A review of Shaky Town by Lou Mathews
“Shaky Town by Lou Mathews is a linked short story collection filled with the working-class concerns of L.A.’s barrio, circa 1980s.” Continue reading A review of Shaky Town by Lou Mathews
Tag: L.A.
“L.A.’s a Strange Place”: On Judith Freeman’s “MacArthur Park”
Judith Freeman’s latest book “MacArthur Park” is set in L.A. from 1984 to the present century as it explores the complexities of a friendship between two women—and how it shapes, and reshapes, both of their lives. Continue reading “L.A.’s a Strange Place”: On Judith Freeman’s “MacArthur Park”
‘Always Running’ Author Luis Rodriguez Talks to 600 Pomona Teens
By David Allen
FROM: Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
First the marching band performed a few rousing numbers. Then writer Luis J. Rodriguez took the stage in Pomona’s Garey High quad Friday morning, Oct. 22, to tell 600 students about marching to the beat of a different drummer.
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Rosecrans Baldwin
By Sean Hooks
FROM: Full Stop
Author of articles and essays in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, GQ, Esquire, Salon, and Slate, Rosecrans Baldwin has published the novels You Lost Me There (2010) and The Last Kid Left (2017), and the nonfiction titles Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down (2012) and his newest release Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles, published by MCD/FSG. It’s replete with cultists, wildfires, earthquake lore, working-class thespians, DIY survivalists, Border Angels, gamer collectives, labor trafficking survivors, and assorted Angelenos who could be said to be vagabonds (or wastrels). Despite reckoning with a litany of contemporary apocalypses, it remains a book levied with humor, including an inventive appropriation of Charles Bukowski’s character Henry Chinaski, an exposé of the lampoonable greed of investment trusts that view human suffering as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to “buy low,” and a hilarious depiction of a screenwriting team’s meeting with Hollywood producers gone awry.
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An L.Á. Writer and Racial Solidarity
By Brian Dunlap
Last month Maylin Tu posted on Facebook about the pitch she submitted to ROCK PAPER RADIO’s Asian and Black solidarity project, #AZNxBLM. This project is a call for “solidarity and creative awareness-building” as it says on their website, in light of the surge of Anti-Asian violence, and “[sought] to fund a collection of original art and writing that responds to the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes with determination and humanity.”
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The 17 Coolest Bookstores In Los Angeles
By Carrie Bell
FROM: Trip Savvy
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Reading probably isn’t the first form of entertainment most people associate with Los Angeles. But the city actually has a long history of fantastic independent bookstores. Bibliophiles in search of their new favorite will not have a hard time finding their happy ending in the stacks of general neighborhood gems—complete with shop cats, signed bestsellers, and coffee bars—or in shops that specialize in specific genres like horror, food/cooking, or romance. Start the search for what Henry David Thoreau called “the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations” at the 17 best bookshops around greater L.A.
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How Pico Iyer found L.A.’s Beating Heart at the L.A. Times Festival of Books
By PICO IYER
FROM: The L.A. Times
Los Angeles is the city without a heart, we used to hear when I was growing up in England, few of us having come within 5,000 miles of California. Seventy-eight school districts in search of a center, a desert car culture in which every last soul is locked inside her own four doors, a teenage wasteland: The clichés came streaming in on us as we stood in the rain at bus stops in chilly Oxford, on our way to another unheated basement.
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L.A.’s Independent Bookstores Reckon With Diversity (or the lack of it)
FROM: Los Angeles Times
On June 23, author Carmen Maria Machado announced she had canceled her virtual event with Tattered Cover, Denver’s oldest independent bookstore. “Unlike the owners,” she wrote, “I know that choosing neutrality in matters of oppression only reinforces structural violence.”
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Literary History: The Fearless Invention of One of L.A.’s Greatest Poets
A new volume of quintessential L.Á. poet Wanda Coleman’s poetry, “Wicked Enchantment” and eidted by poet Terrance Hayes, has brought the Watts born poet into the spotlight. Continue reading Literary History: The Fearless Invention of One of L.A.’s Greatest Poets
Órale Boyle Heights ep 31: Nikolai Garcia
By Erick Huerta Erick Huerta’s guest this episode is Nikolai Garcia. He is a poet from South Central L.A. and they met up at his favorite bar, Hanks, to discuss his new poetry chapbook, what it was like growing up in the hood, his journey to becoming one of those great L.A. poets. You can follow Nikolai on Instagram and Twitter at @HelloKommie. Listen to … Continue reading Órale Boyle Heights ep 31: Nikolai Garcia
Los Angeles Literature 