the community’s deep history of Black, brown, Asian and LGBTQIA writers and their venues. A community and history he wished he’d known and engaged with growing up.
As a result, Dunlap wanted to give voice to the Greater Los Ángeles literary community, for it to tell the city, region and world about itself and the literature it produces. As a place where the public can first engage in the literary community and critically discuss its literature, where the community itself can come together. Where its news and issues can be covered openly and honestly through verifiable facts.
That’s why in 2015 Brian Dunlap founded Los Angeles Literature, first as a blog covering the Greater Los Ángeles literary community. Then in 2023, as a fully-fledged independent, online magazine that’s always open for submissions.
Los Angeles Literature is Community Based
Founded by community member, native Angeleño, writer and poet and Editor-in-Chief of Los Angeles Literature Brian Dunlap, he understands the Greater Los Ángeles literary community firsthand. From a lifetime living in and interacting with the city and region; attending Black, brown, Asian and LGBTQIA focused community literary events hosted in their neighborhoods; buying, reading and reviewing their books.
He knows how the literary community gets lost in the shadow of Hollywood, how the city has long since been stereotyped as having no culture and how its writers and communities of color are too often missing—left out—from discussions of its literature, its portrayals of the city and region and from the authors that were consistently held up as the best storytellers of the city’s stories.
The people and communities that make up the diverse cultures Los Ángeles is famous for.
Support Los Angeles Literature. Support Writers.
Los Angeles Literature is for the Greater Los Ángeles literary community and for the literary lovers of Southern California and beyond. If it wasn’t for the literary community and their support, Los Angeles Literature wouldn’t exist.
Please donate via Ko-fi today!
Your donation will be divided equally: half towards operating costs and half to compensate the writers we publish for their hard work.
We believe in respecting writers for the time and effort it takes to compose a powerful piece of writing and believe they should be able to make a living from their passion.
There are two ways to donate:
- make a one-time donation in any amount
- become a $20 per month ($240 a year) member
And members get a gift. They choose two out of five bookmarks of their choice. Each bookmark has a different powerful quote about L.Á. from a different L.Á. writer.
Each donation is cherished and is used to help shine a light on the diverse literary community by giving it the coverage it deserves.
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Los Angeles Literature 